Dad

Monday, community service commitments. Tuesday, meeting. Wednesday, attend courses. Thursday, more community service commitments. Friday, entertain customers. Saturday, back to the office. Sunday, work and work and work. This vicious cycle'd repeat, and for weeks, it'd be like I never had a Dad. I'd count myself lucky if I could catch him at home late at night. The worst comes when he starts flying to countries after countries. It was either to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, China or sometimes even weird, unknown islands; It was everywhere else but Home.

Today, I took the day off to help him out at his exhibition booth. I couldn't decide if 'excited' or 'reluctant' was the apt word to use to describe how I felt, but it was more of the former. It wasn't solely because my holidays had been as boringly still as an electrocardiogram of a corpse, but also because I'd finally spent some decent time with him. Throughout the entire day, he sat beside me, telling me stories about how unreasonable his staff or customers could get (with occasional rants about Mom's inefficiency in her work) and constantly asking me if I'd like something to snack on.

I miss this. I miss talking to him. No, not the "hey could you get that for me?"-kinda talk. I miss us talking, heart-to-heart. I miss being showered with concern. I miss you, Dad; The once-not-so-busy you.

At lunch, I took a closer, deeper look at him. The wrinkles that diverged out like a river course from the outer sides of his eyes seemed so much more defined than I've noticed, then it struck me.. Dad's old. Really, really old.

"Love your parents. We are so busy growing up, we often forget that they are also growing old."