Doctor To The Highest Degree

Whenever my friends and I started to talk about doctors, I launched this particular joke: The best doctor in the world is Dr. Anwar Jusuf. I would tricked them into at least two-minute argument until I finally tell them that he’s my Dad. The joke always sticks deep in their heads that afterward they refer to my Dad as ‘doctor anwar’.

To Fear or Not To Fear (To Admire, Then)
My Dad is many things, but all my life, on my top ten what-do-I-think-of-him list, competition between ‘whom I admire the most’ and ‘whom I fear the most’ is as tight and hot as the competition between LA Lakers and Boston Celtics in the 80’s.

When I was at home watching TV, he would be on stand-by mode in case I ask questions. And I asked a lot of questions. He answered ‘a lot of questions’ too. When on the road, I would look out the window and he would explain me things that crossed our visual path. Before I fell asleep, he would read or told all kinds of stories –of which I asked thousands of questions. Anytime, he always had explanations and answers. His answer always made sense. He was genius. He was a my very own 24/7 source book.

He was the scariest teacher I’ve ever had. At nights after doing my homework, he used to wait on me reading books and then quizzed me. I failed so many questions that he raised his scary voice on me so many times. The first time it happened, tears were loosed, which made him even madder. I couldn’t even keep my eyes focus, and answering him was far from my ambition. School stress was nothing compared to my night-class stress. Hence, I answered questions easily and finished assignments without significant difficulties. And then the night classes stopped. My Dad was genius.

The Trust, The Whole Trust, and Nothing But The Trust
House rules were seldom hard for me to accept because Dad always had his explanations. And, more importantly, they are shared with me. Implicitly he let me know that no good deed would go unpunished. When I was in junior high, my Dad had this generous policy –no more curfews for me. I could be home as late as I wanted should I provide my Mom and Dad with sufficient information. Each year passed meant more features added to my freedom package. When I was teen-aging my Dad again solemnly put their trust in me. They gave me a raid-free room, in other words: my very own teenage kingdom. I know that my parents found the not-for-teenagers magazines my friends stored in my bookshelves, but not even once they confronted my (the minding-their-own-businesses thing was actually yielded gigantic guilt and the guilt was killing me like crazy).

When I was in high school, it became explicit that my parents never once interfere with choices that I made and will make. When I told my Dad about my sudden shift of interest, medical to design, he accepted calmly. I know my Mom went crazy because I have told them both since forever that I wanted to be like my Dad, a doctor. That night, my Mom invited me to an adult talk to tell me her side of the story and to find out mine. My Mom didn’t want me to become an artist (neither do I), and I convinced her that design methods were scientific. At the end, I found out the talk was my Dad’s idea. That made sense.

When I was in college I burdened my parents with a brand new stuff: inter-religion relationship. I knew I pushed their super sensitive buttons and that their thermometer would hit through its ceiling. To make the truth telling part harder, I was to stand my ground, opposing their being against inter-religion issue. I knew my Dad and I knew My Mom. I chose my battle ground and made my battle rules. I told them separately to give them time to talk things over, so that when it was time to talk to me, they would have one voice. I was prepared for a big battle, instead what he said was: We had our talks (he and Mom). We looked for your misdecisions and found none. We realize you make your decisions with careful thoughts. We decided that this time we, again, put our trust in you.

I was waiting for a war and my Dad offered me peace. I lost my balance, not understanding why he said what he said. I forgot the most obvious nature of my Dad’s decision: they are none I could understand at present times. And that night I realize that trust is a scary thing.

To Mind Our Business
We were not much of a dining-together kind of family and the only male-bonding moments for my Dad and me was when I chauffer him around. They are the perfect moments to measure my Dad’s respect for this son of his. He would take me as an adult and talked as men do (good men, that is). We would have different positions, contradictive sometimes. Different and contradictive always make our conversation alive. And these are joyous moments.

It was on one these bonding occasions that I found out my Dad’s true passion: human mind. The closest clue science has on human mind was brain so we too talk about that a lot. My Dad thinks highly of human brains. A scientist, he thinks of it spiritually (and he loves being a scientist). He would talk about it for hours and hours with fire in his eyes. He was so fluent about the topic that his sentences were very long, grammatically correct, and breath-skipping too.

He hit my home-run button as I too love the topic. We would accidentally came across the same researches and marvel them together. For me and my Dad, ‘human brain’ (as a topic) is our ‘corpus calosum’ –the brain part that keep the right hemisphere (that would be me since I’m the one on the driver’s seat) intact to the left hemisphere (that would be my Dad since he’s the one on the navigator seat, although his navigating vocabulary is limited to only ‘watch out!’). And his being a physician and my being a psych major keep the scale beautifully balanced. Averagely, we have one hour duration and we use it wisely and mind-ly.
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Today is November 10.
It is “The Day of Heroes”.
It is my Dad’s birthday.
That makes a lot of senses.

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PS: On June 15, my Mom’s birthday, I decided not to post my appreciation here because it was too Oedipal for public consumption (and one people reading it is public enough for me).