*Recalling Robertisms
One of my favorite pieces. I hope you like it too even if it is a tad revealing.
Fatherless Days
June 13, 2000
It's that time of year when they say we ought to be remembering our fathers. I remember my father this way ---
He was not home. I grew up with a distant father figure. Distant in a literal sense since he was Manila-based and I was in Daraga, Albay. Distant in a figurative sense since in his absence, my heart did not grow any fonder.
He was the enemy. When I was a kid and whenever he joined us for a few days in Daraga, I remember him urging me to take a bath and he would rub me raw with that stone from the river because he believed I was so covered in grime. When I got home after dark after whiling away my after-school hours at the komiks stand where I borrow the magazines for a fee, I would get a scolding about not being at home with the family as soon as the sun sets. I once saw him hit (manhandle would be an apt word) our black sheep of a brother like crazy for a reason so unclear to me till this day. And he nearly punched me one time when in a fit, I shouted back at him. In his eyes, I may have been on the honor roll at school but I was undependable at home, or in the more practical things in life.
He caused my mother's death. I remember crying a river, with my arms draped over my mother's coffin, because I blamed him for my mother's death. Because I thought my mother was so heart-broken when she found out my father had another woman, in my mind, it was the reason that she lost her will to live.
He was a poor businessman. We derived our living from selling and trading vegetables. My father would procure those exotic-looking (at least to a town such as ours whose claim to fame is the world's most perfect cone-shaped volcano, Mt. Mayon) vegetables and fruits from Divisoria (cabbages, cauliflowers, carrots --- actually grown in La Trinidad, Benguet and in Nueva Vizcaya) and ship them by train to Daraga and my mother would sell them to her customers who flocked to our supermarket (well, I thought that was what we had) from all corners of Bicol, from the islands of Catanduanes and Masbate to the mountains of Sorsogon. If Manila is hit by typhoons and flooding and vegetables and fruits would be scarce, it was my mother's turn to send all the pechay, the mustasa and the kamatis she could lay her hands on from the farmers of Sto. Domingo, Arimbay and Bigaa. There were even times when she would offer these farmers to plant seeds she will provide and she gets the first crack at the produce soon after. Business was good but every profit just went to everyday expenses and back to the trade. There was no sense of investment so that when the business went kaput, he and my mother were left holding an empty bag.
He was sickly. My mother used to tell us stories of how, during her early marriage to my father, she was practically the breadwinner on top of being the homemaker. My father was the bunso and though from a poor family, had been a pampered kid. He was also sickly that my mother had to be the one to earn the money for the growing family. He obviously recovered because he fathered nine children and started to be the bohemian that I saw him to be. But in later years after my mother died, his health once again deteriorated.
He also cries. I felt there was no love lost between us. Looking back, I had so much bitterness in my heart that I never realized I had. I even vowed to myself not to cry when he dies. I was deaf to my siblings' entreaties to see him as a father if I could not love him as a person. From Riyadh, I would send cards on his birthday and on Fathers' Day but I would simply sign my name and let Hallmark do the talking. Then it came time for me to be asked to shoulder his medical bills. Surprisingly, I was happy to. I thought it was an opportunity to help and share whatever blessings I have been getting. My sisters would tell me how thankful my father was to me every chance he can say it. And one time when I was home with him during a break from work in Riyadh, he actually told me that he indeed had been thankful. And he recalled how he too was there for his own father when the latter had been sick. He felt that through me, he was being repaid by heaven. He was holding back his tears and I had to turn my face away from him so he would not see my own, fall.
From then on, I remember realizing that finally, I have become his son.
PS. My father died in his sleep on May 28, 1999. He was 74.
