Airport
I was staring out of the window in a blissful stupor ruminating idly how I’ve probably made one too many trips to the airport in the last month or so, when Dad breached the perfect silence and said, “So how’s life? Are you happy?” Giving the usual dynamic between us, it’s fair to count this as a curve ball thrown at close range. The first thought that came to me was how a little peculiar the timing of this question is, on the way TO the airport, after he had just spent two weeks with me. But Dad works in mysterious ways. Instantly I made an “oh well” mumble to stall for time while stealing a glance at the dashboard – I’m going 120km/h but I’m still 5km away from the tollbooth, so I’ll have to come up with Something. And the image of 貓貓 came to my mind, how would he react I wondered, 30 years down the road maybe, when he, driving me to the airport somewhere on a highway on a windy Sunday morning, is asked to give me a summary judgment of his life on the spot? And I realized this is not a conversation that could be sustained, if I say I Am happy then I will not know what to say next and if I say I’m not He will be at a loss for words instead.
When we walked out of the door Mom tried to get Maomao to kiss Dad goodbye but he waved his hand vaguely and rushed out to the corridor, leaving me holding his luggage in one arm and Maomao on the other. I was not sure if he was fighting back the choke in his throat or if he simply heard the ding of the elevator. Before that he spent the last half an hour holding Maomao on his lap listening to Radetzky March (not Kleiber’s, Karajan’s, which I didn’t approve) then the last movement of “From the New World”. He held Maomao’s hands in his and together they conducted the music from the armchair. I do that with Maomao too but his movement was much more natural and graceful, he even mixed in a few violin gestures which I cannot compete with. Eventually I grabbed the camcorder and recorded 2 mins of it. While I was doing it I was thinking, when Maomao watches this clip 30 years down the road maybe, will he also have the mental image of me, silent and attentive, standing behind the camera?
Wang Maomao 