人逢佳節倍思親 [On festive occasions, one longs for parents] (#183, Topic K)

A front-page story, complete with a color photo, in today's Washington Post shows Tiger Woods weeping, after winning his second British Open championship in a row. "I wish he [father Earl Woods] was here to watch this," he said in a TV interview. (His father died in May, at age 74.) A Chinese saying, used as the caption to this entry, says it well. It might be translated as: On festive occasions, one longs for one's parents doubly. Reading Woods's story, I also wept, since it reminds me of my own situation at the time. In 1953, I led the procession for doctoral candidates at the University of Illinois's graduation ceremony. (That I led the procession was a sheer accident. Candidates were sequenced, alphabetically, first by academic discipline; then, within each discipline, by name. Several fellow candidates in Accountancy elected not to show, allowing me to be the first in a 200+ procession. However, I was proud of one thing: I was the youngest to earn a PhD in my discipline at UI, at age 24, though there are/were, undoubtedly, hundreds of others from China earning their PhDs younger than I, in other disciplines, elsewhere.) After the tassle on my cap was flipped, and after I received my diploma, while still on the stage, I looked at the big gathering -- and, as to be expected, I could not find a single familiar face (I was the eldest among siblings, and the only one in USA at the time), certainly not my father, who remained in Shanghai. A festive occasion, indeed, but a lonely one nevertheless. Why did I look up at the crowd? Perhaps, just as Wood said, I wished that my father could be there to witness this festive occasion. After looking blankly at the crowd in front of me, my immediate thought was directed to a matter of considerable urgency: after leaving Champaign-Urbana, where will I be? With no forwarding address, how should I instruct the Post Office? When would I receive my father's next letter? Since my mission was still in process, I steeled myself, and walked down from the other side of the stage to complete the recession. My father taught me to exercise self-control and be self-confident. And I did. Little did I know, at the time, that I never saw my father again -- not in 1953, not later; the last time I saw my father was when I left Shanghai in 1949.