Umbrella 2

My father believed in math. All of the world's problems could be solved through math. There was nothing that was not mathematical. Morality was mathematics and had to do with ratios. Philosophy was the mathematics of the mind, the way the mind reproduced certain ideas, the way the mind created a model for how everything behaved. Every day, he tried to instill his ideas onto my brain. But I was tired, and I could only listen to so much.

Other times, he would drill me on numbers. What was 49*49? What was the square root of 675? The same questions came over and over again. He got me an abacus. I worked out the math problem as fast as I could, but he was always faster. Then, he would call me slow and stupid. There was no way that I could win except perhaps in the math contests. Around 8 years old, I started to win these contests. It was quite amazing. Numbers made sense to me and I was beating kids 4 or 5 years older than I. And I kept on winning. one after another, like a gambler on a hot streak. Often I would try to find some smile of satisfaction on my father's face and I would literally see nothing. He would almost act like I didn't exist.  

There he is now, eating. He has brought some of math students over for dinner. He asks them about their family and how they are doing. It's the kind of questions that he never asks me, and he does it so casually. I want to dinner to stop. I want to go somewhere and just cry. Why must he push me like this all the time? Why doesn't he just ask me how I am at times? Why is he such a stranger? Often, I feel that I don't know a thing about him. Is there anything to know about him? Was his mind just numbers, equations, and ratios? I keep on eating, and I say nothing. I have become a mute. Even if I did say something, he would probably put me down.

There are times when I respect him so much. I can see how much he does for his students. He is always working and working and working, but not even one shred of emotion in him. It's like he's a damned machine. Every time, I observe him, it's like I am looking at someone whom I don't understand at all.