I-Want-Dad's-Praise and I-Know-Dad-Doesn't-Say-It

"Yeah. It's running."

Dad said that and turned away, carrying his own glass of iced tea out to the back to water his pots of herbs. It was Dad's old standing fan, the kind with aluminium blades that rattle, and I had just swapped out its capacitor. Now it spun steadily and the breeze washed cool across my face. I was still holding the screwdriver, my fingers black with grease. While I was squatting on the floor, Dad had quietly set a hand towel on the arm of the chair right beside me without saying a word. The iced tea he had made for me before I even arrived sat at the corner of the table, the ice nearly gone.

I stood there watching his back disappear behind the screen door. There was a sentence I had been waiting for all along without knowing I was waiting.

I am thirty-eight and I run a small air-conditioner repair shop at the edge of the market. All day customers tell me "you do careful work," and I don't think twice about it. Yet Dad said three words and I sat on the doorstep the whole afternoon, drinking tea that had gone weak, and two voices started arguing in my head. I gave them names so I could tell them apart. Neither one is wrong.

I-want-Dad's-praise: He stood there watching me work for fifteen minutes. Never looked away once. And when I'm done, all I get is "yeah, it's running." Why is it so hard?

I-know-Dad-doesn't-say-it: He didn't look away for fifteen minutes, you're right. He's not a man who stands watching something he doesn't want to watch. He held his glass of iced tea until the ice melted, and forgot to drink it.

I-want-Dad's-praise: But watching isn't saying. I need to hear it out loud. When I came third in class as a kid, he said "try harder," and I still remember it.

I-know-Dad-doesn't-say-it: I remember it too. But remember this as well: Dad has never praised anyone in this house. Mom cooks something good, he finishes and lays his chopsticks neatly across the bowl. Uncle Tư re-roofs his place, he pours Uncle Tư a glass of rice wine. This house says love with its hands, not its mouth.

I-want-Dad's-praise: So I wait my whole life for a sentence he doesn't have in him? It sounds understanding, sure, but I still come up empty.

I-know-Dad-doesn't-say-it: Then come up empty, nobody's telling you not to. It's just that you're standing at the door on this side, waiting for him to speak a language he doesn't have. The language he does have, have you noticed it yet?

I-want-Dad's-praise: Which language?

I-know-Dad-doesn't-say-it: The hand towel he set beside you before you could ask. The tea he made before you even rode over. Standing behind you for fifteen minutes is him holding a place for you to work.

I-want-Dad's-praise: I see it. But a towel doesn't say "you did well." I want to know whether he thinks I'm good at it, not whether he loves me.

I-know-Dad-doesn't-say-it: There, that one is the real question. You're asking two things at once: does he love me, and does he think I'm good. The towel already answers the first. For the second he has nothing to measure it with. Saying nothing doesn't mean the answer is no.

I-want-Dad's-praise: Or it might mean no. I don't know.

I-know-Dad-doesn't-say-it: Right, you don't know. I won't pretend to. But I noticed something: you've never asked.

I-want-Dad's-praise: Asked what?

I-know-Dad-doesn't-say-it: Straight out. Do you think I fixed it well, Dad. Just one sentence. Neither side has tried.

Both voices went quiet.

Out back I could hear water running from the tap Dad had turned down low, the first cicadas of the season calling in waves, the fan I had just fixed turning steadily behind me. I didn't yet know whether I would ask. I only knew the waiting had changed places: it no longer sat inside me as an emptiness, it sat in front of me like a question no one had knocked on yet.

I did this on my phone right there on the doorstep. The three things I wrote: the towel, the tea, and last week when Dad walked all the way to the mouth of the alley to meet me, asking "did it rain?", though I rode up to the gate on my motorbike. The third one kept me sitting quietly for a while. I don't know if those lines count as praise. But they are not nothing.

There is a line I have to draw plainly. "Not used to praising" is one thing. But if someone close to you often criticizes, compares, mocks, says things that make you smaller, that is no longer a matter of "not being used to saying it," and you don't have to go looking for love in a hand towel. Talk to someone you trust, or to a professional. And if this emptiness lasts for weeks and costs you your appetite or your sleep, that is also worth talking over with a professional. The piece on letting go of expectations, not people has a few ideas for days like that.

If one day Dad does say it, I will have to learn how to hear it. For me, accepting a compliment without rushing to deny it is a task just as hard as waiting for one.

I stood up, set the screwdriver on the doorstep, and went around to the back.

Dad was turning the hose toward the last pot. I stood beside him and said nothing yet. He glanced at me once and passed me his glass of iced tea.

"Drink up. The ice is gone."

This article was created with AI assistance.