My father and I have a unique bond. It cannot be severed by distance; it lingers even when I’m quite an adult myself.
You see, it was my father who took care of me when I was a baby. My mother breastfed me, and I’m also close to my mother but it was my father who lulled me to sleep, watched me while I was sleeping, then accompanied and fetched me from school afterwards when I was attending primary school. That’s until I entered grade IV.
Basically, he was my primary caregiver. He lost his job even before they had me (vehicular accident caused his hearing loss so he cannot work further as a seaman). He was the housebound, I mean house husband.
After high school, I was supposed to study in UP Diliman, to take up Journalism. My father objected of it. He didn’t want me to go far. So I enrolled in the closest UP campus instead, which is in Davao City. Taking up Computer Science is not easy especially is you’re not naturally adept with mathematics and abstract reasoning, so it was quite a struggle in the beginning. I cross enrolled for one summer in UP Los Baños to see if I can handle if I transferred there. But barely two weeks in Laguna, I was already very homesick and I wanted to go home right away. My mother insisted that I stay on, but I begged off. I wouldn’t want to live that lonely. I wanted to go home because of my father. He seems so lonely without me at home.
I guess I am quite speculating here. My father never said so. He’s like most men I think. He’s not very expressive. But when I arrive home early from school (that’s 50 km away from where we live and 2 hours travel time), he doesn’t drink much wine. But if I sleep over somewhere or arrive home late, especially if he’s nursing an angst against my mother, he drinks till he’s drunk. Bad thing about it is: drunkenness and bad temper don’t mix well. If he’s drunk, he throws violent tantrums, we sometimes think he’s a monster. But I’m not writing this to discredit my father, in fairness, he’s quite a good man. He still gives me money even if I have work myself. He didn’t object anybody who courted me in the past. He received them quite nicely at home. He’s doing his laundry by himself and he can be sent to do errands anytime of the day except beyond 6 pm.
I think, no father is perfect. Each one has a flaw. But since they are fathers we have high expectations of their behavior. We think they should behave at all times, they shouldn’t make mistakes. But, we also get prodigal at times, sometimes we choose to disobey but they still love us anyway. They are also human, limited, unreasonable sometimes, everything that we are yet a little different.
What I am trying to say really is, let’s love them just as they are!
All comments are moderated. Your comments will not appear here unless approved by the blog owner. Thank you.
