I’m an professional worker’s kid: A story of connect, disconnect and reconnect (Part 1)
Tags: Relationships, Parents

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

“Mom, where’s dad?” asking my mom on the casual family evening dinner. She replied “Well, his work requires him to manage the team physically at the region. He won’t be home till Friday night.”

My dad would not win the best dad award for connecting to his children. Our childhood spent mostly with our maternal side because he’s busy working. Even after his arrival, our casual hangout was at his old office where I hopped all over the places, going into HR department, Monitor & Evaluation and opened door office — weird, right? To my twelve year old self, he’s not a father where I expected him to be. I craved for perfection, attention and his love. No wonder, my love language is word of affirmation and quality time.

Attempting to pacify the relationship, I developed a new relationship connection with him — mentee & mentor. I remembered hopping around his offices, asking “what is his daily job as a monitoring and evaluation manager?” I remembered asking “why did you pursue a career in a non-governmental organization when you graduate with an agriculture degree.” My curiosity in expanding the relationship has enabled me to formulate a newly found respect for this man, as a mentor.

I saw him work — managing his staffs to carry out M&E projects for underprivileged children at deserted area in Battambang. I saw him crying for the first time when he needed to leave the area where he’s been working for the past 7 years. It was a good time. However, that’s all just a happy memory of a great mentor.

Our happier memory didn’t last long. Our relationship in my adolescence years, as father and son, was hardly constructive, with his reserved character and high standards clashing with my adolescent desire for autonomy and recognition. My last memories of him are filled with constant arguments over those small but significant matters ( such as my school subject choices and academic results). I held resentment towards him for his favoritism towards my little brother. The happier memories were ancient ruins buried under layers of bitterness and ambivalence.

Even in my college year, every phone call to home was a resentment and bitterness to a father figure. Instead, every call is a consultation space between a mentee, in his early twenty years, seeking career and academic advice from a mid-forty year old experienced mentor.

You may be saying: “he’s your dad — mentor is also a role he’s playing.” For the longest period of time, I’m saying yes. However, as an attention-craving teenager, five years ago, I want more. I wish he protected me when I was bullied in school because I was too shy to ask that “jerk” to go to a bathroom. I wish he stayed there, when I was celebrating my greatest accomplishment — advancing to national competition. I wish he let me explore further opportunity: music and arts.

I’m struggled with the mentor-alike-father figure. I disconnected to my father for the past twenty years. To me, I always see him as a mentor. A great mentor. I wish he could be more than just a mentor — someone who acts as a protector when I needed him the most.