The good side of my father

I don't remember much of his good side, though I'm sure there
were plenty of examples. But I will at least mention two of them
to show that he was not all mean. I'm referring to his spanking.

1. I was sick unto death once. He did all he could to make sure
I would recover and not succumb to the wishes of the disease.
We have one family member who died from drinking kerosene.
He was just a young baby at the time.

2. As the war progressed, people were being displaced from their
homes and villages. He allowed a family to stay with us that
had two daughters, and I fell in love with one. You bet I kissed
her and that was the last kiss too.
I remember distinctly that there wasn’t enough rice to go around
and how were we going to feed them all? But somehow we
managed to scrape by. I will write more about the war later on.

I will add the third one also. Being that we are Buddhists, my father
would often have a feast for the monks to come to our place--
maybe once a year. We fed them in hope of a favor in
return that we would receive a blessing from them when they
blessed us by their prayers and chanting and sprinkling of holy
water, or blessed water. This is a Buddhist thing to do, hoping
to earn good merits for the next life. Maybe I'm wrong on this
assumption, but that is my interpretation of it.