My Father.

In my childhood my father wasn’t just my father; he was my daddy. I always thought of him as “big”. His hands were big as they caught me when I jumped into swimming pools. His shadow was big as I stood in it for shade at traffic junctions. The music from his French horn was big as well, because it seemed like it could envelope me, no matter where I was and what I was doing. Biggest of all was his booming voice that you could not mistake, because it made everything in the world seem all right.

Dad had come to Singapore from Shanghai, but fit in quickly with the locals, sharing the national love of food. At meal times he’d tuck into bowls of spicy noodles, often breaking out in a sweat as his friendly, jovial face turned red. I’d watch him eat, toying with the leftovers on my plate. And he’d eat those too. For years he joked that he was a human “trash can”, there to eat whatever my mother and I (and later my brother) couldn’t finish.

Every weekend we would grab our suits and floats, wave goodbye to Mum and walk to the community swimming pools. Week after week he would try to teach me how to swim, and week after week he would fail in his battle with a stubborn, playful little girl. But we always had fun, and a soundtrack of excited shrieks and high-pitched laughter always accompanied memories of those weekends.

He held the position of Principal French Horn in the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, and though he spoke of meeting or studying with great French horn players in the world, I never really paid much attention to that. Surely he was the greatest French horn player in the world. That belief was further strengthened by the number of students who wanted to study with him, and I used to feel a foolish sort of superiority over them; they were his students, but he was my father. His attention was the much-coveted prize, and it belonged to me.