Coming of Age

This process of trying to know my father, who died in Mongolia when I was 13, is never-ending. Because he left this world when I was too young to befriend him, to debate and argue with him, to talk politics meaningfully, to ask for advice on what I should study or what to do with my career or life or kid. The last fatherly “advice” I remember was: no boyfriends until you graduate. 

A minority in a family of females, he is the posthumous butt of family jokes. Like the time in Baguio when he forgot to wear his dentures, stepped into the elevator while grinning at a colleague inside, clapped his hand over his mouth in realization, and ran back to our hotel room.

Or the time we spent hours waiting for him to change a flat tire, being stranded on the winding road to Taal Lake in Tagaytay. In fury, he finally kicked the damn thing and it obediently rolled off onto the ground.

In our family lore is the episode when he first returned from Caracas, weakened by his first major coronary a decade before his death. The flight crew brought him out in a wheelchair. On his lap was an enormous Snoopy, a gift for the baby in the family (me, before my position was usurped by our youngest). The absurd image of this larger-than-life man, juxtaposed with the frailty of a fluffy toy dog, was too much for my aunt to bear and she burst unconsolably into tears. This story always cracks us up when we recall it.

Once, I had to read some kind of poetry for my speech and drama class. Must have been eleven or so. Smart aleck that I was and having already exhausted my teacher’s patience by a theatrical Antony’s Oration the week before, I decided to elevate my Dad’s poetry to performance. I had found an inscription in some book, in Dad’s unmistakable scrawl, that said “You touch me, like a ray of light, in a darkened room. You touch me, and I am whole.” When I had the chance to talk to him, I asked if he had written it for Mom. Of course he did, he said, and sure, I could perform it if I wanted. I couldn’t tell if he was pleased by this paean to him. I’ve since lost the book with its yellowed pages and the pale blue ink of his words.

I have, however, found this and quite liked it.

In a few days, it’ll be 25 years since he died. And my son, “g.” after him, is growing into his own man. I suppose I would rather not really perceive the inner workings and name the demons that drove him. I don’t know if it would have mattered in the end if he really saw me for who I was—not just one of the kids, or the one who used to be the baby—or understood who I’ve become. Yet I hold on to a conceit that “I’m the one most like him”—a little diffuse, a bit too externally oriented, caught up with friends and the world outside, and its conflicts, and the realms of the written. Driven by demons in the wee hours of the night.

Some days, it seems that the sum total of who I am was always compelled by the need to win his approval after he died. To be the person that leaves the girl.