Every election day my family goes back to our old neighborhood to vote (my dad never bothered to change the address from any of our IDs). The neighborhood always feels warm but I don’t know if it’s just the heat. My dad gets all nostalgic every time we go there. We let him.
Everyone else who used to live there with us still do, and my dad still remembers them all. They still remember us, too, but mostly him. That’s my dad for you. He leaves marks everywhere. It was lovely to see him all neighborly. He barely has the time to do that now.
While waiting to vote I got to see a lot of playful, hilarious, neighborhood banters with inside jokes that don’t happen in our current neighborhood. Or maybe it does, I honestly don’t know. We don’t take part in it anyway. See, I’m not too big on unnecessary social interactions so a lot of me is thankful that my current neighborhood is not all that warm and neighborly, but I’ve always wondered how it would be if it was.
After voting we went back to our old house that somebody else lives in now with his family. He’s very nice, by the way. Sends us cake every Idul Fitri and Christmas. I don’t remember the house, or even how it looks like from the inside. I wish I did.
I remember the field in front of it, though. I think I remember riding in the backside of my dad’s bike around the field. He doesn’t do that anymore, either. Aging has something to do with it, I think. That and mostly life. Life’s been sucking the life out of him all his life.
My dad tells stories about what me and my sister used to do around the house. He doesn’t hide how fond he is of the area and the people and how he gained the fondest memories of our first years of being a family there. Not in so many words, but it shows.
I seem to recall my dad walking from my old house and showing to me the still-being-built new one with pride. Knowing Dad, I imagine that he put all of his thoughts into the new house, but I’ve never thought how hard it must’ve been to leave the house that you first bought.
We went home, Dad went to work then went back home to go to the cinema with us. We watched a good movie. We argued about the movie. We argued just because. He took some calls in between. He’s been very busy. He‘s been missing it, I think. He’s not sorry about it. Neither am I.
How he tries to make up for what he lacks is what catches me off-guard sometimes. He’s never been perfect, but a good man he is. He tries. It doesn’t always work but God, how he tries.
He’s not great with words, and he has a weird way of showing love. I still have trouble understanding him, as he does with me. And so we’re still gonna spend an entire lifetime fighting, mind you — the man is still impossible. I’m trying to see if maybe that’s just how we work.
It’s been a bizarre day for everyone, but it just turned out to be an unexpected Dad day for me. I’m thankful to come home this week. I wish to not regret it later.
