Khin Hnin Yu - Father

Great poet

When the 2nd day of the new moon of the preceding Thadingyut month arrives, my father will be 80 years old.

He has been with me for 42 years.

When my daughter was five years old and she was starting to understand people, her father was deaf. He was not deaf like normal people. He was completely deaf, so strangers would find it very difficult to talk to him. Writing long sentences on paper was the easiest way to communicate with him.

For family members and children, the only way to communicate is to use gestures and mouth movements, which they can understand.

All I know is that one night over 42 years ago, my father went to bed and by dawn the next morning he was completely deaf.

Apart from being deaf, my father was fat, fair-skinned, and healthy. He had a few moles on his face, and it wasn't obvious that he was as fair-skinned as his older brother (and my father). However, my father's family was fair-skinned.

When I was a little older, my father developed paralysis, and his speech became slurred and heavy. He also seemed to drag his feet a little when he walked.

However, he had to walk around Wa Khema once in the morning, once in the evening, and once in the evening before he could fall asleep.

My family was the first to leave Wa Khema for Yangon. When the Karen insurgency began, my mother and I came to Yangon temporarily, but the situation gradually deteriorated, and eventually, Wa Khema and Yangon were completely cut off from each other, and we were stranded in Yangon.

My younger sister, Nu Nu, is now studying at a city school, while my middle sister, Akwe, is already married and living in Yangon.

Although my father was no longer with his wife and children at the old house in Wa Khema, he was left with relatives. Although there were other relatives, in our family, we can say that my father was left "alone."

There is only one air connection between Wa Khema and Yangon. It is the only one, but it is not direct. From Wa Khema you can go to Pathein. From Pathein you can go to Yangon by plane.

My father sometimes suffers from mental illness, but I don't know if he is the father of a future writer, but he still writes nostalgic and tragic letters sometimes. My daughter Yu.....

When the big ships of the Irrawaddy arrived, my father went down to the dock. The big ships did not come. I could not see my daughters and mother, so my father cried on the riverbank.

I was moved to tears when I read this paragraph. My mother and I were also unable to return to Wakhe Ma as we had reported earlier because the ferry was suddenly closed while we were on our way to Yangon. In fact, we realized that the era was only temporary and that things would return to normal in the future. So we would return one day. While we were waiting for the day to return, the situation in Yangon was not as bad as we had previously realized, but worse than before, so we had to delay in Yangon instead.

When I showed my mother the letter from my father, she looked very sad. My father sometimes called my mother “Tin Tin” after my mother’s original name, Daw Thein Tin, but he usually called her “Mother” with his sons and daughters. If my mother was going to a village and stayed there for a few days longer than expected, he would go down to the port almost every day to wait for her. When my mother returned, I could hear her shouting happily from the top of the Wa Khema Pagoda Road (where it meets the waterfront) with her hands raised, “Our mother is back, our mother is back!” from our house, about 1,000 yards away.

As described in Yangon, it is heartbreaking to imagine the days when the father, his sons, daughters, and mother were still stranded, walking back and forth along the Pagoda Road from their home to the port alone.

“Anyway, Mom, let’s rent a house in Yangon and live there. I’ll call Dad to come with me by plane.”

I told my mother about my idea.

"It's okay... But people in Yangon don't know much about my father, so I feel sorry for my neighbors for my father."

"I'll have to watch it later, Mom."

After they agreed, I had to arrange for the call, find a flight, etc. The person who picked me up was Maung Kyin Aung, a fellow soldier from the Wa Khema Military Police Battalion, who had graduated from the same school.

Traveling by plane was not easy at that time. However, Maung Kyin Aung was able to bring my father to Yangon smoothly. Upon arrival at Yangon Airport, he humorously recounted the events that had left him racking his brains about his father's peculiarities.

"I don't want to talk about my father, Ma Yu. I'm so tired of thinking that I won't go if I don't have a big stone water filter and mortar. The plane is the last one to return, the time is approaching, and I can't give you a place, and if you can't give me a place, you can't go either. Think about it. In the end, I'm forced to give up and go."

I smiled as I looked at the items Maung Kyaw Aung pointed out.