Tenderness of men and black coffee

Homogenous culture can feel rich and colorful, but it can also be isolating, constraining, and benumbed. I find myself craving this richness in the states, but it is always a bit jarring whenever I first arrive in Taiwan.

Upon arriving in Taiwan, I was faced with the reality that for the next five months, my home would be in this country. I would have to take off my rose colored glasses and really see it for the first time, the good and the ugly. I prepared myself for the culture shock and adjustment period.

I do not greet my family in Taiwan with hugs like I do my family back home. At first I am a little offended. I had assumed our years apart had accumulated a mountain of missed hugs and kisses owed to either party, but like every other time, we simply acknowledge each other and say hi. When I get over the initial shock of greeting each other from afar, everything else is quite easy. After not seeing them for years, I’m not sure how to hug them anyways.

My parents are not the same as their family in Taiwan. Maybe because back home it was just us six, my grandparents and us. Maybe when it became us five and then us four, my parents felt it was better to fill us with their love rather than their sorrows and regrets and loneliness. It’s a stark contrast, going from my family here to my family there. At home we end every phone call with, love you. In Taiwan I don’t even hug my grandmother.

I wonder where my parents learned such tenderness.

Each time I return to Taiwan I am greeted in the same way. At a certain point one gets used to the lack of touch and love yous the way they do the bitterness of black coffee.

I for one, love to drink black coffee. I have become a two cup a day kind of person. Black coffee is what real men drink, was what I told myself when I was barely old enough to drive. At first I found the taste too bitter. One day I started thinking of the bitterness as an acquired taste, but I was still drinking a cup of bean water.

Supposedly, if you focus hard and smack your lips, reaching your tongue in the corners of your mouth and across your gums, you may catch fleeting traces of sweet fruit or fragrant flowers. Maybe it is sour grapes or fresh oranges, but it fades quickly, and is not as telling as the real thing. Drink enough and you begin to appreciate the bitterness, and your mouth learns how to extract the subtlest of flavors from the dark murky liquid.

The men in my life are black coffee

I sometimes feel like I hardly know my own dad. I find it hard to talk with him, but it is my own fault. When we sit together, the questions fail to come to mind. I talk about the weather and tv and movies, recycling the same phrases and questions. My dad is not cold or cruel man, but he is a man, and befriending other men can feel like a game of chess.

I used to feel my dad’s stress when he was at the restaurant. One day, when he went to fix something at the restaurant, his hand got caught in a machine. The cords wrapped around his arm, trapping his wrist and twisting it. He came home and couldn’t move his wrist. I thought I could hear him sniffling softly in the next room with my mom, but I’m not sure if his tears were because he was the only one who could cook for the restaurant or from pain. I didn’t even know how to ask if he was okay then.

The stress of the restaurant used to seep from his sighs and silence, but he has softened since they closed it and with age. My dad is not a talkative person, but he likes to hum along to his music, which he compiles into single playlist that grows longer and longer each year. He likes to sing in the car and sometimes in the shower too. My dad is the one who taught me to ride a bike, to rollerblade, to fish, to cut with a cleaver. When I wanted to snowboard, we bought used snowboards and he learned with me. He hasn’t taught me as much on tenderness, but I have learned to extract the flavors from these moments myself.

I have been staying with my dad’s best friend in Taipei for some weeks. I sometimes marvel at their friendship, because his friend is a never-ending stream of consciousness, and my dad can sometimes be as talkative as a potato. I’m a little envious of their relationship—there are pictures of them hugging like lovers. His friend tells me things about my dad I never think to ask myself. He will know things about my dad that will be buried with him.

The men in my life in Taiwan are more reserved and more stressed and less expressive. They do not talk about fear or anxiety or joy or love, and I feel myself closing off too because of it. Lately I have been drinking black coffee every day. It makes my hands shake and my frequenting of the toilet increase. Milk and sugar are better for my stomach, but I have grown accustomed to a cup of bitterness in the morning.

Recently my dad has said I have almost made him cry from something I wrote, but I wasn’t there to witness it, only my mom. I find it hard to picture. The last time I saw tears fall from his face was when death pried them out. I don’t cry much myself anymore either. Tenderness is hard enough to summon in the presence of other men, let alone tears. The women in my life have coaxed a pool of them from my eyes. I wonder what it will take to shed a few tears with my father, when I will not feel as inclined to ask him questions he’s heard me ask too many times before. Black coffee makes me thirsty. I wish feel real rain someday.