ENQUIRY
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
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Honor thy father
Sunday, 06 21, 2009
Sunday, 06 21, 2009
He should be a vigorous 93-year-old by now, but God had other plans for him as soon as he turned 67. And what he left was a progeny of eight children, all of whom went way ahead of him in terms of educational and social achievement. But that is going abruptly too far in the story of Emerson.
When he was a young man, poverty stopped him one year short of finishing high school. But he realized that whatever goals he could not accomplish through refining his hungry mind, he could accomplish by getting his hands dirty through a vocational course in auto-mechanics. When he put up the first vehicle repair shop in San Nicolas, there was not one single vehicle south of Laoag that did not pass through his hands. Every vehicle owner swore by his ability to coax a dead car back to life. He was also a locksmith. There was not one stubborn lockset whose tumblers he could not unlock. Some even joked that had he wanted to, he would have made a fortune being a successful break-in man.
The same pair of grease-stained, calloused hands that clawed at the innards of vehicles was equally adept at turning rough blocks of wood into intricate pieces of art, now treasured by many who were the objects of his generosity. He never sold any of his woodcarvings, which he fashioned with tools he made from scraps of metal and bits of spokes of discarded umbrellas that lay around his shop.
It seemed there was nothing he could not do with his hands, whether it be eking out a living or celebrating the joys of being alive. He could play the harmonica, hammer out a rhythm on the marimba, tickle the ivory keys of the piano, play a soulful riff on the saxophone. He sang a lot, danced like a dream, and was never known to refuse the obligatory drink passed around on certain manly occasions.
He was some sort of a hometown hero. He once braved the raging floodwaters in San Nicolas in 1953, and saved a family who had been marooned in the middle of what could have proved a watery, agonizing death.
And because he loved to get his hands dirty in honest labor, he found time to till the land his father had bequeathed to him. He operated a cono, which everyone patronized. One of his customers was a pretty 21-year-old lady who was to become his wife.
His lack of higher education notwithstanding, he read a lot and acquired a lot of books. His library, augmented by the collection of his father who was a superintendent of schools in Northern Luzon, was always a rich source of information and knowledge for his kailians.
During the war, he survived the horrors of the Death March, and endured the tortures of incarceration at Capas. He had been given up for dead, having been sick of malaria and dysentery, ready to be thrown into the pit of the dead and the dying, when he was recognized through his dog tag by a relative, who then nursed him back to good health. He recuperated, and thereby hung a tale of indefatigable machismo: Who would ever think that with the Death March and Capas having already sucked out of the vitality of his being, he could, within 11 years after the liberation, still manage to beget three more daughters, and three sons.
The war left some permanent scars on his psyche. Three of his brothers in the Army were killed by the Japanese; his sister and his mother were liquidated by the collaborators. On many a time, he would pause to tell his children of the inhumanity of war. But personal tragedies could not deaden the exuberance of the man.
In the kitchen, he was a good cook, specially when it came to adobo of the canine kind. And everyone loved his isaw, that anyone who ate it would forget that it came from an “uncivilized” pig. Even the wild banyas went into a panic mode whenever he was around, lest he turn his culinary expertise on them.
Although he was a hail-fellow-well-met, he abhorred politics. But everyone in San Nicolas remembers him festooning the façade of his house with a big streamer for his hero, Marcos, every election time. He told everyone Marcos was an authentic war hero; he should know — they fought together. Which is why it pained him to no end when the fakery of Marcos’ medals became a scandal.
He was a nurturing and loving father. He was a buddy to his sons, but a stern disciplinarian to his daughters. While he taught his sons the many skills only he could impart — like bringing them to the wilds of Pagong at the foot of the Cordilleras — he was quick to frown on his daughters who failed to be back at home well before the oracion at six o’clock in the evening.
He was obsessed with the desire to provide only the best for his family, which meant a comfortable house with modest standards and the best schools that he could afford for his children. He was keenly aware of the value of education and instilled it on all his children. He taught them the codes that he lived by, as well as those that he missed — how to make good decisions in life, how to have fun and to laugh and love, and how to appreciate the meaning of honest work.
When he passed away, his remains were laid in state at the municipio, where he was extolled for his virtues and his all-too-human frailties. But nobody expressed it better than his brother-in-law 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).
Thus lived and died a great man, and I wonder what my life would have been had he and his youngest son — me — not been good buddies.
The Daily Tribune © 2009
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