PDLP Chapter 202: Bull and Modern Parents
Chapter 202: Bull and Modern Parents
Chapter 202 Bull and Modern Parents
My name is Wang Lin. I'm an executive at a listed company and I'm almost 50 years old. My wife is the daughter of the company's president. We've been married for almost 15 years and we love each other very much.
I have three children, an older daughter, a younger daughter, and a younger son. However, only the two younger children live with me now. As for my older daughter, she unfortunately passed away a few years ago.
My eldest daughter's name is Wang Shuangyao. Isn't it beautiful? I chose this name myself. Shuang means a pair, two, and ou means double. The character "yao" in a name implies purity, liveliness, beauty, and a promising future. It carries both auspicious meanings and profound connotations.
The name Shuang Yao implies quick movements, friendliness, talkativeness, and superb skills. It also implies that a person is intelligent, wise, innovative, able to create a bright future, and achieve success.
And my eldest daughter really lived up to my good wishes. She behaved differently from ordinary children when she was very young. She is a true genius.
But the moon waxes and wanes, and no one is perfect. While she possesses a high IQ, she has also lost some of her emotional intelligence. She never responds to our love, and when she sees us, it's as if we are familiar strangers, just insignificant parts of her life that can be discarded at any time.
As she grew older, she went to college and was immersed in the world of mathematics every day. She had no time to care about us or respond to us.
A family begins with love and ends with family affection. At that time, Shuangyao's mother and I no longer had the passion we had in the past. The incompleteness of our family accelerated the gap between us. Gradually, there was no feeling between Shuangyao's mother and I anymore. After reaching an agreement, we went to the Civil Affairs Bureau to go through the divorce procedures.
We agreed to keep this a secret and not tell Shuangyao, at least not tell anyone until she reaches adulthood, and pretend that nothing had happened.
But when love comes, no one can stop it. The next year I met my current wife, and I once again experienced the beauty of love. I thought about being with her and starting a new family all the time.
Coincidentally, that year, my ex-wife also met her Mr. Right, and then we both made a tacit decision, which was to keep the original house and give it to Shuangyao, while we started a new family.
During that time, we were all obsessed with our new relationships and new families, and we cared less about Shuangyao. Sometimes, when we remembered to contact her, we found that a month had passed.
Fortunately, Shuangyao was very busy at that time. She studied hard with her tutor every day. Even when we contacted her, she would hang up the phone after just a few words. She never went home all year round, and we basically met in a small restaurant on campus.
This allowed my ex-wife and I to run our own small families more unscrupulously. We would just make an appointment every month to visit Shuangyao, pretending that we were still together. Later, we only visited her once every two months, and finally once every six months.
Time passed quickly, and soon I was promoted and given a raise. I became a corporate executive, a son-in-law that my father-in-law relied on more and more, and the father of two children.
Every day when I go home, there are delicious meals prepared for me, children who call me dad with sweet smiles, and a gentle and virtuous wife. Everything fascinates me and makes me spend more time with my family. So when the research institute called me to sort out Shuangyao's belongings, I realized that I had neglected Shuangyao for many years. We haven't even had any contact in the past two years.
I took the initiative to call my ex-wife. It was our first meeting in several years. She had begun to change. The crow's feet around her eyes had begun to increase, but her inner temperament was so gentle, completely different from the coldness she had when we divorced. It was obvious that she had lived a good life these years, or rather, a very happy life.
Her current husband came with her, but after dropping her off at the destination, he drove away. It can be seen that he is an honest man, the kind who cares for his wife and loves his family.
We didn't say much, but just went to the place notified by the research institute to collect Shuangyao's belongings. As for the body, we just took a look at it before it was taken out.
We didn't make a fuss because among the relics there was a body donation letter signed by Shuangyao herself, which indicated that this was the last time we, as parents, would see Shuangyao.
We took a small bag and walked to a nearby park. Now I think about it, I have forgotten what I felt at that time. I felt reluctant, sad, confused, and more of a sense of emptiness.
Although Shuangyao is our daughter, the feelings between us have become increasingly distant after so many years of separation. Thinking about it now, it feels like hearing that an unimportant relative has passed away.
But it was still different. That was our daughter, sitting on a bench in the park. I don’t know who started it, but my ex-wife’s and my eyes started to become blurry.
Inadvertently, my hand touched the bag. It was an ordinary black briefcase, which looked similar to a computer bag. I suppressed my grief and gently opened the bag. To my surprise, there were very few things inside, only a few pages of paper and a small windmill.
Holding the light pink windmill, my ex-wife and I looked at each other, and then unfolded the pages of paper in front of us. The first one was undoubtedly my daughter's personal experience over the years, or more like a personal profile. It wrote a lot about the awards and honorary titles that Shuangyao had won since she was a child. At the end, it also included the rewards she had won over the years. At the end was a bank card with a password and a sentence on it, giving half to her father and half to her mother.
With trembling hands, he placed the bank card in his ex-wife's hand, and after a while, he spoke with trembling lips: "My daughter left this, and my family doesn't need it now. I'll give it all to you!"
Then, despite his ex-wife's objection, he opened the second page of paper. There was only a picture on it, but it was this picture that made him and his ex-wife burst into tears, because there were only three people on it, the father and mother strode away in opposite directions, leaving behind a little girl curled up in a thick transparent shell in the middle. The little girl's eyes were helpless and fragile, as if the whole world had abandoned her.
He understood then that his daughter didn't have Asperger's syndrome as initially diagnosed. It was simply that she was slow to respond to their love, leading them to become impatient and give up on her prematurely. It wasn't that their daughter didn't love them; it was simply that they didn't care enough and didn't understand their daughter's love in time.
His ex-wife cried until she was hoarse, as if she had vented all the grievances and longing for her daughter over the years. He also clenched his fists, with infinite regret and remorse filling his chest.
That was his daughter, his proudest and most dazzling daughter, the daughter who had been cherished since childhood. But how could they have lost her? How could they have forgotten her?
The last page of paper in the bag fell down. It was a photo of my daughter. The daughter standing in the front had a smile as bright as the warm spring sun, and behind her were large fields of sunflowers growing towards the sun.