Love is Patience

下面是加州硅谷一个13岁的华裔女孩在学校英文课上写的一篇随笔，相当感人。经小作者的同意，我们得以发表，文中人名纯属虚构。原标题：“Choices Worth Making”.

I sit at the white desk in my comfy old swivel chair, adding embellishments to my latest fashion sketch. As I look around, I notice a picture I never saw before on the desk. Framed in an off-white cardstock frame is a picture of drunk-looking businessmen surrounding a large banquet table, with a banner sporting “We'll Miss You Zheng” in the background.

I take a moment to digest this photo, and I realize that it is from my dad's goodbye party for his “China team,” as he prepared to leave this job for a new one—one without traveling. I glance at the photo again, this time with hatred and bitterness for the businessmen that took my dad away from my family, and I begin to cry. As the tears roll slowly down my cheeks, onto my just-finished fashion sketch, I watch as the black gel ink blossoms into a few fuzzy ink flowers, and it hits me—this is the story I never had a chance to tell.

Of all the grainy memories of my childhood, there is no definite memory of my dad going on a business trip for the first time. At first the occasional visits to China and Japan were so cool because he came back with interesting presents for my brother and me. As I turned 7, I began to notice him leaving more often. I always gave Daddy a big hug before he left, lugging his monstrous black suitcase that was as tall as I was and hopping into the taxi that shuttled him off to his next destination. I never felt too bothered, though, because he always brought something exotic to fascinate my curious 7-year-old mind.

My family prepared to move from Fremont to Foster City in the summer between second and third grade for my mom's new job. My dad came home “for good,” and everyone pitched in with the packing process. As we settled in to our new home, it seemed that my dad's traveling days were over, and we were all one big family again. As third grade began, my dad resumed his occasional travels, and everyone threw themselves into their daily grind. Nothing seemed off-kilter until Winter Break of third grade. I performed at my teacher's annual Holiday Piano Recital without my dad in the audience for the first time. Businesspeople don't believe in Santa, or holidays. I wanted so desperately for my Daddy to come home and see me perform, watch me flaunt my musical talents up onstage.

Everyone's mood spiraled downwards after that holiday. Our family began to feel a mysterious emptiness without a father figure. As an eight-year-old, I didn't know what depression was. In my mind, my mom was simply sad. To cheer her up, I wrote her poetry and painted her pictures of flowers. Blinded by my naïve ignorance, I figured that Mommy was just tired, and I usually left her in peace. Even now, I don't know how she felt during that time, but the air of sadness that engulfed our daily lives imprinted itself in my mind with crystal clarity.

As much as my dad arrived and departed around the world, he noticed my mom's change in attitude. There was a lull in his traveling for a little while, and everyone's mood noticeably lifted. In the summer between fourth and fifth grade, he picked up where he left off once again. As I began fifth grade, I met challenges with false friends who tried to hurt me and succeeded. Through it all, my mom gave the best advice she knew, for she hated to see me so tangled up with inconsequential, fake friendships. I finally noticed my mom's meek and quiet misery, but this time it had a name—depression. My mom did everything she could to keep herself together and pretend like nothing was wrong to prevent her sadness from seeping into the lives of my brother and I.

Like a winding drive down a mountainside, my mom's mood continued to worsen, slowly but surely. My dad continued to throw himself into his job. His career, his destiny, no matter what he called it; all I saw was an act of selfishness. He prioritized his exciting career before his typical suburban family. He took frequent business trips all through my sixth and seventh grade year. I felt like he missed my childhood, that my own father didn't truly know me, his own daughter. I no longer cared about his presence at my Holiday Recitals, my Open Houses, or my school musicals. I lost touch with the Daddy I knew, and he became a stranger who wandered in and out of our house, only staying a quarter or less of each year. I didn't care about my dad’s presence at all. Even when he was home, he wasn’t actually there, always too busy fielding phone calls and sending out “urgent emails”. My dad logged tens of thousands of miles, crossing the Pacific hundreds of times, working constantly. My mom sat, all alone on the sidelines and watched, burdened with the responsibilities of running a family on her own. I tried, to no avail, to cheer her up. In my mind, I felt a little lonely too, like perhaps in some twisted way I could cheer her up, and it was almost within my reach. Almost.

Finally, my dad decided that he was through with his company, with his “China team,” and he quit in January of 2009. When he returned, it only took a matter of two months for everything to return to normal order. In time, my mom recovered, and things seemed much more buoyant in the family.

During this whole period, I learned to take care of myself in the easy ways—school, homework, piano, health. I lived in a monotonous routine, and I used art as my means of self-expression. I felt like a shell of a person, waiting for something to crack me.

The relationship between my dad and I is still strenuous, because I still believe that he missed huge chunks of my childhood. I try my best to get along with him, for the most part, and our family recovered nicely from this bump in the road.

Is my dad right, choosing to go with his career path for four and a half years and neglecting many family duties? Is it a choice worth making at all? As I sat there and cried quietly, staring at the picture of my dad's workaholic past, I saw my entire family's period of anguish flash past in my head. This is our story, the one I never had a chance to tell. 欢迎转贴，转贴时请注明出处，谢谢。