The Phone Call My Father Made at 6 AM

I thought my father was cancelling a wedding. Years later, I realised he was carrying his daughter’s heartbreak.

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This morning my four-year-old daughter was suddenly in a rush to get to school.

“Hurry up Mom, I really want to play with Alexander in school!” I unplugged the hair straightener and ran downstairs.

“This is the best day of all my life mommy! ”

Twelve years earlier, I had bought that same hair straightener on what I thought was the worst day of my life.

I was 24 and sitting at work in front of my laptop when suddenly tears filled my eyes and I was finding it hard to breathe. The photos and social media posts started to blur out, but imaginary dialogues between people started to ring in my ears out of nowhere at the same time.

It was early days in my career. Like many finance graduates in Ireland, I worked as a junior staff in a professional services firm with many others that are similar ages as me. It was March in Ireland, so it still felt wintery and cold. At 4pm it was already getting very dark. Two colleagues and I were out at a client’s office. And just five minutes before we had come back from a coffee break bitterly joking about the length of the busy audit season.

Until I opened my laptop and confirmed that the man on the other side of the world, who I was marrying in four months had been cheating on me all along. We had met in college and had spent two years apart doing long distance. We were going to start married life together in Ireland in just months’ time.

In a single afternoon, the future I had envisaged had vanished just like that. Life from this point on was suddenly all unknown.

I held back the tears and left the room, closing the door behind me. I realised my hands were trembling. The others followed me out the door with their gaze.

I remember going into the bathroom trying to process this and calm myself down. In the bathroom I stared at my shaking hands. My palms were soaked with sweat, yet I felt incredibly cold. Even the fluorescent lights felt painfully bright.

I returned to the room only to pack up my bag to leave work, making up an excuse.

With my mind as messy as tangled ropes, I took out my phone wondering who to call the moment I left the office. I dialled my home number in China.

As the line connected, it would occur to me that it was already past midnight in China, my parents would already be asleep. I quickly tried to hang up, but it was already too late.

A sleepy voice emerged, “Hello? Small one? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing Dad, don’t worry! I phoned by mistake; go back to bed.” I tried to end the conversation before the emotions poured out all at once.

It must have been obvious from my nasal voice however that something must have been up. Because my dad wasn’t buying it. Or he simply knew through something called parental instinct, which I now understand as a parent myself.

My dad’s voice started to sound more alert, he must have sat up in bed at this stage. “No, something must be up. Tell me.” And it is then I also heard my mom’s voice beside him as well, “Is it Small One? What’s going on?”

Oh great, I’ve woken them both up. And my breath is so heavy that I’m pretty sure they can hear it over the phone.

“Dad, he’s cheating on me. The wedding is off.”

Silence.

“Okay, are you sure?”

“I couldn’t be more sure, Dad. The other girl had messaged me and there are all these photos and he kept apologising. Dad I…”

My mom quickly took over, “Are you okay?” She sounded worried, terrified even, that I may do something stupid.

I remember the cold air I inhaled as I tried to take another deep breath, so cold it felt like the brain freeze from ice cream, except it tasted bitter. “I’m okay Mom, don’t worry. I’ll go home now and sleep it off and deal with it tomorrow.”

“Leave it with me Small One. I’ll call his parents in the morning and let them know the wedding is off.” His voice was steady.

It reminded me of the morning my parents waved me goodbye outside customs at Beijing Airport when I left for Ireland in 2008. The same calm voice from my dad. His hand on my shoulder, “You’ll be fine! We will be fine! You are all grown up now, go and see the world out there.” That gave me the exact same feeling in the moment that he was holding something back so that I didn’t have to.

I reassured my parents I would go home safely, and Dad reassured me all will be okay and I hung up the phone.

True to his word, he called them the next morning. It was just after 6am.

For years I have imagined that conversation. My dad would have been on the treadmill before work. The two men had become friends over the years. They shared meals together, celebrated together, and called each other brothers. Yet that morning, my father wasn’t speaking to a friend. He was speaking to the father of the man who had broken his daughter’s heart.

I once thought he was simply helping to call off a wedding. It wasn’t until I became a parent myself that I began to understand what that phone call must have cost him.

Wandering aimlessly on the main shopping street in Dublin, I ended up in a hair salon like in those cliché romantic comedy movies. I cut my hair short to shoulder length. Years of memories came flashing back as the scissors landed. And together with the hair that fell to the floor, the memories and any possibility of reconciliation were left behind me as I walked out.

I walked back out onto the shopping street with shorter hair and no idea what came next. For the first time in years, there was no plan, no certainty.

Just the long walk home.

Twelve years later, that hair straightener still sits in my bathroom drawer. It has been there for first dates, job interviews, my wedding morning, and now for hurried school mornings with my daughter.

As I unplugged it this morning, listening to my daughter chatter excitedly about seeing Alexander, I realised I no longer think about the man I almost married when I look at it.

Instead, I think about my dad. And I think about the phone call made at six o’clock on a treadmill on the other side of the world. At 24, I thought my dad had simply helped me call off a wedding. It took becoming a parent myself to understand that, long before I found my way again, he had quietly carried part of my heartbreak for me.

And what I thought was the worst day of my life turned out to be the beginning of the life waiting for me all along.