My father was an enigma to me. He was like a stranger and a friend at the same time. When he meant business, acting as a responsible parent, he was like an authority of formidable and unbreakable power that it made me having a hard time penetrating the invisible walls he unknowingly built around him. His serious face, cold and inquisitive stare, firm voice, honest criticisms, and unwavering self-confidence often made my justifications futile and irrelevant. I hated him silently during those moments. It made the rebel in me plan for a coup d'tat which was never executed at all. My mutiny was unspoken.
My father was a strict disciplinarian. Maybe because he was a former teacher. Maybe because he was a soldier. Or simply maybe because it was innate in him to act properly according to the rules. He was a fan of Proverbs 13:24, so he didn't spare us the rod if the blunders we did call for it. But this belief of his didn't made me detest him to be honest. It was his way of making me feel guilty through his tactful words, very solemn and almost holy to the ears, that made me hate and love him at the same time. Inside my heart, those honest words he spilled during times he were mad felt like a white liquid suddenly boiled and exploded my young spirit to deflation.
The intensity of hatred I felt for my father was also as strong as the love I felt for him. I think these two often accompanies each other especially if the person whom you spend your affection and respect with is a person so complex, mysterious, incomprehensible and impenetrable. Unlike my mother who is so vocal with all her emotions and sentiments, my dad on the other hand was a quite man. He was for me a man whose personality was defined by the accuracy of his actions. He wasn't impulsive and I think, he always tried to be a gentleman in all his ways. That was the difficulty I encountered when I was still a kid. I couldn't read his mind with just his actions. Maybe my young mind was still feeble to possess such skill during that time. Calculating his every action was like deciphering hieroglyphics in my bedroom's wall. And that was what made him seem so distant from me, his being so contained and unpredictable.
Yet, there were also times when his coldness vanished and temporarily replaced by the fire of congeniality. Maybe those were the times when his paternal affection was overflowing and too consuming that it temporarily shattered the walls he built. These were the times when he would carefully combed my hair like that of Jose Rizal's style, filed my nails, created toy cars and kites out of indigenous materials for us my brothers to play on, sang for us while I and my brothers had our afternoon nap, cooked our favorite bukayo and fried banana, and patiently taught me my lessons in Mathematics and English. Those were the moments when it felt like he was the long lost friend I lost. The fragile man trapped inside his box of stone.
If there was one trait I really admired my father for, it was his ardent and undying devotion to my mother. His love for her was like a diamond polished by the friction of time. He adored her like a goddess and considered her as his bestfriend, his soul-mate. I think my mom was the only living soul in this planet whom he could honestly connect with. The woman whom he could bare his entire soul. Which really amused me thinking that they were very opposite from each other. My mom is a clanging bell, my father was a silent river. Yet they complimented each other.
Aside from the trait I mentioned above, I also admired my father for his unbending principles and his voracious appetite for knowledge. I think I got my love for reading from my father because every time I watch him reading whether a book or a newspaper, so absorbed and disconnected, he was like an ethereal creature. Flawed yet beautiful.
When I reached my 13th birthday, my father died. The event was too painful for me for a lot of reasons. First, I was too young to be the new head of the family. I was scared of the responsibilities waiting ahead. Second, the absence of my father was like being left in the open to be ravished by wolves. Naked, cold, and helpless. And most of all, there would be no more future opportunities of knowing him, of knowing the man whose past I supposed was lonely and sad. The man hardened by the tests of life. I always thought that I detested my father in the past simply because he was just indifferent and emotionless. But now that I am already reaching my thirty, I started to realize that I hated him way back because I am just like him. I desperately wanted to be like him. Now, I just smile whenever the old folks of my father's kindred say to me, "You are just like your father." I don't know why but those words really give me comfort.
To Romeo, may you continue to watch over us wherever you are. We miss you. Happy Fathers' Day Tatay.
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