Painful Love, Painful Memories

This was the first story I actually attempted at writing so it is very coarse. Purely fictional with a tinge of family love
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Like any child, discipline was a memorable part of my life, yet for me it was exceptionally painful – lovingly painful.

As I race down memory lane and my past plays itself through my mind like a black-and-white film, I return to the time when I was about four or five years old. It was then I made my first mistake in life – to lie. Details of what constituted the lie I fabricated have been blurred by age. Afterall, it was but a mistake any other normal child around that age would make and it is only through our mistakes do we learn. However, the way I was taught right and wrong was nowhere similar to how other normal children were taught. I remember my father was furious, or maybe furious was but an understatement to describe him then. Seething with anger, he brandished a bamboo cane and swiftly lashed out at my hands once. As the cane left a red stinging mark on my forearm, I reciprocated with an equally angry look at the person who dealt the blow.

Yet this time what I saw in my father’s eyes was more than anger. I could not discern what there was but I knew there was definitely a tinge of something else. However, before I could extricate the mix of emotions, the next scene shocked me so much it left my mouth agape. Using all his might, my father lashed out at his own left forearm twice. Then with tears rolling in his eyes, he muttered a sentence I would never forget.

“You have erred by telling a lie, but your mistake has showed how much more I have erred in teaching you. You have to be disciplined for your mistake but I will also not go unpunished for my negligence.”

This was so much more painful for me than the physical distress the cane could give me. It seared my heart so badly I cringed as though it was bleeding. I ran towards my father and clutched onto his injured arm tenderly while my small body plunged into his embrace. Tears dripped onto the two parallel red marks on his arm and how I wished my tears could alleviate his pain. However, my tears were no magical phoenix tears; they were but drops of guilt and remorse from a disobedient kid who had hurt his father. At that moment, I felt something dripping onto my head and I did not need to look up to know that it was my father’s tears.

Only when two people cry together do they understand how much they love each other

For the rest of my childhood, I was often praised by others for being an exceptionally obedient child. Some jokingly said that it was because my parents were strict disciplinarians and I was fearful of the punishment that awaited my mistakes. They were absolutely correct. I was very afraid. I was afraid of the punishment my father had to endure for my mistakes. For me, the ultimate torture stemmed from the pain my mistakes would inflict on my father. I was not strong enough to bear such a pain, a pain that transcended the normal caning or grounding plaguing the average kid. For those many years to come, I was also never strong enough to face that.

We were two entities but our pain was one

Twenty years later, my father is no longer around. However, the cane that he wielded twenty years ago on that fateful day still hangs on the wall in my room. Whenever I see it, I remember what my father has left behind for me – his legacy and teachings of love and pain, intertwined into a bamboo cane and crystallized into drops of tears……

Was it pain or was it really just love?