By NICCOLO DELOS REYES
I only have few fond memories of my adolescence with you: no driving lessons, no light-night drinking binges, no serious discussions about girls and sex and everything I believed I should have learned from you, at least according to the movies. Your presence, I have come to accept, was dependent on a host of factors we had no hold on.
You used to work as a cook for European cargo vessels. And then, in my second year in college, you got tired of jumping from one ship to another, so you tried your luck here. Rummaging through old cabinets a week ago, I found brown envelopes, each one with a hastily scribbled date and a specified amount in pesos, the same envelopes you had faithfully surrendered to Ma every week. I look at you now, and I remember better days.
*
Once, while watching late-night news, you winced at a story of an adolescent boy who killed himself, leaving behind a letter that stated he was gay, and he was afraid that his father would kill him, so he made things easier by committing suicide. You said, somewhat too loudly, that you would rather have your son tell you to your face that he was gay instead of wasting his life worrying you would resent him and kill him. In my mind I heaved a sigh of relief.
If I had been younger, then, perhaps you would have told me I was spending too much time with my sister playing Chinese garters or hand games, instead of playing tag or basketball with my brothers. Funny how, given your ever-unstable temper, you never mustered the courage to ask me if I was gay.
Or perhaps the problem was with me. Perhaps after all these years, in spite and precisely because of everything that has happened between now and that night you made a subtle wish for me to be honest with you so I wouldn’t have to kill myself, I never really believed you, never trusted you. Perhaps I’m scared that you would blame yourself, that the years you were traveling across seas robbed me of years of fatherly guidance. I would never blame you for this; this is not something we ought to regret.
*
You used to walk me every morning to a Catholic school run by Carmelite nuns. The distance from our house to my school normally took two jeepney rides; walking, however, was cheaper. You lost your job that time, and Ma was selling cookies in government offices just so we could survive. Besides, as you used to say, walking was good for our health.
We would pass by big, beautiful houses, with wide lawns, tiled roofs, and iron fences. Once in a while you would stop in front of one of them and study its details: the intricate patterns on steel gates, bells with unfamiliar inscriptions hanging by the doors, pointed roofs with woodwork that curl at the corners. For minutes you would just stare at the house, while I busied myself watching makahiya leaves fold at my slightest touch, picking their lavender blossoms and storing them in my oversized backpack.
Those weren’t happy days, I realize now. I missed the field trip to Enchanted Kingdom because you said P350 was just too much. A few times I was summoned by the school principal, who was also a nun, to censure me for refusing to attend the high school entrance exam review, which cost P500. Every day I dreaded the thought of transferring to another school and leaving my friends because we still couldn’t afford my tuition even on a partial scholarship.
I never blamed you; you did what you could. There were times, however, that I wished things were better. Then I’d imagine you trudging kilometers of the asphalt road under the scorching sun, always in a hurry so I wouldn’t worry and wait for too long, and I would feel petty. ●
Published in print in the Collegian’s June 19, 2008 issue, with the headline “Fragments.” The piece has been edited for clarity.
