I do not remember the first time I realized he wasn’t coming back. A part of me learned not to care.

Gone were expectations of him taking me to school, dropping me off at playdates, and

attending father-daughter dances with my friends. He would never teach me to drive. Gone was

he from my immediate life. I grew up convincing myself that other kids were embarrassed by

their dads and that the father daughter dances were cheesy, but that’s when the other children had

a choice --- I didn’t.

“Bbbbbye...,” I whisper-muttered, appalled that “Dad” would leave with Kevin without mommy and me.

“Bye,” He replied, without an ounce of sun.

Little did I know that that was forever and that he would never expect me to be “daddy’s little girl.”

I had just aroused from my ice-cold-blue-metal bunk bed and saw that everyone was up

but not in a joyful manner. My dad, with suitcases next to him, held the front and only entrance

of the small suburban townhouse in Staten Island we had shared. The cloud-from-heaven

colored door was the entrance to the world: a world where half a family will venture off to start a

new life. My mom’s face was unfocused, like the night sky when the moon cannot be seen. Even

with my just-woke-up drowsy eyes, I saw the sun shine too golden, like perfectly toasted bread

right before it burns. Living up to my name at six years old, I was naturally optimistic. Everyone

just kept telling me that “Everything will be ok, you’ll see.” And I believed that deeply.

This is my story: I had just come back, about a year ago, from living with my

grandparents in China for the past five years. During those five years, I had never heard from

daddy, I had never received presents. He had never visited while mommy did twice and called

weekly to talk to me and ask if I wanted to go back and live with her. Even after I moved back to

New York and lived in the same house as him for over a year, he was a million miles away when

he was right next to me.

Mommy and daddy had slept in different rooms, but that was just the way it was for us as

far back as I can remember. My mom sunnily sauntered into the room that my brother rand I

shared with a fabricated jauntiness. “Who do you want to live with?” she interviewed Kevin and

me repeatedly every few evenings during that summer before kindergarten. Naturally I said

“Mommy!” and my brother said “Daddy!” to identify with gender right before the “cooties’

stage.” I did not anticipate any negative changes in the near future due to her amazing acting

ability; I loved my life the way it was and I thought that was how it would be for the next

hundred and more tomorrows. Without a doubt, I continued coloring my dreams; my content six-
year old brain hardly even processing what my mom had said, too naïve to think about what

secrets the tomorrows ahead held.

I was in for an immense surprise, and not a jubilant one.

That blinding lemon midsummer morning still haunts me. I woke up late to something

that no one could foresee. I was the last to dart down the cold, scratched and faded hardwood

stairs, ready for the budding day. I contemplated the wonderful day’s possibilities in my mind:

going to the beach, just swimming with our neighbors in the townhouse community pool, eating

vanilla ice-cream sundae for breakfast, or going to New York City.

It was unexpectedly deafeningly silent and what I witnessed, instead, is still engraved in my mind.

They were all gathered by the door and I could taste the impenetrable air and I knew it

wasn’t just Northeastern midsummer humidity from Midland Beach. Suitcases with daddy and

pintsized Kevin in tow, trudged out for the last time; never to be seen as whole again. My father

and mother and younger brother were all up but not ready for summer quests, as I expected. It

was the last time that we would be seen together as a “family.” I never questioned where daddy

went because even a six year old, I knew it wouldn’t make any difference.

It was the peace before the storm of realization: divorce.

Primarily, the word “divorce” had no place in my mind. Even if I did hear that word, I

was only a naïve little preschooler. I realized much too late that life as I knew it was poles apart

from the lives of my friends. They had two parents who loved each other and their children.

These wonderful parents took their children to fun activities: dance classes, art classes, cooking

classes, karate, bike rides, etc. Things that a single mom did not have time or money to spend on.

“Do you want to go to the park today?” my mother asked whenever she worked up

enough energy and time.

The best memories I had after daddy left were walking a few miles to the park where I

learned how to swing, spending hours in the front yard practicing jump rope and being a hla-
hooping queen, taking the MTA buses to the Staten Island mall and letting my mom do my hair

while we rode the Staten Island/South Ferry to school. My mom became my world: my hero, the

only person I could trust and depend on.

As I grew up, I rationalized that if daddy could leave so easily and not look back, not

reassure his only little girl that he will still be her daddy, that everything would be alright, and

that he will still love me, then maybe he doesn’t deserve my love. It seems so strange how one

sunny summer day engrained in my memory could conclude such irrational thoughts over the

course of a decade.

Visits with my father were prompted by the lawyer, but each time I visited, I would be

scared stiff of the 18th century-factory-workers’ style, claustrophobic 3 room long apartment in

New York City. Although I dreaded visits, because that meant either sharing a bed with him or

my brother or sleeping on a futon in the suffocating living room, as there was only one bedroom

with a flimsy cloth curtain for a door reserved for my grandmother and her small TV with her

considerable amount of VCR tapes of Chinese and Korean dramas, a kitchen (which also served

as the entrance), and a small living room (used for sleeping, eating, watching TV, playing, and

reading), I never complained. I wanted to see my brother, my best friend, my peer and my

partner through all the abrupt, unforeseen changes.

There is a question that has been burning in my mind: What would have happened if I woke up later on that blinding day?