A Man Called Dad

I was sitting quietly in my room one average fall day when I heard a knock at my door. I turned around and saw my dad’s head poking out from behind it.
         “Can I come in?” he asked. I always felt awkward and slightly guilty when he asked questions that I wish he knew the answer to. If our relationship were normal, he would have known I did not mind. “Yeah,” I replied. He walked round my bed so that he was facing me. I was sitting cross-legged, my laptop situated in front of me. I turned my music off and suddenly I felt uncomfortable with there not being any background sounds. I was not sure what to say or do with myself. I just looked up at him expectantly, waiting for something to happen. Sometimes I wish I had told him he could not come in so I did not have to hear what he was about to say. Then he spoke uneasily as if he was embarrassed, that I might hate him a little bit and he was right.
“How would you feel if I moved to Australia?”
         For years, my dad has always travelled for his job, a mining engineer. First, when we moved from Nevada back to Alaska, he had to stay there and keep working at the mine. This was the first time I had been away from him for that long. This was when I cried when I left. He would visit every now and again. Eventually he quit his job in Nevada and moved back in with my mom, my sister, and me. He did contracting work from home. Then he had to travel more when he got a job in Washington. He was gone every few weeks. This was when our relationship began to deteriorate. The phone calls gradually became shorter, neither of us having anything to say. I was used to his absence by now and each time he left, it got easier to say goodbye and I stopped crying. His plane would leave and I went home—just another ordinary day.
         When he said Australia, part of me was not even surprised. A few years back, he had gone there in hopes of acquiring a job, but he turned it down. The other part of me laughed; I was not sure if he was being facetious. Evidently, though, he was not. When he explained the conditions of the job, I was not listening. I was thinking he would not actually apply for this job. Nevertheless, I was wrong again. Come January, his application was in and he was exchanging e-mails with the company. He would work in Papua New Guinea for two weeks, then on his off-days, live in Australia. He signed a two-year open-ended contract, so he could stay for as long as he desired, but two years was the minimum.
         I never said anything to him. I never said anything to anyone. When my parents asked me if I was content with this dramatic change, I would robotically reply, “Yes, I don’t care.” And I was not lying. I did not think this would trouble me. He had been missing from my life so much previously. I suppose it was the principle of the circumstances. He would not be in a different state anymore, but a different country, a different hemisphere, a different life.
         I could remember a time when I was younger, I had spent hours mustering up the courage to ask my dad if he wanted to play a board game. Monopoly was my favorite. He always sat in his old gray recliner in the corner of the living room reading The Wall Street Journal and sipping beer from a frosty mug. My voice was shaky when I inquired the simple question, “Dad, do you want to play Monopoly?” My heart beat ridiculously fast and I could feel the scarlet shade of anxiety flood my face. When he said yes, I was so ecstatic and I ran joyously to retrieve the game. When he said no, I did not say anything and walked away gloomily. It is funny how not much had changed since then. If I ever wanted to ask my dad an uncomplicated question, I ran it through my head repeatedly, trying to think of all the possible answers I could potentially receive. Only now, I never fully gathered that courage I once had. Instead, I stayed silent. I never told him I was angry he was leaving.
         His departure date was May 25, 2007. I refrained from watching him pack and I did not listen to any of our family’s conversations pertaining to this ordeal. My mom and sister had gone on a trip to Italy, so it was just my dad and me the last week he was home. I avoided him, but I do not particularly know why. I would hear his heavy footsteps nearing, and quickly occupy myself hoping to evade any Australia-related small talk. The fact that my dad was leaving shortly had not settled in my mind quite yet. I could not stop and allow it to or else all the cluttered emotions I had hidden for so long would explode into a fountain of tears and fury. I did not want that. Nor did I wish to bestow guilt upon him. This was a great opportunity after all. That is what everybody else thought. I was not going to rain on my dad’s parade. I could remain in the clouds just a while longer.          
         May 25th arrived faster than I had anticipated. It seemed like a normal departure day—suitcases piled by the door, my dad sifting through all his belongings making sure he had everything. When the time came, our friend Susan drove us to the small airport (while my mom and sister were still in Italy, I would be staying with her). I sat in the back of the truck while they talked.
         “When do you think you’ll come back?” she asked. I thought and hoped he would respond with something like “As soon as I can” or at least “It depends”, but he replied, as if I was not right behind him listening, “Well, I don’t know. I don’t really have a reason to come back any time soon.”
         Susan chuckled, “What about your family?” She thought he was joking. I knew he was not. Perhaps he meant something else when he said this, but I will never know. I do not recall what he said after that. That is the only part of the discussion I remember. It is stuck with me now, probably forever. I only sat wordlessly now, waiting for him to leave.
         Finally, we hopped out of the truck. His plane was ready to leave. I still did not know what to think. In my mind, I was still sitting cross-legged on my bed on that average fall day. My dad never knocked on my door; he never said anything about leaving. He was just going off to work again for a short while.
         First, he said his farewells to Susan and she wished him good luck at his new home down under and his new job in Papua New Guinea.
“I’ll be back,” he said, reassuring us it was only temporary, but this attempt at reassurance had no effect on me. Next, he turned to me and leaned down for a hug. That was the last moment he felt like a real person to me. Now he is only a subject, just somebody I occasionally e-mail. Now he is just a man I call Dad. Nowadays when he calls, I hear strange tropical birds in the background filling the void of our own voices. I generally stay silent. The silence is painful. “Who is this?” I want to scream. This is not my Wall-Street-Journal-reading beer-sipping dad. This is not my old Monopoly opponent. This is not my dad! But I do not voice these thoughts. Instead, I remain unvoiced.
He glanced at me and we exchanged I love you’s. “I’ll see you later,” he said.
But to me, it was goodbye, Dad.