Above the Door

劳動光荣

Mark black Chinese characters above a small wooden door of a shaggy old house

where my father lived as a child, 

And where his parents lived when they were young, 

Back when the couplets along the door were not so faded and decayed, 

The walls not so stained and cracked, 

The weeds in front not so overgrown, 

The trees behind not so bare. 

My young father stood straight in front of the front door, 

Hands tucked in his new Mizuno winter coat

He had bought with money he had earned and owned for the first time in his life,

Money he could not have dreamed of having

living in that old house. 

Labor is glorious. 

That's what the sign above the door said.  

My father wore a thin smile and squinted into the distance

with eyes like a crescent moon behind round glasses,

Reserved and quiet, 

Perhaps remembering childhood times starved and cold,

Perhaps saying his final goodbyes before that house was torn down, 

Because to this day, he has never taken me there even once.

Above is a poem I wrote reacting to a photograph my father had sent me. I chose this picture even before I learned the truth about it. Perhaps it was a strange connection I felt to the photo—to the cracks and holes in the wall, the worn down couplets next to the front door, the growing weeds and bare trees, and the old yet enduring sign above—that made me choose this photo over the five other photos my father sent me. 

My father’s expression and pose also attracted me. In any other picture of my father, young or old, he always had a small smile on his face to signal his happiness. But in this photo, his smile felt thinner, and his eyes more distant. It raised a curiosity inside me—why was my father taking a picture like this in front of an old, worn-down house? 

It all clicked when he told me that the house behind was where my grandparents lived when they were young. There was a way a house was when certain people lived in it. And in that house, I felt and saw a strange presence—a way the house was—that reminded me of my grandparents, whose stubborn insistence to give all they could I will remember forever. And my father’s expression which attracted me was of remembering the childhood times he spent in that house and of realizing how far he had come, wearing a Mizuno winter coat he would never have thought he could wear living in that old, worn-down home.