How a Quilt Covers a Mountain
/Olivia Wang
There is an old Chinese saying that “A father's love is as mighty as a mountain, and a daughter
is a little warm quilt to warm her father’s heart.”
A father’s foundation is not one of waterfalls and roaring rivers. A father’s foundation is
immovable, inaccessible and imposing. He holds up the sky and fears nothing, standing upright
and unyielding. We do not question the mountain’s presence or ask the “why” of it all.
But how does a quilt cover a mountain?
When the mountain disapproves, he threatens to withdraw his shadow, leaving us exposed to
the glaring sun. His silence crumbles into landslides if we do not obey.
But all we see is the sky he is holding and the ground he steadies for us. Or else, he says, it is
inevitable that when we leave the mountain, we will find no ground to stand on and a sky that
could fall; no one to teach us and no one who cares.
I ask my father, why he does this for us if he does not want to?
Most would say this is my first mistake. I say it is my first excavation.
The mountain looks at me and sees me clearly for the first time. I look at him too, my gaze
uncontrollably shifting, trying to focus on his. I see my own reflection in the weathered stone of
his eyes- tiny, foolish, now waiting for the sky to crash down.
But the crash does not come. My words are a dull knife, and for eternity, they seem to have no
effect at all. But then, I see the first fissure: a slight slump in the shoulder that was holding up
the sky. The furrow between his brows twitches, easing.
My words have shredded the skin of the mountain and revealed the man.
“I-” He steps out of the mountain- his voice for once stripped of its majestic echo. He
pauses. “-do not know,” he admits.
And for the first time, the man is small enough to be covered by the quilt.
Author's Note: From family dinners to Chinese exercise books to funerals, the phrase “父爱如山” ("A father's love is a mountain") appeared throughout my childhood, always paired with “母爱似水” ("A mother's love is like water")—the mother's worry and criticism (affection) flowing endlessly like water, the father's silence and stoic bearing like a mountain. But why must a father "bear the weight"?
Olivia Wang is a Chinese American writer and daughter living in Nanjing, China, where she moved from Kentucky when she was four.
