my father

[Drunk Monk]

This is a post I've been thinking about for three years.  When my dad passed, he left a box of q-tips, one of those 500 count boxes.  My mom doesn't use them so she put them in the bathroom that I use in her home, the one I grew up with.  You know how q-tips always say not to stick them in your ear?  Yeah, well, I do that.  Why don't you arrest me?  It's a weird thing actually.  I have a very clear memory of my dad teaching me how to clean my ears with a q-tip when I was very young and saying 'Dad, the box says not to stick these in your ears.'  And my dad just ignored that.  Years later, I'm minoring in Anthropology at SJSU and the prof is using earwax to demonstrate the Punnett square, a basic genetics chart, and he's pointing out that Asians and Europeans have different earwax.  A few years later, in my random Asian studies, I learn all about the tradition of ear cleaning in Asia - it's a common barber skill, often done by local 'experts' who shill it on street corners.  There's a wonderful u-kiyo image of Bodhidharma getting his ears cleaned by a prostitute.  If you go to Daiso, you'll find ear spoons designed for just such a task, right next to the Japanese q-tips which don't usually have the 'don't stick in ears' warning.  So my dad was right.  It was one of those odd heritage lessons he passed down, surely without even realizing it was culturally distinct from American practices.

So on my weekly visits to my mom, I've been using that box of q-tips my dad left unfinished to clean my ears after showering.  It ran out this week.   Like so many things that were my dad, it vanishes.  Soon I wonder what might remain.  His bloodline?  His patents?  What remains of any of us?