(or suggest a better title???)
His body moves across the house; wakes up, bathes, prepares for office, leaves for office and goes back just in time for the news or much later if he’s busy with office work. He is very much alive but he is just as lifeless as the pieces of furniture in the house. Lifeless and harmless.
I could not quite recall exactly when it happened but I suppose the dying began in 2003, the year the family started rehabilitating the old lot across the river. Or maybe it was even way before that. Perhaps he began dying when I was still a child.
My father is the youngest child amongst the brood of three, raised without a father by her aunt and a mother whom we believed to have been bipolar. When I was young my grandmother, his aunt, who I will call here Grandma A, tells us the recited ABC at age 2. Grandma A said that by age 3, my father already knew how to read. He read practically every printed material his eyes would lay on. Amazing, isn’t it, but wait, there is more. Grandma A also claims my father learned how to write his name by that age. When I remember this, I look at my son with pity. He could barely sing beyond “F” and could not even make a decent circle. He also could not recognize his name when I write it for him and he’s almost 4!
It would have remained an amazing tale had Grandma A’s not told every one I learned to sell pan de sal at age 3. I didn’t learn to count at my toddler years. I was actually already in grade 1 when the pan de sal selling adventure happened.
One of Grandma A’s favorite anecdotes about my father is when he defended his choice to be an engineer versus being a lawyer.
“An engineer?” says Grandma A. “Don’t you want to be like Mr.X? Well-respected, classy with a lot of money?”
“A lawyer lives by betraying the truth. They trick you into believing the wrong is right. I don’t want to live my life deceiving people.”
But my father could have made a good lawyer because he loves to preach. He practically steals the show in every the drinking circle in fiestas, baptisms, weddings, funerals, and during cocktails. During the family’s dinner time, the kabisera serves as his podium, and criticizing us is his favorite topic.
With his air of pure intellect and arrogance that leaves you flabbergasted, if not envious, little did I know that there was also pure honesty in him. At drinking circles, he would often proudly announce that he doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke but has one certain vice: lying. He is the only person I know who admitted to lying, not as an act, but as a vice. If don’t call that honesty, I don’t know what is.
I only knew he lived by his virtue of lying when we started developing the lot across the river. Although we had a handful of real properties, we barely earned from them. “The lot”, my mother said, “is going to be they’re biggest investment of all. Your father has a lot of plans for this lot, He will have his organic garden here, the rest will be for sugarcane, We will also build a small stone house for our post-retirement there. You can have the house at the Poblacion because your father and I will be happy to stay here.”
To realize that, mother had to go through a lot of borrowing and loans. She obtained money form all sources possible. Money flowed into their hands, money which my parents, especially my father, didn’t know how to manage in the first place.
One weekend, they asked come to the farm with them. He walked to the middle of the peanut field, right arm gently swinging the bolo. He slowly turned to us and gestured with his hands.
“This is where the mill would stand. We transfer this nipa hut there to make room for mill expansion. Here we will plant corn and sweet potatoes. I will also plant bananas and some other things so we won’t have to buy anymore. You can eat as many bananas as you want.”
He kept gesturing on the air, like a haughty architect talking to a bunch of naïve clients.
I was hopeful of the project but was not aware of the huge investments and loans that my mother has acquired under his wishes. In fact, I know very little of his relationship with my mother, except that to me, he is an ideal father, especially since we both did not believe in religion. But there are drawbacks. A radical father more often than not also does not believe in responsibility and family. With the money coming in, my father spent in all in upgrading himself. He bought the latest model mobile phones and stopped frequenting bargain buys. He would also often window shop to see what more he could buy with the money he thought he had. This self-upgrade came easily because he worked in the City, 113 kms away from the provincial home and the lot being developed. Meanwhile, coming home during weekends, he would fight with my mother for every erroneous installation or execution of the works for the lot across the river. He also spent his time playing PC games and relished in his seemingly newfound status. One time, during supper, I asked him for his plans for our youngest sibling, the only boy in the brood of 5, who would be entering high school. He answered as if irritated: “You are old enough to know where to put your brother.” Oh, now so it’s my fault I have to consult him where to enroll my brother. Maybe I should also start saving up for my brother’s education?
Patient as we were, we took all these little things aside. We were a very independent group, after all. It’s also another drawback of a radical father, he twists the truth, drowns you in details and before you knew it, it’s already too late; you have already become the villain.
When the news of his cheating became apparent he virtually stopped talking to us. He took his meals in silence. He restrained his hands and his haughtiness. He withdrew from the family and from his children. He became the sissy little dog beaten crouched at the corner. When I told Grandma A I want him to leave the house and excommunicate himself form the family, she admonished me for not treating my father with enough respect. How could this anti-catholic, pro-contraceptive, pro-divorce, anti-war, 93 year-old annulled matriarch scold me now for upholding women’s rights? You shrewd father. You beat me to her.
My parents did not separate upon the strong advice of Grandma A. They were able to put up the mill in the lot across the river and had a very successful first year of operation. As the business progressed his relationship with my mother turned the other way around. She got crazier and more paranoid each time, as one cheating was followed by another then another. To be fair, the allegations were not very conclusive. All that I knew was, coming from my mother, that the last cheating episode was about some endearing SMS. My mother found the SMS send by my father to some bimbo in his phonebook. I will be very fair here and say that I didn’t like the part about the endearing SMS. That is really tasteless, considering he wants to be labeled “radical, intellectual, progressive-thinking”. Sometimes it makes me think that my father could be a candidate for rehab, similar to what Tiger Woods had. Maybe he is just sick. On the other hand, I believe that my mother should start getting a life. If my father doesn’t want her anymore, she should stop shoving herself to him.
In 2006, I started a new life without a father. Yes, he continues to live with me. In fact when I officially moved out of my mother’s house, my mother made a great deal of talking me into letting my father stay with us. With a lot of grace and patience, I was able to reduce my father’s existence to a mere shadow, and stole the kabisera from him. I am a vicious daughter, they say. Awful as it may seem, I loved that new title of mine. Better vicious than meek; women would have not reached their present status if not for vicious ones like me.
In the 7 years that went by, the mill in the lot across the river has seen progress, but not without headaches. Each and every beginning and ending of the milling season my father and my mother would fight. Each and every milling season resulted in a relationship with a tenant or two going sour. I slowly withdrew from the responsibilities and direct involvement with the mill. I went there for happier times, and in July of 2008 to survey the devastation of typhoon Frank. It has been a roller coaster and I don’t see any signs that it will stop being that way. After all my father, as he would often say, loves the idea of a challenge. Similarly, my mother, no matter how we advise her not to, always finds ways to create a big mess out of something; always courting disaster.
i think their problems make them feel alive. I think my father's alleged cheating, and the fact that he has stirred the family beyond his expectation, affirms his existence, not only to use but more so to himself.
