I can’t remember the last time that my eyes stung so much by the porridge of salty tears, sweat, and sand. Of course, It’s not that I have a dysfunctional memory, no it’s just been happening always for the past thirteen years that it’s so hard to remember every moment when my eyes would become sore and sting like someone mistook my face for a bully and sprayed Mace’s mini pepper spray….It’s not that I wish him to be my superhero, no I only want him to be normal like everyone else’s dad. 

Dave’s dad is spraying sprain spray onto his sprained ankle, Josh’s dad with a proud grin boasts of his son’s second prize in front of other parents, and even puny Mike’s dad is wiping off the defeated tears streaming down his son’s face. Why can’t I swap myself with any of them, hell I would even agree to be Puny Mike. At least I would have someone to wipe my tears from my eyes. Everyone here laughs at my sentiment, they think I am being stupid for crying even after I became the first in the race. I am not crying for winning, I would have rather lost and have a caring dad by my side than be the winner without anyone to cheer, anyone to praise, anyone to wipe off my angry tears. 

Every New Year’s Eve, I wish on the twelfth stroke of the clock for some magic that would change his heart but my wishes never seem to reach the stars. They get caught by the nets of clouds and fall back into dreary rain, dissolving inside the earth. My dad seems to really like the Earth, he likes it so much that for three hundred and sixty-five days he circles the Earth from one corner to another. Traveling is his addiction, Mrs. Thorn says addiction is bad, that it consumes your soul into the darkest pit of the universe. I never want to have such an addiction as dad, I don’t want my soul roaming alone in the darkest pit of the universe, seeing the dark space surrounding the Earth in my science book gives me nightmares for weeks.

There’s no one of course but my aunt and uncle whom I can’t disturb when these series of nightmares creep into my mind. I lay awake all night, staring at the paintings of butterfly meadows and firefly waterfalls that hung on my walls. They glow faintly by the energy-saving string lights my uncle bought for me on my tenth birthday after I told him I was afraid of the dark. There’s a trick I learned to stop the nightmares from crawling out of my bed. I replace the thoughts of dark infinite space with the vision of my dad and me with a picnic basket, sitting in the middle of a bright illuminating meadow filled with trees and butterflies chatting like old friends who meet after two weeks of summer vacation. 

Vacations are the worst part of my life, and even more listening to my friends tell me all the fun they had with their dads at Disneyland, playing catch, going swimming by the seaside, and playing Mario Bros all night. My dad never likes doing any of these, or maybe he doesn’t even like me. Perhaps if I came into this world the way he wanted me to be, maybe then I would have got to do everything these kids did with their dads and even more…. 

There’s an album of my Dad and uncle’s childhood photos that my uncle showed me on an embarrassing day to cheer me up because I was hanging up my washed clothes after a bath and my towel dropped to the wet grass when Mrs. Shirley, our neighbor, saw me bare—waist down. The embarrassment left me weeping the way girls wept when their makeup toys were confiscated at school. I asked and kept one photo that day even after I was told no. The photo was a portrait of my dad when he celebrated his eighteenth birthday. 

I always keep this portrait of my dad inside one of those pocket mirror cases I got from my aunt after I told her I would be a good boy and do my homework on time. Whenever I get bored of staring at the nonsensical sums and dancing alphabets I stare at the portrait and look at myself in the other mirror. I make faces, tilting my eyebrows a bit up, shifting my lips towards a one-sided smile trying to look like him. I don’t have the same bushy eyebrows, nor the large eyes. My cheeks are flushed pink and chubby which makes my eyes squint. Maybe that’s why he never shows up anywhere, he doesn’t like my chubby cheeks and squinty eyes. 

If I could one day wake up and see my reflection like my dad’s portrait, I would be the happiest boy in the universe! And maybe knowing this he would decide to be by my side or take me on his travels around the world. But Mrs. Thorn says we are all unique and beautiful the way we are born and it’s alright if we don’t look like our parents. Well maybe if I were to be born again, this time the universe would give me a face just like my dad so he would start to really be my dad. But to be born again, I have to die as Mom died on the hospital bed holding my dad’s hand when I was four years old. I never found Mom again, maybe she was born again as a trapped princess in a forbidden kingdom like one of her bedtime stories, and that’s why Dad travels the world to find and rescue Mom.

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