Wang Maomao

Rudy. Soon I am old.

“The father and son faced one another across the stark declivity of their different heights, the man staring wordless at this incarnation of something he had imagined long before, in a different life; the child staring beyond at his virgin mother.”

— The Recognitions

I saw the scene so vividly in my mind’s eyes, and as I dragged the highlight across the sentence it felt like a ritual of burning a mark on the memory. The images of both Gwyon and Wyatt materialized for the first time and crystallized in their respective silent forms of that instance, and would time and time again resurface from subconscience and haunt me for the rest of book.

With Maomao, three and a half now, it’s a mighty struggle on a nightly basis, to overcome a simultaneous surge of affection and exasperation and emerge, in apparent difficulty, with either a plead in affected calmness, or a command of ad-hoc sternness, equally futile — he just goes on doing whatever he is doing, blissfully ignoring me. Without a word to me he charges forward gallantly in the quest of blazing a trail of his identity on this world. He talks to himself, and his toy cars and farm house, and the newly acquired pair of live fishes with a self-assurance that’s as cute as unnerving, conjuring up a world and dismissing it all in the procession of a half sentence. Caught off guard, I hurry after him and frentically try to assemble a semblance of strategy.

And I thought how differently it is with Dad. The first time (well maybe after the first few times) I listened to Chopin’s Cello Sonata, each note instantly became a word Dad spoke to me that he did not, the whole piece a conservation we never had. We share everything we share through blood and gene, a semblance runs from the similar faces to quirky moods. I gave Maomao his name partly because Dad’s love for 圍棋. Every time I go back home we spend afternoons watching broadcast of matches on TV, without a word. Dad plays violin but never bothered to teach me, I did not learn that he read Borges in his 30s until I was in mine. Yet a (sub-)conscious effort to imitate him runs through my adult life, the way he is at ease with his life, the careless way he does things, good or poorly no matter, the Grace.

Meanwhile, Maomao, three and a half years old, is all his own little man. Seeking my approval never seems high on his priority list. At times it is so clearly that he is probing me, with that peculiar mixture of childish slyness and innocence, and I feel hopelessly out of my depth. To every answer he follows up with another “why”, eventually calling my whole adult existence into crippling doubt with that single word. This morning I took him to the beach as usual. I kept asking him not to go up to the lifeguard tower and of course that was his cue. He sent me to retrieve a bucket of water, and when I turned around from the wave of course there he was on the top of the spiral stairs, waving and beaming at me. I was not sure which urges to suppress first, to laugh or yell.