Lessons Learned from a Part-time Dad

The story of my Pa through my eyes

A 7-year-old girl sat on one of the staircases in her house crying, “Papa, papa….”. She doesn’t remember the reason for crying and calling out to her father but knew she wanted him there that day. There were other people in the house, but no one came to console her and tell her that he will be back or that everything will be okay.

The girl knew he was at work, far, far away, and that he would eventually return home. Why couldn’t he be there when she wanted him?

Thirty years later the same girl finds herself crying in solitude, grieving the loss of her father, and trying to come to terms with the fact that he is never coming back. Maybe he is in a better place, but he is not with her. [Written on Feb 8, 2014].

My Papa

My father, known by the initials MRKM, was the life of a party. He used his wit and humor to lighten up the mood in the room. Except for this one time when he was really upset with another family member and expressed his disappointment about them, I have never heard him speak ill or badly about anybody. Always positive and uplifting words and thoughts!

I used to call him Papa, and slowly along the way he became Pa to me.

He stood tall (or should I say short) at 5 feet and 4 inches. There were no readymade clothes in the store that fit him well. With a small frame, he had to get his pants and shirts tailored, a job easily done in India.

As a Chief Engineer in the merchant navy, he wore his white uniform — shorts and a short-sleeved shirt showcasing his rank slides/ shoulder straps.

His signature dressing when he was not in uniform was a short-sleeved, buttoned-up shirt tucked in his pants and a belt around his waist. He never left the house without his pen and a pocket-sized notebook that he carried in his shirt pocket, and his wallet in his back pocket. Aside from grocery runs or when on errands, he always carried a camera.

He could forget his wife and children but he didn’t forget his camera!

I have vivid memories of learning to use all types of cameras over the years, starting with the Polaroid camera in the 80s to the latest digital camera in the 2000s. He took pictures everywhere he went. If you invited him for an event in your house (e.g., a baby shower), consider you just got a free-service photographer.

When he visited me while I was in Tokyo, Singapore, or the United States, I would be worried when he went galivanting and spent his time browsing electronic stores in Akihabara in Tokyo, Mohammad Mustafa in Singapore, and Best Buy in the US. Let’s not even talk about Black Friday when he visited. I haven’t woken up at 4 am to go shopping in many years!

I am grateful for his craze for taking pictures because that’s how I can piece together my childhood memories of people, places, and events. My childhood was captured in thousands of pictures — the sole reason for my long-term, visual memory!

Guest Papa

Given the nature of his job, he was away from home for 6–9 months of the year. He would return home during his leave period which was anywhere from 1–3 months at a stretch.

He was the provider of the family and my mother defaulted to doing the single parenting. If I did the math (a rough estimate), he was probably present for about 20–25% of my childhood and growing-up years. But when he was there, he was fully present.

Foresight in thinking

His work took him to places all over the world. A young man from a poor family in India was exposed to the cultures and practices of the western world. He fully understood the value of a good education and the essential ingredients to be successful in life.

Pa was a man of conviction about several things based on his lived experiences. He changed patterns and did things that were considered non-traditional in his family at that time. Two that come to mind are exposure to a non-vegetarian diet and introduction to sports.

Being a vegetarian he had his share of difficulties when traveling around the world. There were no veggie burgers back in the 70s in McDonald’s. Born a Brahmin, he found it difficult to break out of his ways but he ensured that as kids we were exposed to eating chicken and egg for starts. We later developed taste for seafood and other types of meat and seafood on our own.

Although Pa was short in stature, he was very interested in sports. It wasn’t until he went to an engineering school that he took up playing table tennis (TT) or ping pong. His friends fondly called him Chotu. In Hindi, it literally means “small guy.” He ended up being on the college TT team.

Pa made sure that my brothers and I started playing tennis at a very young age. He believed sports was the key to enhancing physical, mental, and emotional development in children. He was not wrong about that. I have to thank him for giving me the gift of tennis and sports. My athletic abilities have served me well in staying strong and positive through life’s thick and thin.

With the short period of time on leave at home, my father made sure that he checked all the boxes that there were in the passage of fatherhood. He taught us how to ride a bike, took us for swim lessons, and attended parent-teacher conferences, school plays, track and field events, and tennis matches.

The awkward stage

Pa was very affectionate. I used to get a piggyback ride every night from the living room to my bedroom one floor up until I was 12 years old. He then went sailing and came back after 18 months. It was the longest he had been away. I had gotten my period. I was now in ninth grade and thanks to all the sports, I grew taller than him.

Something changed. I was no longer his little girl. No more piggy-back rides. The touch and physical affection were gone. There was an awkwardness than grew between us. He didn’t know how to engage with me as a young adult.

The distance resulted in impaired communication between us. He didn’t know how to handle my newfound interest and interaction with boys. The easiest way was to restrict my activities and give me the silent treatment. He did not directly communicate his discontent with me. The message was passed down through my mother.

Once he caught me talking on the phone past my bedtime. It wasn’t even with a boy, I don’t think. The next morning he disconnected all the phone extensions in the house.

As a 16-year-old, I wrote him a letter asking him to be more open in speaking to me about any issues he had with me. I told him pulling out the phone extensions did send me a message but he could have used his words to directly speak to me. I reassured him that I wasn’t doing anything that I was not supposed to be doing and that he could trust me and my judgment.

It took him another assignment at sea and then back home to feel more comfortable seeing me grow into an adult. Pa called me several endearing names, but as I turned into an adult he started to call me “Mummy.” Knowing his joking side, no one questioned it.

It wasn’t until his last days in the hospital that he told me that he learned a lot about life and parenting from me. In his own way, it was his way of saying how special I was to him. He said that was the reason he started to call me “Mummy” and thanked me for all the lessons I passed on to him incidentally. There weren’t enough tissues in the hospital for me that day.

My Strength

Pa said there was no distinction between my brothers as boys and me as the girl child. He said there was nothing in this world that I couldn’t do if I set my mind to do it.

He was the one who lifted me up. He was the one who saw me. He was the one who affirmed me. It’s a story for another day, but my mother was fighting her own battles being a single parent. I was invisible to her. All the more reason why I was drawn to the attention I received from Pa albeit only for short periods of time.

Pa taught me how to drive a stick-shift car. He wanted me to clock at least 1000 km with him before he let me drive independently. If you can drive in India’s traffic, you can drive anywhere in the world! Left-side or right-side of the road, traffic or no traffic, city or highway, it didn't matter — I can drive!

When my mother was getting worried that I was turning dark with all the tennis under the sun, an unattractive trait for a girl, he stood up for me and said a tan would go away if I stayed home and that it was more important to stay active. [Writing about colorism in India is for another time].

Pa coached me through oratorical and public speaking competitions. A fan of Dale Carnegie, he enrolled me in public speaking classes when I was in tenth grade. He said that public speaking was not only a way to project one’s confidence but also aided in personality development (he meant social skills).

Pa supported me when I wanted to study in the United States. He stood by me when I wanted to marry a man outside our caste. He waited patiently with me while my mother took ten months to come around to the idea and agree to my choice of a life partner.

Pa was the best grandfather my children could have asked for. He crawled with them, sang to them, walked them around the neighborhood, pampered them with ice cream, and read them stories. He captured all their precious moments in hundreds of pictures and videos.

His shortcomings

Pa had his flaws. After all, he was human. In my opinion, he was a great son, a trusted friend, and a present father when he was around. In retrospect, I think he could have done better as the husband. His primary role was that of the provider.

While all his friends stopped sailing and took on shore jobs to be with their respective families, my father continued to sail. It was an active choice he made. I cannot tell with certainty if it was for financial reasons or if he was just addicted to the sea. I knew I never wanted to marry a “shippy” I wanted a partner, not just a provider.

He sailed and sailed and sailed………until he was 68 years old. Pa used to joke that he was probably the oldest seaman on active duty. We had no way to fact-check that but I won’t be surprised if that were true.

His decline

Pa was like Bruce Willis in Unbreakable. He never had any health issues. I don’t recall him in bed with a cough, cold, or fever. He stayed healthy with his diet and walks.

In one of the routine medical tests before his sailing assignments, he was detected with a high PSA level. Soon after, he was diagnosed with advanced-stage prostate cancer. He was so drawn to sailing that after a certain stopgap procedure, he strapped on a crotch guard of sorts and went back to the sea for his last voyage. Pa signed off the ship in Feb 2013 in Singapore and started chemotherapy in April 2013 in India.

By July 2013, he started to lose his hair. By September 2013 his tumor showed signs of shrinking, and just when we thought he was in remission things took a turn for the worse. I made three trips to India in a span of six months leaving two small children behind in the care of my husband and friends.

When he knew he was nearing the end, he made sure things were done his way. The visual of him laying in bed with his iPod playing Frank Sinatra’s My Way on a loop is crystal clear in my mind. Any guesses what song you need to play for me to start bawling instantly?

Pa assigned me as the executor of his will. He woke us up in the middle of the night to bring all his passport-size photographs so that he could pick the one that would go in the papers for his obituary.

He fought real hard for the last three months. but lost his fight to cancer on January 30, 2014 — The same day as Mahatma Gandhi. I had last seen him on Jan 1, 2014, and said my goodbyes that day. I didn’t go back for his last rites. [That’s a story for another day.] As per his wishes, his ashes were dropped in the Bay of Bengal — the place where he started sailing. Every time I am by any sea or ocean, I dip my feet in the water as a way to say “hello” to him.

Life lessons

So many of the things he said have just stayed with me, etched in my mind, that I repeat over and over again.

01. You never know unless you try. Pa encouraged me to try everything and anything possible. He said the only way to find out whether we could do something or not was to give it a try. There is no point living in regret.

02. If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say it. You never heard him speak poorly of anyone.

03. To-do lists. Even today, I write down what I need to do each week and I make a list before I go grocery shopping. No need to guess where I got that habit from.

04. Punctuality. Given his personality and profession, he showed me the value of being early to places if not on time.

05. Generosity. There is a long line of people who were helped by Pa, either financially or by way of his deeds. One of the things he said to continue to do was to feed people and feed them well. It was his way of saying not to worry about money when it comes to sharing food with people.

06. Never waste food. We had a clean plate policy at the dinner table which I have passed on to my kids. Of course, don’t stuff your face and get sick. But, be aware of the serving size and make sure you finish what you take.

We never celebrated father’s day growing up. I don’t need a dedicated day to remember him. He will always be with me. My father was my rock and I am ever grateful for his intermittent presence in my life.

The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude. — Thornton Wilder.

The photo finish

My mother wanted to give his last camera to my children as it was just sitting around unused. On one of her trips to visit us, she made the mistake of packing the camera with its case in her checked-in luggage. When she arrived, she found the case but somebody in security or baggage handling had flicked the camera. I didn’t care for the actual camera as much as I grieved for the memory card that was in there with some priceless last pictures, possibly deleted by the one who stole it. RIP Camera!

Tagging my story nerd friends as I tried really hard to put to practice many of the things I learned with the exercises. Particularly, getting personal, using objects, and the story in a story. Scot Butwell, Mike Butler, Klara Jane Holloway, The Sober Vegan Yogi, JF Danskin, Bernie Pullen, Angie Mangino, Nicole Wallet, Maria Rattray, Mary Louisa Cappelli, MFA, JD, PhD, Jann Christoph von der Pütten, Denise Darby, MarkfromBoston 🌻Ukraine, C.A. Jaymes, Eko BP