Two Months Ago

I traveled to New York for the first time because my father was sick. Fortunately, he recovered from intensive care and came home again. We talked in the living room, despite the covid-19, and I thought the way to be nice to him, I was to treat him the same way I always did, as if he wasn't sick. I acted on him the same way I always did: without manners, without love, without acknowledgement. And he was still accepting. It was also that day, after meeting an acquaintance in New York, I took the homebound bus across Manhattan Central Park. He was sitting on the Overpeck park bench in NJ where he always sat with mother. It was late in the evening, in the summer afternoon sun. I couldn't bring myself to walk in front of them, but I couldn't turn around also. Because my father was looking at me and his eyelights told me what this time of sunshine looking at me would pass quickly. My mother with a gentle smile beside him, and I said, "It is so nice in the afternoon, isn't it?" And I passed in front of them and came home. What I didn't realize was how precious that moment to my father, and I think of excuses that if he hadn't been looking at me, I might have stayed and talked to him a little longer, But he would have had no choice but to do so. And after that, I never see my father again.