Two memories

I have of my father.

Once, when I was perhaps seven or eight, he had taken me to visit someone in hospital. I can’t recall now whom we were visiting, though it feels like it would have been my mother, or where was she in this memory? (But why was she in hospital?)

It had been raining, and we had come in from the rain and were climbing a dark staircase to get upstairs. My father was holding my hand, and I had the other hand on the banisters, walking gingerly up the stairs. Suddenly, I felt my father let go of my hand quickly and reach across the stairs—a man who had been walking down the stairs had slipped, as if almost fainting, and my father had sprung to help him. Even then, at that age, I felt a mix of both pride and also…a sense of abandonment? I thought it was so good of him to help the other man, but when he’d let go of my hand, I’d almost fallen too, but steadied myself on the banister. Did he know I would be okay? Was there time for him to think?

The other memory I have of my father that just came to me is also of a rainy day, and it had been raining hard for a while. Our aged guard dog, a white furry mongrel named Lassie, was afraid of the thunder and had been whining at the back door. Lassie had never been let into the house, but in her old age and after our other dog had died, she’d become more keen on being a pet rather than a guard dog. I recall my paternal grandma happened to be at our place, and we were all sitting around in the family room, trying not to hear the piteous whining while feeling the dreariness of the day.

Suddenly, my dad put his newspapers down and went to the thermal flask where the hot water my parents use to make tea through the day was. He shouted at the dog, then filled a cup with the hot water and he was going to pour the water at the door so the dog would go away from it. I think he actually did it. I remember my grandma saying to him, “aiyo, mor la—don’t do that”, her fingers running across the Buddhist beads she used as she chanted, her main activity since her husband passed away.

Why would my father do something so cruel? I was trying to recall how old I was then, and I think it might have been when his business had failed and he’d been trying to cope with having to declare bankruptcy and pick up some sense of himself again. He has also taken the sudden passing of his father very hard, and that was probably just a year or so before that.

Is it a sort of kindness to think of these excuses for him? I thought of this second memory first, when I was making tea just now and my cat was near enough to me that I worried about the hot water dripping on her.

What would make a person pour hot water on a hapless creature that has been living with one for years? How small and pitiful we are, if the things that happen can cause such darkness to sit within us and make a monster of us. But isn’t that what human history is made of?