E·N·Q·U·I·R·Y
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
My father, the husband
Sunday, 06 15, 2008
Five years ago today, I wrote an article about him, simply titled: “Emerson,” purposely for Father’s Day. For all its poignancy, the short piece kept my cellphone ringing on the day it came out in this space. One friend even called to say: “That was a moving one about your father; by the way, did you invent him?” No way, Reggie Pastrana — that was my father in flesh, blood and spirit. I have to confess, though, that in the article, I was once again the boy remembering the father who gave him instruction and guidance in coping with the problems that the world beyond the confines of rural San Nicolas had in store for him.
My mother was already suffering from macular degeneration at that time, so the article had to be read to her by my sister Evelyn. The article ended thus: “When he died, he was brought to the municipio, where most everyone extolled him for his virtues and some for all his all-too-human frailties. But nobody said it all (better) than his brother-in-law Santing, a general in the Army and who fought alongside him during the war, who said in his eulogy: “Nalaing ni Eming nga ama. Nasayaat ti pamilya na. Napintas ti nagbanagan daguiti amin nga annakna.” (Eming was a good family man. All his children have turned out successful and accomplished). To which my mother wistfully commented: “Nabiag tayo nga nasayaat gapu ti kinalaing ni Eming nga asawa ken ama.” (We lived well as a family because of that. Eming was both a good husband and a good father.)
Today, in the commercialized flush of the celebration called Father’s Day, most of us tend to overlook the fact that fathers are husbands too.
’Tis been said more that once in various times and climes that it is much easier to become a father than to be one. So it must have struck a joyous chord in my mother’s heart every time she realized that here was a man who was both a husband to her and a father to their children. Emerson was Father the Nurturer rather than just Father the Provider. It took a lot of balancing for Emerson to make his children happy but never at the expense of his wife Concepcion.
My mother tried very hard to protect me from “the world out there” that she even encouraged me to take up priesthood, as if the calling guaranteed that I would be safe from the slings and arrows of existence. My father, on the other hand, did his damnedest best to intimidate and threaten me with the world — and did his damnedest best to teach me how to face and survive it.
Thus, whenever my father hauled me and my brothers Stanley and Dondi off to the foothills of the Cordilleras — of course without our mother — it must have secretly pleased my mother no end to see that her husband was teaching us the age-old practical skills of survival, as well as initiating us to the mystique of young manhood and lessons in the school of hard knocks where we learned how to sling as well as dodge the life blows that came our way.
Emerson, my father, was a disciplinarian of the old school. When use of the rod was still not frowned on, before Bantay Bata made it illegal, my father knew fully well when not to use it, and only wielded it whenever extremely necessary. His wife, my mother, used to wince — and vicariously suffer with us — at those rare moments when my father felt he should not spare the rod. But she endured them, for she knew that was part of the disciplining process, and that her husband, our father, just had to do it, so she herself could have disciplined sons. (In this case, I guess my father was a patriarch inside a matriarchy, only he never knew it.)
There had been no competition at all between my mother and us children in the affections of our father. There was even no conscious effort by my father to balance interests. He always considered his role as father complementary to his role as a husband, and vice versa. Thus when Concepcion was happy, she was happy as a wife as well as a mother.
It has been 27 years since my father died. Looking back to those years in San Nicolas, where he was a mechanic, locksmith, music and art dilettante, farmer, husband and father all rolled into one, I cannot help but marvel at the way he succeeded in bringing up eight children, professionals all, who in their turn gave him 26 grandchildren and six great grandchildren, and growing. O, were he around today!
I have had two daughters (Kathryn and Kristin) and two sons (Kenneth and Kevin) myself since then, and a granddaughter (Kaitlyn) to boot, courtesy of Greal who is himself getting to be a very good father while being the good husband to my daughter Kathryn. I and Malu, my wife and their mother, are indeed proud of what they have turned out to be.
Today I echo Nietzche, who for all his skepticism once managed to say: “Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.” Or invent one.
Happy Father’s Day to everyone, including those gallant men who stick to their women (legitimate or otherwise; all right, Dan Pinto?) and sired children to gain bragging rights to the title “father.”
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