As my father nears 99 years old...yes...you heard me right…99! I realize I have had an amazing opportunity to watch as he transitions through many different seasons of life. My dad has had a very long life, and a long season with the game of ping pong. The art piece in this blog, Ying Yang Ping Pong, is an homage to him. He is a vet and was stationed in Korea seventy years ago, one of the physicians to the 50,000 prisoners on island of Koje-do. There were many hours during his service where he had to keep his mind distracted from his loneliness and boredom. The game of ping pong was one of his favorite preoccupations, along with chess, painting and writing letters home to his young wife, Lois. Although our family did not always have a ping pong table at our house, dad always seem to find one somewhere as we grew up. Whether it be on a vacation, a neighbor’s house, or in our church’s basement, our dad was always involved in a game of table tennis, showing off the tricks he had learned overseas from hour after hour of play.
The fact that dad is alive and moving at ninety-nine is a miracle in itself. He still has a tricky serve I cannot return, and on the off chance I do, my return is so poor he easily finishes the point by slamming it down my throat (in a nice way). How does he stay so sharp? He practices against a robot, which can simulate different speeds, spins, and rotations better than most of dad’s human opponents. He also plays by the rules, which includes insisting that opponents toss the ball correctly on the serve. Try to serve the ball out of your hand against my dad, well, you are going to lose the point. That is the way it is with my dad and table tennis. Serve big (and correctly) or go home.
Watching him navigate his 90’s has shown me how he uses what is available to him to filter life’s challenges, just like he did when he was in Korea. I’m still filtering myself, zigzagging through choices, learning every day. I never understood as a kid why dad wouldn’t let me win a point or let me win a game. I thought he just couldn’t stand to lose, or that it had something to do with his fierce competitiveness. That may be part of it, but I think it had more to do with the hours and hours he spent playing in Korea, hitting shot after shot to help lift his spirit when he missed my mom too much. But I understand his fighting spirit better now. It is his default when life gets challenging, and when life tests his survival instincts. It is true now and was true when he was stationed in Korea. He was fighting for his life and his country, and wasn’t going to give up any ground, or any point, without taking a few prisoners along the way.
This artwork of mine is a symbol for the game that my dad has played all his life.
If you investigate this piece, your eye begins to jump around to many colored areas, objects, and splashes, but they bump off each other, jumping back and forth at obtuse angles. The ball’s imaginary trajectory, and your eye, zigs and zags across my table tennis composition, and it’s not always firm footing. Yes, the movement dominates the design, but there is no winner or loser, just a funny orange ball trying to find its way back to dad. It’s his shot, then mine. Maybe it’s your shot too. Perhaps in viewing the splashes of color, the abrupt changes of angles, the scrawled characters and cryptic writing, some humor emerges in Ying Yang Ping Pong that offset some funky bounces, those errant shots in life.
There is an actual ping pong ball sitting like a big orange painted dot on the lower half of the piece. Perhaps it is a shot I hit too hard, or maybe it is one of dad’s crafty serves I cannot return. It is part of a rally that is still alive on the table, one to be experienced and enjoyed regardless of the outcome.
Odds are, dad will angle it for a winner.