Phone Calls From the Distant Past

My father called me from Toronto last night, and I surely expected some musings on the death of Big Stein - despite our Cleveland roots, he wouldn't know who Harvey Pekar was. While we traded thoughts on the Yankees ownerfor a few seconds, he he bore a bigger surprise than just calling from Toronto. In some ways, just calling from Toronto was slightly insulting - since two visits as a kid, it has always been one of my favorite cities. Toronto is the New York City of Canada, and if you've never been there, shake off the bullshit stereotypes and go enjoy one of the best big cities on the continent.

But I digress. His call was to connect me with our old friend. Dad had Yu Kai sitting next to him at their restaurant.

Of all the factory workers in Xiamen, Yu Kai spoke the best English, and bore the best prospects for getting out of China.
He came to dinner at the house several times. I best remember the ferry to Gulangyu, when Yu Kai and his young daughter sat next to me on the right and we talked the whole trip. Just 14 and wanting desperately to spend my summers working a minimum-wage job and meeting girls, I truly detest those long trips to China. But the older me can see where I took silver linings, and talking with him during those three summers was among them. No bullshit, no Communist Party jargon, he was suited to leave, as smart as he was.

That struck me as the oddest thing. I hadn't seen him since 1994, yet he lived just 300 miles away in Toronto since 1996. He had lived a lifetime away from Communist China since we last saw each other. His voiced sounded the same, although I imagined his hair now streaked in gray and the age in his face.

It was just a few seconds of conversation, the crowded restaurant obscuring his Chinese-inflected English. But it meant the world, even one we had been apart from for so long.

I got his message, and was glad Dad spent an evening with his old right-hand man in Toronto, a lifetime away from where they knew each other best.