Father's Day 2023!
Spoiler alert: Gory details ahead! No use crying over split milk though.
This Sunday, June 18, we celebrate Father’s Day. I don’t know why or why we even have to. We never did prior to when it gradually and then all at once became a fad in the Philippines. So when did that take place? Well, whenever it came to existence, it certainly was not during my father's time growing up in Naga. And if you ask me, I don’t believe in it either.
Without talking about it, I have always looked up to him and yeah, probably loved him too. I’m sure I did! He was after all, the only father I ever knew and although he was far from perfect, he was and is my only role model in life. Where did I run off to when I was having trouble adjusting to my new life in UP college? Why, my favorite “happy place” in childhood, Naga of course! Without the needed support of my real siblings who were all studying at that time and focused on their own lives (and I don’t recall a time when they were really supportive), Naga was where all my cousins were. A broken family in itself talking in a language I didn’t understand (sometimes in angry, fighting tones) but ironically that’s where I felt some kind of “home”.
I could stop right here talking about a time that shouldn’t have happened (because it halted my life in so many ways like “I should’a been a contender” kind-of-thing) but since it already happened and is part of my history now, I will go on. I have to. Otherwise, what’s the point of him or even me for that matter?
Running off to Naga and abruptly cutting off my ties with my so-called college buddies wasn’t as easy as it sounds. Technically, it was. I just had to go to the bus terminal in Pasay one regular school day and book myself for an 8-hour night ride from Manila to Naga, scary as it was. Once there, I thought I would have a warm fuzzy relationship with my Lola Naga, daddy’s beloved mother who was a Principal at a University together with Lolo Ruperto who was also a teacher, I don’t know where. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. As it turns out, Lola was as strict and stoic as can be and not the lovey-dovey old grandma devoted to her grandkids and she had quite a few of them, my cousins in fact who lived next door. There were two houses in Jacob Street divided by a “molino” or rice mill in the center and joined by a pigsty at the back. Lola Naga was the central supplier of rice to the people of Naga City and even to the Japanese soldiers in WWII who provided them their food supply. While growing up, daddy said they also had a kalesa/karitela business because it was the popular mode of transport pre-war and she took care of these probably emaciated horses as well, I’m surmising. I love love telling the story of how she easily handled the “needy” Japanese soldiers and wasn’t at all scared of them “gooks”! There's a zero horror story of the Japs with her. Really! To me, she was the original “indomitable gaul” and although this could have been my best memory of her, I also remember slamming the heavy door (in their house) at her back because I thought she was so uncaring and insensitive towards her own grandkids who just lived next door! Hell, she even hit poor Lolo (countless times when he was probably flirting with other female school staff) with an umbrella when she wanted to be disciplinarian, according to cousin Aldo! Anyway, she was visibly shaken but did not report this to anyone, just as if I slammed the door to daddy here in Sanville, he didn’t tell it to anybody…my bad behaviour, ie.
While in Naga, I was able to explore the place on foot which I couldn’t do here in crowded, polluted, cosmopolitan Manila. And since moving from our residence in Apo where you can easily ride the jeepney to go places, to our new residence here in Sanville (since first year Highschool) where you’ll need a car to get by and where I started to feel so isolated in life; Naga was literally and figuratively a welcoming breath of fresh air. Sometimes I wish I was still there for the fresh air alone and my unanticipated freedom. I could have built a life in the province. I could have worked as a freelance artist even painting movie billboards which did not pay much (and not a prime job either) but was challenging for me given my Fine Arts course in UP and simply took care of my cousins’ kids which felt like a fun adventure in babysitting. Who knows what kind of "free person" I could have been over there once I made a decisive turnaround from my regular life in Manila?
All this could have taken place if daddy hadn’t stepped in and urged me to go back home to Manila and bring Aldo’s baby with me who I was taking care of and who has a slight case of cerebral palsy and who was abandoned by his own mother. He felt this was the best scenario for everybody. Me being home with him and mommy plus a child I started taking care of and probably needed “urbanised” care that his own father Aldo couldn’t provide him. Yah!
Daddy was overprotective of his kids, probably me more than anybody else. Up to when I was already an adult, I was the only one who wasn’t spanked. All my other siblings got a whupping from him and since he never laid a hand on me, I always felt I was special, like I was the favorite, which I probably was; until I actually turned against him. Before I jumped off the roof one fateful day in 1996 when I was in the middle of going AWOL from work to taking anti-depressants to being absolutely friendless to having focal dystonia on the R shoulder which was really annoying to being a general “bad company” to everybody in my radius (which was mostly my own family), we physically wrestled each other in the sala or living room. He was a strong person even in old age and he twisted my arm towards my back but I was able to push him quite hard, he hit the door gate and fell to the floor and I felt a little triumphant in that brief physical altercation at least.
Things weren’t the same after that. Even if he was the only one who cried when he saw me on the backyard grounds unconscious because I don’t really know what was going on with mommy at that time (who probably felt she was in deeper trouble than me and never cried), we never looked at each other the same way. You can even say we planted a seed of “hate” for each other.
At this point of my blog, you may be wondering what led to this full-blown animosity between us. After all, I was his youngest girl and favorite one and he was my daddy! Mommy always said “your daddy loves you very much”. Although this could very well be truth, it's a little difficult to believe that on lip service alone. I guess you could say that our distant relationship happened over the course of accumulated minor missed opportunities of no intimate communication with each other. We never talked like how normal families would. By normal, I mean…*I’m not even sure how that would go*. I only know there came a point I didn't want to eat family meals with them anymore because of how they dominated (esp mommy and daddy) the conversation and no one not in a heightened voice would be able to interrupt their never-ending conversation about work, the news, their pals and who knows and who cares what else! My personal needs in life were relegated as topic for the sideline. Now as I look back, it was "burnout" for me. I simply couldn't communicate with my family in fortissimo mode all the time. I badly needed a break from all of them. It was a different set of family quirkiness in Naga but it was nonetheless a welcome break. Ninang Gilda once told me it was in my parents' generation esp daddy's that they had this "macho, tough guy" attitude in life where they did not acknowledge their weakness, only their forte.
Daddy was a proud member or even head of the Sigma Rho Fraternity in UP, President of the UP Wrestling Club, a Bodybuilder, a UP Law Class of '52 graduate, a Judge for The (Special) Court of Tax Appeals, a Guerilla for the US Army (not sure how that goes now), a supposed Valedictorian in High School in Naga...if it weren't for his bad conduct. A-ha! So he really did have a streak of "outrage" in him! And when WWII took place and the Japs killed his favorite eldest brother Jaime (also a bodybuilder, co-owner of a gym with daddy in Manila and a Lieutenant for the US Army), that's where he all but lost his faith in humanity and bolstered his hatred towards the Japanese and Americans alike. It wasn't only Ninang Gilda who interviewed him after all. I tried too...once, and that was all I could muster because it's really difficult talking to him. Mommy once said" You're depressed? Your daddy is the original depressed!" A-ha again! My assessment of him being a difficult person was not unfounded after all.
But what can I say? He was an incessant talker and most of the time, aside from having a thick Bicol accent, he told funny tales. His classmates loved him because not only was he at least seven years older than most of them (because War interrupted his schooling) and was probably wiser, he was the class comic but not without gaining enemies along the way. But let's focus on his friends. As I have blogged previously, he developed a life-long alliance with his company lawyers. He was close to them and also protective and that's what we all admired in him as a family. Although generally speaking, he was a closed person, only choosing to deal with his nuclear family, not even communicative to his own siblings; in some facet of his character (and boy, was he a character!) he was the life of the party!
So how do I end this? I'll end this by saying I chose to be with my parents to the very end. I could have been somewhere else making a name and even money for myself because I had so much potential but I chose to stay. I felt I wasn't emotionally-armed to face the world! Talent alone won't get you anywhere if you're not internally sound and confident with yourself! It might not have been a joyride but we stuck together for better or worse. I may not have been beside daddy when he expelled his last breath in the hospital ICU attached to so many machines (which I knew he was terrified of and tried to avoid), but I was actually beside him in his own bedroom during his final week before dying. Although it was me who prompted and accompanied him to the Veteran's Hospital to collect his pension from Obama and his pension from the Court of Tax Appeals shot up by a whopping 60% in his last 3 months (driver Ely knows how much exactly), he never gave me the 1 Million Pesos I asked from him that I wanted to invest in the bank for myself. When I was younger, he used to joke, "We're rich! We're rich!" and so I believed him. Later in life, he was stingy after all, stingier than the Ilocano he married. But he had a hand in how my roof studio's roof should look like and that was it! It was a power struggle, a battle of wills between the two of us. Since I was acting mostly disrespectful when I was older constantly looking for a bit of compassion in him (which would be tantamount to a miracle), he resented my tone and probably wanted me to be more "malambing" or soft before he actually gave me any more favors in life. I just couldn't!
So goodbye daddy and goodnight! You were my one and only father and I was your once and only favorite girl...and despite all that backdrop, we still hated each other. Until now, that is. Happy Father's Day today! I'm not one to judge you and vice-versa but just like you, I'll keep soldiering on!
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