Pieces of my Father

Eric Yu — Pieces of my Father

To welcome our next storyteller to the stage. Please give it up for Eric Yu. I was 16 when I discovered I had a cousin. I was flipping through an old photo album and I said, Mom, who is that? She goes, oh, you don’t know? That’s your cousin on your dad’s side. No, I don’t know, Mom. You never told me about him. Who’s that sitting next to him? And in that moment, I discovered I had not one, but two cousins on my dad’s side, and they lived in China. It felt like someone handed me just two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and they were like, oh, did you want the rest? It’s across the Atlantic Ocean. And I hadn’t been back to China in years, but after this revelation, I knew I would have to cross that ocean. But I was already working on a puzzle, my father. I was born and raised in Westchester, Pennsylvania, with my sister and my mother, and for most of my life, my dad was always away, working in China to support us.

I’d see him maybe once a year when he’d come visit us, and through a child’s eyes, he was this elusive figure that would show up every once in a while, yell at me to finish my dinner, obliterate me at ping pong, and then disappear. Honestly, his absence was familiar to me. But it did take its toll on my parents’ relationship, and by the time I started high school, he moved to the US in an effort to save the marriage. And while he was ultimately unsuccessful and they got a divorce, this was the start, the real start, of our father-son relationship. I think he wanted to make up for lost time, and so he did all of the dad things. He would drop me off at school, we’d go out to eat together, We’d go on trips. He’d take so, so many pictures. He’d obliterate me in ping pong, still.

And along the way, I started piecing together who this guy was. He loved to sing. He had this rich, operatic voice. He played basketball when he was younger. He had this jump shot that started from the side of his head like that. He valued hard work. He was tough on me. And he never said as much. East Asian immigrants generally don’t like to talk about their feelings. But I think he regretted not being around more when I was growing up. Fast forward a few years. It’s an October morning, my senior year of high school. I’m very excited. That night, my dad’s taking me to my favorite restaurant, Outback Steakhouse. And at the end of the school day, I get called to the principal’s office. This has never happened to me before. I walk in. It’s my principal. the guidance counselor, and my history teacher. They sit me down and they say, Eric, your dad was involved in a car accident this morning, and I’m sorry to say that it took his life.

Right as I was putting this picture of him together, someone lit the pieces on fire. Last year, my sister and I crossed that ocean and took our trip to China. It was my first time back in over 18 years. I met my cousin, Feng Xiaorui. He is loud and warm. He challenged me to an arm wrestle within the first 20 minutes of meeting him. I beat him. I also met his wife and their adorable five-year-old daughter. I met my other cousin, Feng Yujie, his very pregnant wife. And he was softer, full of questions about me, and had the kindest eyes behind his glasses. Here were the people that I had only ever known of, suddenly in front of me, handing me a beer with lives that stretched so far past the edges of that picture I had seen all those years ago.

I’ll never forget that first night we had dinner together as a family. The room was full of laughter and the spiciest, most delicious home-cooked meal. After we ate, my aunt took me to the closet and had me bring out this big suitcase packed with old photo albums of them and my dad when he was a kid, a teenager and young adult. And as I flipped through the pages, they shared stories about how he was so charismatic. He was an extremely hard worker and a great student. They told me, From sunrise to sunset, he never stopped singing. Here were the pieces I thought I had lost, not just in the photo albums, but there in the room.

I saw him in the glint in my aunt’s eyes when she made a sarcastic joke. I heard him in the sound of my uncle’s voice when he was speaking, and especially when he was singing. And I realized there were never separate puzzles to assemble. It’s always been one big picture, one that existed before me, one that’s growing, and one that I’m grateful to fit into. Thank you. Good morning, everybody.