Another Code: a morse code operator at sea
You came into this country without a lick of English.
But you spoke another code.
In your youth, you trained as a skilled morse-code operator. You studied hard for your exams. On your bicycle in the busy streets of Taipei, you’d tap your fingers on the handle bar to the numerous patterns and combinations. On the lunch table, waiting in line… tap../tap — … .. … /tap… . People looked at you, wondered what you were doing. You didn’t care. Every second counted. You practiced until your fingers danced to the rhythm of the International Morse Code. It paid off. You became one of the few.
You traveled across the seas in the most unforgiving accommodations. There were storms. It was your job to detect incoming weather patterns over the radio sent from shore. Any distress signal to and fro, they looked to you. It was you who kept the line open between land and sea, and ship to ship.
You weren't a fisherman, but you smelled like one
It was life with the fishermen in the high seas. The smell, though, was the thing you remembered and talked about most. The smell was worse than the storms. Was it the men or the fish? What difference did it make anymore? The smell of fish, of the sea was inescapable. Even your showers were abrasive, with the water from where else but the unending sea. But the men. They smelled the worst. You weren’t a fisherman, but you smelled like one.
When you weren’t firing off dits and dahs, you’d catch and dry squid under the sun while the fishermen reeled in their catch. 魷魚乾. You made your own dried squid, and sold them to the locals wherever you made it to shore. It was your pocket cash, the only money from this work that you kept. The rest, however handsome it was, you gave back to your mother. It was what you did in Chinese tradition, especially back then. And you did it with pride.
You docked along the shores of Kenya once. The tapestry you bought at a local market hung on our living room walls for as long as I could remember and for as long as you were with us. They moved with us for as many times as we moved. The tigers and the giraffes held their place, always on the walls in the living room, like a badge of honor reminding you of your glory days.
You’d teach me S.O.S and tell me stories of life at sea
Then you arrived here. New land, new language, new journey. No more seas. No more morse code. You became a father. The telegraph key, once a crucial lifeline, was stored away, and occasionally dug out by amused little hands that tapped away at the paddle, creating the sweetest cacophony of high-pitched beeps. Dit dit dah…
You’d teach me S.O.S and tell me stories of life at sea.
Dit dit .. dah.
What would you do here? This location was too terrestrial for maritime morse code.
But you found a way. You always did.
.. / -- .. ... ... / -.-- --- ..- --..-- / -.. .- -..
I miss you, Dad.
