Frank walked around and left a picture for each child, which was a group photo of them for Christmas one year, and he wrote on it, "Will we spend the next Christmas together?"
Love your dad.
After his wife's death, Frank finds the children growing farther and farther away from him, and he embarks on a journey alone to visit his four children, the four little guys who make him proud, painters, conductors, dancers, and successful advertisers.
However, the truth is not what he thinks, the children seem to be living well, but there are many things hidden from him, David was caught selling drugs, and eventually died in prison for overdosing, Rosie did not have a good life, a person with a child, with a series of illusions to reassure the father, Amy and Jeff separated, but to pretend to be very happy, Robert is not the good conductor, he is just a drummer in the symphony orchestra.
When we were children, we rebelled, the secret of growing up was never mentioned to our parents, the diary was hidden in a place that our mother could never find, when my father's big hand fell on his ass, he was stubborn enough not to shed a tear, he hid in his room without saying a word after eating, and encountered any form of nagging just plugged in headphones to turn the volume to the maximum.
We would rather chat with our own fabricated characters than sit down and share something with our parents, and our relationship is more like a confrontation between the two sides of the Cold War, with no one taking a step back and no one further seeking reconciliation.
When we grew up, we no longer lived with our parents, we had our own life, and then we had our own family, we seemed to be very busy, so busy that we didn't even have time to hang up a phone, dealing with the boss, dealing with customers, dealing with endless troubles and situations, so it was natural to remember that place, when you were away, the father might thoughtfully tell the mother that the family seemed to be a little deserted.
No matter how big the problem is, we learn to hide it, and hurriedly saying "everything is fine" is not to let them worry, and it is more like a perfunctory diaphragm.
Maybe parents are more like a city, a city that we pass through but will eventually leave, and we ourselves are more like a tree, a moving tree, although it has roots, it can't stop.
We would pass through many of these cities, and we would just tell others where we were coming from, where we were going next, and then we were in a hurry.
Until we are old, back in the city, suddenly found that many years ago it had been abandoned, the weeds were overgrown, the buildings were collapsed, and the traces and secrets you had left behind were taken away with time.
People always spend very little time forgetting the memories of the past, but they turn around and spend many years or even a lifetime painstakingly retrieving these memories.
You've seen a lot of landscapes and encountered a lot of other trees, but none of them can accompany you throughout your life, even the one you remember.
Many times I feel that I don't know what we are all looking for, just running with the flow of people, living in a big house, driving a luxury car, and having a better life than others, it seems that only in this way will I feel happy and safe.
The speed of this society is getting faster and faster, and there is nothing wrong with pursuing a better material life, except that if one day my father suddenly came to the city where I lived and appeared in front of me and said that he was going to surprise me, and when he asked me, "Are you happy?", I would not be able to stop crying.
For a father, a painter's son and a painter's son are no different, although he once told you, don't be a painter, you have to be an artist.