Incomplete Family

“Mommy, where’s daddy? When will he be back?” My father used to work in the navy when I was five. The population growth was increasing, and it was hard for people to find a job. Later on, there were a bunch of people who applied for a navy job in my city, and my father was lucky to be selected as a navy. At the beginning, I seemed to be fine because I could at least see my father several times a year, and there were so many people in china that never got to see their family after they went to work. Everything was perfect until I turned seven. My thoughts and feelings had changed after I went to the elementary school. I was more aware that it was not fine to grow up without a father. Also, I felt that I could not be a happy girl to celebrate holidays without a father because it felt incomplete.

The first effect was that my father wasn’t there on the Father’s Day. One day when I was in the elementary school, our teacher taught us how to make a gift for father’s day. Father’s day is a somewhat important holiday, at least to me. Later, our teacher asked us to draw our father’s face on the paper, and I could not draw anything until the end of the class because I didn’t remember how my father looks. I tried hard to think about how my father looked like, how tall he was, and what kind of character he was. After school, I ran home as quickly as I could to ask my mother to see my father’s picture. I started to draw my father’s face from the picture I saw, and I was thinking about how nice it would be if my father came back on father’s day and was to receive the gift that I made for him. My imagination never stopped until Father’s Day. Sadly, I didn’t see my father attended to school on Father’s Day. In addition, I discovered that all my imagination was just a fake image. I cried when I saw my other classmates who were able to give out the gift to their father. At that moment, I deeply realized how important my father is in my life.

The second effect was my mother had to celebrate her birthday without her husband. It is easy to remember my mother’s birthday because it is on a week after Father’s Day. I thought my mother was a brave and independent person. She would prepare well for her own birthday. For instance, she could cook and make a cake by herself. On the day before her birthday, I saw my mother holding the picture of my father and cried when I walked pass her room. At the moment, I realized that my mother wasn’t as independent as I thought. She is just a normal woman like every other woman. Also, she obviously anticipated her husband to come back for celebrating her birthday as he did before he left. She didn’t eat a lot during the dinner. It seemed like she was cooking mainly for me, but not for her birthday. I saw the tears in her eyes when she brought the cake to the table. On that day, I understood that nothing could be more important than having my father to celebrate with us as a family.

The third effect was that my father wasn’t present and couldn’t celebrate with me on Children’s Day. Children’s Day was one of the special days during my childhood, but my father was never there. “Mommy, when will daddy come back?” I asked the same question when I was five.” “Baby, he will be back on Children’s Day.” My mother didn’t want to disappoint me, and both of us wished for this day to come true. At the day of children’s day, I remember one of my classmates made fun of me saying,” Don’t you have a father?” I didn’t cry on that time because I have always believed my father would come back one day, and he will never leave me and mom alone. My mother would usually take me to the park and give me a gift on that day. Even though sometimes I felt unhappy when I saw other kids with their parents in the park, I always pretended to be happy in front of my mother.

I didn’t want to live without a father, and I remember one of my favorite Chinese quotes says “you can earn a lot of money in your life, but you cannot make up for what you lost.” Even though I know he was working hard for us to have a better live, it could not be a complete family without a father or mother. I couldn’t give out the gift that I made for my father, and my mother was never happy, especially during her birthday each year. Sometimes, my classmates would make fun of me for not having a father. I expected my children’s day to be happy instead of being upset. After a year, our dream finally came true, and my father came back on my eighth birthday. I cherish everything that I own now, especially the relationships in my family.