Riding the tram with dad
The tram ride on the afternoon of Christmas Eve with my father turned out to be the salve for my soul that I wasn’t even looking for.
To get our identity cards upgraded to an apparently ‘smarter’ version, my father and I went to one of the government’s designated offices yesterday afternoon. The initial plan was to spend a couple of hours at a coffee shop, and then I would meet up with my husband for grocery shopping before heading back to our island.
Whilst waiting for our turn for what turned out to be 50 minutes of repetitive and manual administrative bureaucracy, I casually asked my father if he had any bone doctor to recommend. Naturally, he wanted to know why. “I tripped over a cable this morning and landed on my two front paws. And now the ball of my right palm is bruised.”
So after we had all the mandatory paperwork done, father suggested we went to the Hong Kong Sanatorium to have my hand checked.
There were just us and a man on the upper deck of the tram. In the midst of Christmas Eve traffic, the tram was in no rush, in no anguish from the tramline being hijacked by impatient motorists; it just went about its business. I rested my head on my father’s shoulder as the tram turned the corner on Percival Street, as he recounted a story of mum losing herself over an incident the last time my parents had their identity card upgraded.
As if along with my head, I also rested my heart and soul on my father’s shoulder. The exhaustion that was piling up inside me was finally shown a route out, out through the tram windows, out to the blocks of concrete and gasoline and noise outside. Dissipated and diluted, my worries remind me once again that my father’s shoulder would always make space for me. Difficult as he may sometimes be, my father loves me very much — for 39 years and he always will.