MIRRORS

This isn’t a job interview, it’s a set up.

Story context:

Over 10 years ago, my father was attacked by three men with baseball bats while jogging home from work. He was left with broken ribs, internal bleeding, smashed teeth, a head injury, and damage all over his body.

I was in another country when it happened. I was told months later.

Growing up as the kid who translated for his parents — and grew up in their convenience store — I had already learned something I didn't have words for: how people treat you is a mirror. The same person who looked at my angry father with disdain looked at my warm mother with a warm smile. I watched that difference my whole childhood.

My father was a defensive man. Hard to be in a relationship with. The ambivalence I carry about him — loving him, knowing him, reading the police reports of what was done to him — is like two supernovas colliding again and again.

I don't know if anything my father ever did could justify what those men did to him. The attackers got two weeks in jail. I wasn't there for him. And it still mess me up.

Maybe justice is a fiction blinded by lack of perspective.

But I know revenge makes you become who you hated.

Be careful what you hold on to.

Jae