[ WP ] Tell the origin story of the most awesome or most interesting character you can imagine .

In my household today, “ love ” has always been expressed routinely; it sits at the tip of our tongues in everyday life, and is casually inserted at the ends of conversations or before parting ways in the mornings. But as a child growing up in Father ’ s household, “ love ” and “ affection ” were not unconditional, and were carefully rationed. Due to the circumstances surrounding his own upbringing, I imagine it was his logic that “ love, ” if parceled out too frequently or easily, would soften our minds and weaken our fortitudes. A terse nod of the head or pat on the back was given in lieu of outward praise when we achieved outstanding marks in school or placed first in competition; what would normally be cause for celebration was accepted as simply maintaining a standard of the family, and was thus seen as nothing out of the ordinary. Other telling signs of his approval might come at the dinner table when he requested that we take a larger helping of food. More subtly, it could be observed when the stern focus behind his dark eyes would momentarily wane, or when the thin lines of his mouth would loosen its grip and relax into a crude approximation of a smile. When people ask me if Father was a loving man, they are surprised at my response. To them, a man of his background was surely incapable of harboring these emotions, and the expression of “ love ” therefore did not fit into their narrative of such a character. 
 
 A memory central to my childhood is the setting of wine gourds and ashtrays and porcelain cups over the large circular table in our parlor room every Sunday morning. When Father ’ s friends arrived, Mother would usher us children out into the courtyard, leaving the elders to their business while we played. In our household, in our culture, the worlds of children and adults operated as separate entities never to be conflated, and for years we turned a blind eye not out of ignorance, but out of adherence to custom. To us, it was a simple gathering of old friends, no different than us consorting with a group of classmates after school, albeit in a more systematic manner. And so years later, when people ask me what Father did, I tell them I do not know. 
 
 Vaguely I remember, in my adolescence, being roused in the middle of the night from our ancestral home by a cadre of grim looking men barking out sharp, urgent commands, and shuttled to an airfield where we boarded a twin engine plane bearing the sovereign symbol of an unfamiliar nation on its side– I had never before seen one up close, only from afar, flying in formation, and often accompanied by the distant wail of airhorns. The sheer shock that I must have experienced, paired with the lingering influence of an abruptly interrupted slumber, must have dulled my senses, for the details of our journey up in the sky have eluded me ever since. But from that day on, our home, our country, was lost to us forever. Certain memories of the old life as we knew it are stored in rare photographs, but have most typically been relegated to the crevasses of our minds, surfacing every now and then in wistful conversations with my siblings, like the tendrils of a fantastic dream. When people ask me about how a common civilian family was evacuated via air travel back then, I tell them I do not recall. 
 
 Once we were settled into our new surroundings, Father ’ s Sunday meetings marched on, but we would never again set out so many cups. Furthermore, the kindly smiles that Father ’ s friends would ordinarily greet us with were replaced by pursed lips and solemn nods; the thrums of lively conversation, once frequently punctuated by bursts of laughter and the clink of porcelain cups, had become subdued, and the clamor of the porcelain was heard only as echoes in memory. 
 
 Years later, word of his passing came to me in the form of a plainly written letter while I was abroad at school, and I quickly made arrangements for the long journey back home to attend the funeral. I did not expect it to be a large affair, given that many of our family ’ s relationships were abruptly severed during the relocation. The funeral was held in a rather elegant ceremonial hall, but it was the sea of black-clad figures, extending in rows and columns far outside of the building, that remains most firmly entrenched in my mind. We had never seen any of these people before, and I remembered wondering, how did Father have so many friends? In stark contrast to our suits, these mourners were dressed in traditional uniform, and all seemed very eager to pay their respects. It was then that I was forced to challenge my naïve childhood notions of Father and his station in life, and I realized that perhaps he was not the simple man that he projected himself to be. In the years following his death, much speculation has been made into his life by inquisitive journalists who would draw their own conclusions and go on to publish articles that ranged from the merely suggestive to the outrageous, despite anything we said, and to this day I am still no less shocked by these rumors; to me, he was nothing more, nothing less, than our Father. 
 
 Mother ’ s explanation of Father was very simple. He came from a time that was very different from the one that you and I know and understand. He did not live by the same rules that we live by now; to provide for us and ensure our survival, he could not have afforded to. Nowadays, when people dispute my claims to the kind of man Father was or was not, I simply shake my head, for they do not know. 
 

