It's autumn again, the eighth since my father died, and I'm aching for chicken nuggets (炸鸡块). I don't remember him saying "I love you," which isn't a common 1 in Mandarin (普通话), his preferred language. We always had a bit of a 2 issue.
My father was the fun parent, the indulgent(溺爱的) one. He 3 me to fries, ice creams, and fizzy drinks. It didn't seem to 4, then, that his English wasn't fluent, or that my Mandarin was already 5.
Our language of junk food evolved into one of 6: a Happy Meal on our fishing trip; two liters of Coke guzzled together before my mother came home. I felt honored until I began to understand that my father kept secrets from me too.
In third grade, I came home and told him the dangers of cigarettes. He promised to 7, but I kept smelling smoke in his clothes and car. My father was not virtuous. He was a man of 8 pleasures: fast foods, nicotine…I didn't understand why he 9 these.
My father died two years after I graduated from university. He was 49. I was 22. I grieved his 10, and then I grieved the fact that I never fully knew him.
I used to 11 my father for addicting to fast food which might be responsible for his death. But the older I get, the more I see myself compromising too. And so, each 12, I think: now I'm the age at which my father followed his wife to a country where he didn't speak the language; now I'm the age at which my father followed his wife to a country where he didn't speak the language; now I'm at the 13 at which he was fired from his job...
I can imagine the difficulties my father must have 14 upon moving to the US to discover that McDonald's was now the stuff of everyday. It was cheaper than fish, much more 15 than fresh fruit, and simpler than a long-distance phone call to Beijing in which he had to 16 his difficulties and his loneliness.
I can imagine how it might be happier to eat golden nuggets, even if they 17 shorten our lives by a day or a week or a year — because first we have to 18 this day, this week, this year.
The next time the urge strikes, I'll have a 19 or two or four. And in that moment, I will understand my father 20.
