By: Wendy Shywalker

Pity the father's with me for a son.
As a child at the temple, I was not the proper Shaolin student.
American in many ways, like my mother,
I could see the world outside and wished to share in its wonders.
I imagined what it would be like to watch TV after doing my homework,
what it would be to play baseball after school, sliding for a home run,
tearing holes in my blue jeans.
I know I exasperated Pop, my temper always getting the better of me,
storming off to my secret place to find the peace and solitude that was inright front of me
if I was to look deep enough. But I was child, children never see what is in front of them
until its too late.
Then it was too late, in flash of bright lights, explosions and death, my world changed
forever, my friends lay dying around me.
Men in black emerged through the fire and smoke destroying everything in their path,
priests, children, none mattered and all fell.
As the stones exploded in to pebbles and my friends breathed their last,
I looked for the man who would save me, the man who promised to be their for me,
I looked for my father.
But he never came, for a moment I thought I saw him through the flames,
but as I called to him, he was gone. The pain from the smoke and my injuries was nothing
to pain in my heart as I thought I saw the man I loved more than life,
turn his back to me and leave.
Ping Hai did what he could with this child, trying to temper the anger that
raged at the world,
but he was not my father and I let him know it. In the end old age,
lack of patience and bad health won out and it was felt that I would have to leave,
go and live in my other world.
I didn't belong in this world, I wanted my temple and my father back,
but I could not have either, so the orphanage became my home.
But it wasn't a home.
This world wasn't as I had imagined.
While I got the homework, TV and baseball games, I found no enjoyment in them,
they were cold and with out depth, without my father to share my life,
there seemed no point.
My loss and pain was multiplied by the fifty odd other children,
whose pain was no less in their hearts than mine.
My empathy for them, as well as for myself,
caused me to face this world as cold as it had been to me.
This was a dark and hard place, that is what you should have been teaching me Pop,
not peace and patience, my new world had no place for those words.
Nobody here was loved, why should they love back, why should I?
So my burden became heavier as my anger grew with every day.
Then paul came, the anger, the facade of denial of wanted and needed love,
didn't fool him for moment.
He ignored the harsh words spoken to keep distance
and he held on to the arms that pushed him away.
He made this child believe that there was a place to love and be loved,
it was not the temple not his Pop but a home and another father.
Dad once said that he had a tiger by its tail.
While I had the love I had craved, the anger was still simmering under the surface,
Dad had to get me out of more than one scrape through the years,
when my temper would get the best of me.
Eventually I saw, his life, the life of a policeman the way to repay the debt I owed
not only to Dad, for loving me, but for all the innocent people
that had no one to fight for them and maybe, a way to fight my demons.
I know Dad was proud but I think he was also worried, what all that anger
could do with a gun as its messenger.
Then, Pop returned from the dead, as I had for him.
I thought with his resurrection, my anger and pain would ease,
but Pop's intermittent disappearances and returns, only seemed to make the feelings of
abandonment and hurt move like a rollercoaster, a constant movement of ups and downs,
anger and love.
As I yell at Pop, for never being there, telling him to stop following me,
protecting me, holding him and then pushing him away.
And as Dad, has to pin back my ears for breaking the rules and stand in the
line of fire when I explode, to protect me.
I think on the two fathers who have nurtured my various stages and pointed
me towards my destiny.
I think on the stages yet to come, and I pity the fathers that have me for a son.