Lonely Dinners

So day after day the fisherman load up and leave hoping that the day's catch will build him a fortune of sorts......

It must take so much optimism to be up at 3am. and sit and wait for the fish to swim by and bite the bait or get trapped in the nets...come rain, sunshine, a green moon, hormonal mood swings, sickness, laziness these guys go out each day no matter what.

There are no traffic jams to cover up your lateness...I am not sure what they do when they have a tummy upsets out there...Pee breaks I can imagine (but may not want to for purposes of keeping my appetite for lunch)....

This kind of seeming unending strength and commitment is something I admire...People who take very seriously what they do...whether they are in a lowly or a grand a day kind of job…

But you know sometimes I wonder…

My dad did this for 40 years at the expense of family coziness in the evening to make sure he got our bills paid, food on the table and a decent education for which I am wholly grateful (Thanks Baba!)…He would come home late and eat his dinner alone kept warm in the oven as my mother watched (she always patiently waited up for him) and he only got to see us when we were fast asleep…..I missed him sorely when he was nose deep in paperwork and in endless work crisis's…To get attention I had several attempts of naughtiness just to get him out of the office early to whip my ass after a looooooooooooong lecture and cross my fingers and hope that maybe he would come home early the next day....

Eventually, I got tired of the whippings and at some point and got busy with my school work, boys, fashion, boarding school and subsequent life and all the shit that comes with it…But even with that, now that he is retired and I am almost 30 the pregnant silences are too awkward to fill up when I ring him up or visit him…..The times apart from him while I was growing up made us grow too far apart to hope to recover…..I still love him anyway….

~Siki~