The World Didn’t Deserve My Father
For all Dads out there
Someone asked me that if I have the power to choose anyone living or dead to have dinner with — but completely unknown — who would it be? Then I answered, I would choose my father. It would be under the guise that I am not her daughter or someone important in his life, but rather a random stranger he met in his prime. We would eat at a fancy restaurant that overlooked young children in the meadows asking for alms. It would probably be early morning after he sold out his banana produce and was on his way to return to his family. I would ask him if there was a chance wherein the good side of things were at his end and he had options to take, would he choose his wife, my mother?
Would he choose to honor suffering as a predicament of success at the 2/3 stage of his life? You see, I do love my father. He is a remarkable man who sticks to his principles and rules, which made him abundant with success, love, and acknowledgement from family and strangers. But, I have yet to see a side of him that will shake the principles that he upholds, and that would be in his early fatherhood. The stage when everything was aimed at him, and he had to choose between his soon-to-be wife and his parents and siblings.
Forgive me if I must say, I do not intend to uncover the dark side that may arise at the second thought that my father would choose an option beyond what is expected of him. Rather, I want to see the individuality of my father. The character is who he was before he became a father and a husband. A personality in which he only thinks, speaks, eats, and sleeps for and by himself. These are wonders of my thoughts as I realize how my father’s decisions and experiences shape him, as he stands firm as the foundation of 6 children and 1 wife.
And if I do hear him say the opposite, he would choose to study, travel, and become a lawyer. I would be proud of him. Even if I didn’t exist in the world he dreams of, and even if he chose us, my mother, I would still be proud of him. Because I feel like my father has been robbed of the status quo that the previous generation normalized. That is, to raise a family, put food on the table, and build a business. He shoulders the desired masculinity that anyone wishes to toss on him, and with that, he believes dreams are only a luxury for someone like him.
If and if by chance he would ask me an advice for someone like him, I would tell him nothing because being a good father is not just defined by sacrifices and hardships, but also by seeing over your kids growing up as good and humble persons who do not shy away by their beginnings. Even if someone is covered by dirt and sweat, do not mean that they are dirty inside. No one could truly defined what being a good father is to be nor the standards that is expected of. But for me, I saw my father of being deprived of parental love from my grandparents, and yet he showered me a love that cannot compare. Of not knowing or teaching what is to be a loving father, and yet he is able to become one.
For all Dads out there, struggling to become a good father, I am so proud of you. From a daughter to another daughter, may it be a relative or a parent that’s reading this: We might be bound by the social classes that divide us. More so, the privileges and luxury that we and those around us enjoy. However, we must not lose sight of who we are and what we strive to be, no matter how long it takes us to achieve the success that we define for ourselves. Even if the steak is hard to chew.
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