As irony would have it, my puberty wouldn’t arrive until I moved to America to live with Dad. It’s almost as if all those years of begging to finish my dinner was completely pointless, as Dad took all the credit for my healthy development into a young adult with little and no effort. Not that my Dad was a terrible cook, in fact he was a terrific cook when he had the time; but it was also a fact that Dad could’ve fed me anything remotely resembling human food, and I would’ve gladly shoveled them with complete disregard to the actual content.

Puberty is not without its awkward moments. Victims can easily identified by awkward body developments, strange facial growth resembling either the surface of pizza or the moon, hair growing in strange places and voices that turned into something that belongs on the muppets. For me, the worst side effect was my body odor, a foul and unstoppable stench that emanated from the suddenly overactive glands under my armpits.

Dad, having gone through puberty so very recently, if you consider big bang to also be a recent occurrence, did the best he could. He purchased for me, various brands of colognes to attempt to cover up the unstoppable beast that I’ve become. The result is similar to when shady restaurants tries to sell spoiled and rotten food by putting more salt and soy sauce into the dish. One day, one of my friend, who has been a very gracious and kind person up until that point in our relationship, had decided that he could no longer tolerate sitting next to me on the school bus on the way home, especially after a pick-up game of basketball. He turned and asked me, “Steve, do you know what a ‘deodorant is?’”.

“Yeah, sure, my dad buys them for me?”

“He buys you deodorants, are you sure?”

“Yeah, he buys me all these bottles of cologne and stuff.”

“No, Steve, deodorant is not the same as cologne.”

Americans tend to take their wonderful invention for granted: Cotton gin, steam engine, microprocessors. I personally think the greatest contribution that America has made for the human kind, is the anti-perspirant/deodorant. See, my dad was not the only person who did not have the knowledge of such wonderful invention that eliminated one of puberty’s most vile humiliation, the entire country (or island, or province, depending on your political affiliations) of Taiwan did not know the existence of such wonderful creation. I don’t know how teenagers in Taiwan dealt with puberty, because I was fortunate enough to be away from the combined airspace shared by a couple dozen body odor-emitting teenager all sitting in the same classroom.

I wasn’t the only beneficiary of this new discovery. Even though Dad was years past his teens (despite how much he still wants to be one), he too found “Sure” and “Old Spice” was now his new best friend. Even though body odor wasn’t an issue for Dad, the possibility that he could smell even better, and become even more handsome and attractive than he already was (vanity runs in the genes), is an incredibly appetizing proposition.

The discovery of deodorant marks a fine example of unique experiences that Dad and I share in the period of time we lived together in America. A lot of those experiences are about cultural differences, events and knowledge that are taken for granted. We make fun of Europeans for not using deodorant, because from our perspective, we can’t fathom deodorant as anything but a day-to-day consumable. Rather, it is almost a cultural icon of sorts, embodying the hygenic value of American life.

Amongst those unique experiences Dad and I shared, the rituals of Christmas was also very new to both of us. Even though Christmas is a recognized holiday in Taiwan, we don’t go out and buy trees. Even though we understood certain gift giving aspect of Christmas, it wasn’t required for the family to gather around and open presents on Christmas day. More often than not, Mom simply took us out shopping for one or two toys that we really wanted. Not to mention in a religiously diverse environment such as Taiwan, Christmas has very little religious connotation to most of the general public. Jesus is not the reason for Christmas, Santa is.

That first Christmas, Dad took me out to visit his professor, Dr. Lee Spray’s house in New Jersey. There I saw my very first snowfall, had my own stocking hanging by the fireplace, and placed my first present underneath a real Christmas tree. We spent most of our holidays there, because Dr. Spray always treated us like his own family. Christmas tree, big dinners, fire place, and opening of presents.

After Dad finished his dissertation, we started moving around as he started looking for a job. Now being more than a couple of state borderlines away, we couldn’t visit Dr. Spray’s house anymore. That Christmas we spent by ourselves, with some of Dad’s close friends. Living in a much smaller apartment, we didn’t have a fireplace or room for a gigantic Christmas tree. Even though, Dad was insistent to keep the tradition going, we went out and bought a little plastic Christmas tree and placed it in the corner of our apartment. We didn’t have a fireplace or a big house, but we gathered around the little plastic tree and opened our presents just the same.

That was the last Christmas Dad and I spent together. He accepted a position at an university in Taiwan, and I moved to California to stay with my aunt. We were never able to celebrate another Christmas together, the schedules of our lives just never worked out that way. Dad visited a few times during summer time, and I went back to Taiwan a few times during the summer. Christmas time tickets were always too expensive, and it didn’t make much sense celebrating Christmas in a place where even plastic Christmas trees weren’t easy to find.

Christmas trees notwithstanding, even deodorant was a recent import product, and absurdly hard to obtain. It was also much more expensive than buying the same product in United States at the time. So everytime any family member had a chance to go back to Taiwan, Dad would always make sure they brought back a batch of deodorants with them. Of course, this was over fifteen years ago, and deodorant is now an everyday product, but Dad still asked people to bring some back.

This Christmas, I went to my aunt’s house for dinner. She always cooked twice as much as what we needed to eat, and then cook even more stuff for us to pack and take home. As she was packing stuff for me to take home, she ran off into the garage in search of something that she forgot to give me last time. It was a stick of deodorant.

It was from the batch that she brought back to Taiwan for Dad, but she never got to see Dad before he passed away.

I still have that stick of deodorant in my bathroom. It’s not a brand I use, and it’s almost like a memorabilia of all those unique, weird, odd experiences that Dad and I shared. I thought about getting a glass box and enshrining that stick of deodorant forever, but I’m not sure I want the family heirloom to be a stick of deodorant.

I just hope wherever Dad is, he’s not having problems with body odor.

Our lives as a family, has been a series of comedic, if not tragic timing. My father had, at several different points in his life, prominent career that seemed to point towards the ideal of success. He was once a manager of human resources at RCA of Taiwan, subsequently owned a very successful company with a few partners. I don’t think my father was ever a business genius of any sort, rather his rapid ascension at almost any given opportunity had more to do with his genial personality. Family might be his priority, but friends were a close second to the extent of seemingly eclipsing the first. However, that forgiving personality would prove to be his flaw as well.

I never questioned much about my father’s past, as I’ve never been a person who’s particularly interested with history. Although I’ve overheard that my father’s company eventually failed because of the misplaced trust in one of his partners, resulting in the loss of their IP and the manufacturing plant. It’s a theme that plays out in several different occassions in his life, because by nature, he trusted people until they’re proven untrustworthy.

Dad’s decision to pursue higher education in America came shortly after that. We became a long distance family, while dad pursued his degree and worked hard to eventually migrate us over to United States, mom brought us up on her own with help from various family members. Dad would come home during summer vacation, only being able to stay for two to three months a year.

During one of those summers, we went to pick up Dad from the airport. I remember searching for Dad’s old driver’s license at home the night before, because I had forgotten exactly what Dad looked like (a sort of condition that persist today, I consistently have problems remembering people’s faces). At the airport, I saw this man that vaguely resembled my dad from the driver’s license (he had shaved his mustache, which made him much harder to recognize); I walked up to him and asked, “Are you my dad?” He cracked a big smile at the time and laughed at my silliness, but even at that young age, I thought that I might have unintentionally hurt his feelings.

Dad’s feelings were important to me, although he was gone for most of the year at that point in my life, there was never a question to how much he loved us. Those summer vacations when he was home, were still some of the most memorable part of my life. There as no particular moment in those time that stood out, but it was the most normalcy that existed in our family. We went out, we went shopping, we went to restaurants, we hung out. The most simple part of life was the most treasured, and those months that we had to spend apart just made those moments we spent together even more precious. Dad would place his hand on the back of my neck when we walked down the street, his hand was rough, ridden with callus, and the most wonderful warmth for a little boy.

Dad’s plan was to move the entire family to America, but by the time he got us all green cards (a process which took years of work), my brother was already over the legal age at which males are allowed to leave the country without first serving in the army. Instead of the entire family moving over, my mom had to stay in Taiwan to take care of my brother. The choice to come to America was never forced upon me, but somehow Dad knew that I would’ve enjoyed life here, much more than the life I had in Taiwan.

Even then, the plan was still to move the entire family to America. Timing again foiled my dad’s future, as he finished his Ph.D. at a period of economic downturn with an extremely tough job market, especially tough for a man who spoke English with a heavy foreign accent in a very competitive field. We spent a year traveling & interviewing for jobs in various locations. We would find an apartment here, stay with a friend there. Dad would take trips to visit different university campuses in hopes of landing somewhere, which took anywhere between a day to a week at a time. In that single year, I went attended four different schools, and eventually Dad realized the best opportunities for him is still back in Taiwan.

For better or worse, I ended up being the only symbol of achievement for his years of struggle. Once again the choice of where to stay was left to me, and I chose to stay here. After all the plans fell through, I remained mostly intact to what Dad really wished for. Still, I did not become a doctor as he wished, but I lived a life that’s relatively well-to-do.

The funny thing about having a long distance between Dad and I, that’s probably the thing that made our love the strongest. We didn’t have much time to fight or argue, we barely had enough time to love.

Timing would be my dad’s nemesis for one last time.

As my brother was expecting the first child of this generation of our family, I had made plans to visit them after the baby was born, and spend some quality time living at my parent’s house pretending to be a twelve year old again.

Two days before my brother had his first child, our family’s first grand daughter, my father passed away.

It was sudden and without warning, as his air passageway finally collapsed from years of smoking. We knew he was having problem breathing for a while, but it was under control for the most part. One moment he was just sitting there, watching TV and relaxing with my mom. The next, he couldn’t breathe, and there was nothing we could’ve done about it. It was already too late by the time the ambulance arrived.

I guess everyone always wished that they had more time to spend with their loved ones before they pass away. There is never enough time. It just seemed even more painful because I knew exactly when I was going to book that flight to see him, and that I just spoke to him four days before wishing him happy Father’s Day*.

By rough estimation, there were anywhere between 500 to 800 people who attended Dad’s funeral. Friends, colleagues, family, and hundreds of students from current and years past. For weeks leading up the to funeral I had been calm and comforting my mother whenever possible. Despite my best effort to be the voice of reason and acceptance, I completely lost it when I had to address the crowd. I don’t know if what I said came through as anything more than a series of incomprehensible sobbing.

Up until that moment, I don’t think I’ve ever fully comprehended my dad’s accomplishment since those years when he came back to Taiwan. Seeing all those hundreds of students that all held Dad in such a high regard, realizing how Dad had influenced the lives of so many, filled me up with pride and sadness all at once. I knew at that moment, he loved them all, just as he’s always loved all his friends. They were all Dad’s surrogate family.

I had to wonder, if Dad had lived 20 more years, faded into the distant memories of these students, would they still remember him if he had passed away then?

For once, time did not forsake him. If there was the perfect way to pass through this life, Dad had picked the perfect time. He passed away gloriously, enveloped by the love of all those who will always remember him.

*:Father’s Day in Taiwan is on August 8th.

I just got back from Taiwan from all of the funeral proceedings. There are way too many thoughts and memories to process at the moment.