My Friend’s Father

My Friend's Father

Knowing that he would come the next day, I had butterflies in the stomach. By my

friend I had got to know that he was a strict man. “My sister and I used to feel aghast at the thought of him, for he flogged us whenever we were disobedient

or failed in the exams at school.” My friend said.

So if anybody were me, she would possibly feel the same way as I was at the moment. Indeed, before I had seen his picture in my friend’s family album, in which

he didn’t look scary at all. Still, I felt nervous and listless at home,

when my friend went to pick him up at the nearby station.

It looked one minute was like an hour. For one thing, I did want to see him, for

anyway it’s him who brought my friend up and made him a well-educated man; but

for another, I was reluctant to do so. What if he didn’t like me, his future daughter-in-law? My hands became sweaty at the thought of this: will he punish me

like he did to my friend, won’t he?

While I was rumbling with my shirt and thinking of all this, there was a knock on the door with my friend calling my name outside. Holding my breath and telling

myself once again to be cool, I went to answer the door. So there he was, standing beside my friend with a big smile.

Wait, was he really the guy who tended to scare my friend away? In my mind I had

pictured him to be a stern and short-spoken man with no smile at all. But now the man standing in front of me was nothing like that: he doesn’t have a stern look at all, he smiles, he talks with me in a tone that makes me feel at ease, and he even tries to speak mandarin so that I could understand.

That evening while he rested in our living room, I talked to my friend in the kitchen. I told him that I felt surprised to meet his father. “I thought he must

be hard to get along with.” I said. To this my friend laughed and said when he

was a kid he thought the same way as I was now.

At dinner, he sat opposite to me, and my friend was next to me. Surprisingly, there was an air of familiarity. I didn’t feel uneasy at all. In a while he asked

me briefly how I got along with my study, and how my parents were at home, to those I replied accordingly. In return, I also asked after the things alike with

courtesy. My friend joined our conversation,too.

After supper, he said he wanted to stroll about for a few minutes. “In the map,

I have already known where the house locates at. But I’d love to see it again

with my foot so that it won’t lead me to a wrong place next time when I drop in

.” he said jokingly.

“A man can’t live in a place without knowing its neighborhood.” he added. That time suddenly I saw my friend in him. Or rather, I should say I saw him in my

friend. My friend once said to me that a man can't live in a city whereas cared

nothing about the city. In his word I saw a sort of responsibility. And this time, from his father’s words, I knew where his virtue of obligation originated from.

“Why your father used to beat you and your sister?” that night I asked my friend once again, “he doesn’t look like that way, to me he looks so amiable and easy.” My friend responded that probably because for his father’s generation they reckoned it was a must. “In a family, there got to have somebody to play the

hard role, you know.”

“And I think I should thank him for his whips and been harsh on me when I was a

kid, because you have no idea how I was mischievous and ill-behaved that time.”

In the end my friend added.

So let me see. Up so far, how do I feel about my friend's father? Aha,nothing but admiration,I should say.I admire him, who volunteered to be the hard part over

the years though probably without knowing it. And he is by no means the figure

I had imagined, but an amiable,caring, and responsible person.

It says that Parental love is universally selfless and devoting, though the forms that convey it may vary. So how can I not admire and respect him, and not salute to him, as well as the dedication of every parents to their children?

Caroline