Category: Every Little Thing

September 26, 2020

On his second walk Argos is still very much trying to take everything in and adapt to the environment. He’s particularly scared of the two-deck buses, tenses up and assumes the attacking position if one swoops by too closely. Whenever Maomao feels Argos trembling through the leash, he will stoop down and hold him, press his cheek on Argo’s head and pat him on the leg until he stops shaking. Then he will stand up and resume walking like nothing happened.

After seeing that happening a couple of times I took out the phone and took a few pictures. In that moment it occurred to me that for a kid it’s really one of the same thing when he acts out of kindness of heart and out of mischief, like when he chases Argos around the living room with a stick. Just a tiny little soul knowing nothing yet but innocence.

September 18, 2020

At 8:30pm Maomao again wants to go downstairs to play. I lost my patience, scolding him for not wanting to spend more time reading or playing piano, but I eventually had to relent and let him go seeing that he’s at the brink of tears. Nowadays he plays at leat 3 or 4 hours downstairs everyday and it becomes a constant source of tension between me and him.

After he went out I sit in bed reading W. H. Auden’s Dyer’s Hand with a random symphony piece on Spotify in the background. My mind wondered to my first few years in Boston while reading the essay on the evolution of a young poet, and suddenly I was struck and weighted down by a deep sense of frustration and fulity. Not over my own laugable attempts to become a poet in my 20’s, I’ve made peace with that a long time ago. I again pondered on how Maomao is a total different person than me. This year I spent more time with him at home than ever, but instead of help us bond it only makes our relationship more and more contentious. This afternoon he was playing a song by Imagine Dragon in his room while drawing. I asked where did he learn about this song and, must have sensed the displeasure in my tone, he said, “I like Rock Music. Different people can like different things right?” I didn’t say anything and left the room. And the other day he put a song called Dancing Monkey on a loop at dinner table. He’s rather quick at picking up these random bits from kids he played with. Last week for a few days he was obsessed with Minecraft, cause kids downstairs talked about it. And before that it was Fortnite. I’m rather concerned by such indiscriminatory exposure to pop culture but I feel powerless to curb it. Conversely I’m inching ever colser to give up on trying to get him to take an interest in Classical music, a lost cause I have been devoting to from the day he was born.

I mean I know all this is me being unfair and harsh on him out of pure selfishness more than anything else. When I’m not losing my temper I put on aggresive displays of disappointment towards him just because he’s lying on the sofa daydreaming. I hate it when I’m like that but it only seems to get worse. I don’t know how to internallize this vague guilty feelings that I’m failing him in his education, so it comes out as negativity and aggression against him. Ever since he was born a recurring thoughts when I’m reading is “I wonder what Maomao will think of this when he sees it in 20 or 30 years”, as I drag a yellow highlighter across a line I like. But now sitting here it seems to me yet again that this may never happen. He’ll probably grow up not caring about books or music at all. All these thoughts I thought that I have meticulously perpetuated with ink and paper, a sort of metaphysical fist pump with him across a vast span of time and space even after I’m gone that I secretly buried between these pages, will actually all vanish with me. As that subsconscious expectation of legancy and continuity was constantly shattered and yanked away from me I suffered these bouts of futility attack.

貓貓語錄

（pointing to a Bentley): “Daddy can we buy this car?”
Me (laughing): “Can’t afford this one.”
(Matter-of-factly): “I know. You can’t even afford a Lamborghini.”
Me: “Now why be a prick for no reason…”

(After giving $2 to someone with a sign): “Daddy, I think everyone should give $1,000 to poor people.”
Me (suspicious): “Have you been watching CNN? Is the ‘Yang Gang’ still a thing?”

“Daddy thanks for buying the drawers for me. Let me give you $20.”
Me: “Sure, thanks.”
“Do you want a $20 or two $10?”
Me (Highly suspicious): “朝三暮四？把我当猴耍？”