RANDOMLY, DADDY


Mine will probably not be the hours emptied by your leaving but when it comes to time and you, I will be looking back from hereon to what has been instead of forward to what could still be, with the 'now' rendered non-existent. Time... the way it was for me... has stopped.

I wasn't the daughter with the fancy debut or the celebrated graduation. I did not even have a wedding banquet to speak of. But I remember being the daughter you would pick up at school late into the night after a string of meetings, often the only girl left, kept company by the guard at the gate. It will be dark by then but I always brightened up when your car ground to a halt. In my young mind, I always knew that no matter how late you came, Daddy would always come for me and there were no two ways about it. We'd be speeding along singing Michael Jackson's 'Ben' to the dark streets and it would crack me up whenever you made a spoof of it... 'like Ben-tot! Mabantot!'

Or sometimes I'd have a fresh list and I'd run down through my litany of jokes, the good ones I heard lately, which I would painstakingly write down on my writing pad, making sure I didn't forget the best parts cause it was so imperative that you got the joke. Sometimes you were so grave in manner, after a long and hard day, I felt it was up to me to give you your sense of humor back.

I was the daughter whom you promised to buy a box of Robina Farms fried chicken for the day of her field trip so she would have her fill (usually after a leg and a wing) and have some left over to share with her friends. I was up early that day, excited about the field trip and feeling proud about having a whole fried chicken to do with as I pleased. I took a peek in the refrigerator and there was no box. I was told that Daddy forgot. I ended up bringing some hotdogs and rice and a lot of disappointment instead. I have forgotten where we went but I remember having lunch at some wide-spread green with little rolling hills. And I remember seeing you making your way up to me with a box of fried chicken in tow. It came right in time.

I remember the countless times you had to pick me up from school in the middle of the day because I was again at the clinic complaining of some vague stomach ache. I remember you visiting me late at night, after work, and after having been to the other unit of the hospital where my brother was also sick, when they realized they had to cut me up because what I had wasn't a stomach problem but some cyst growing inside me. I was told you punched the wall and smashed your knuckles to avoid smashing the doctor's face who kept giving me antacids.

I remember sharing with you a love of the sea, of swimming, and of discovering secret little alcoves which proved the best sites for snorkeling. I remember watching all the little fish in all the beautiful colors with you and swimming around in circles like they did in the little sea pools under the rocks which you told me I should not be afraid of because they weren't going to crumble over our heads and bury us in the sand.

I remember you watching the waltz number I choreoghraphed for a Church fund-raiser and how you hugged me in pride at the applause that came after, knowing it was the first time I ever did such a thing.

I remember you picking me up at the Folk Arts Theater after watching a play and after meeting Tommy Abuel, the first and only movie person I ever met and whose autograph I had the guts to ask for. I showed it to you, flustered and elated, but the name didn't ring a bell with you. I decided he probably wasn't that great a guy after all. I was a fan for all of a day. Of course, it didn't occur to me that you probably didn't know him cause you never had time to watch either TV or the movies. You were always working.

I remember that you couldn't be at my highschool graduation because you had to be out of the country. Still, there were red roses for me, signed, 'Daddy.'

I remember asking you to trust me when I was trying to make up my mind to marry my husband and I remember you thanking me for telling you before I finally decided. I remember you telling him how you knew I wasn't perfect as nobody is perfect. That if it didn't work out, he was always welcome to send me back home, but that hurting me physically was never ever an option. You didn't warn or threaten him. You just asked him not to, like a pact that men sealed with a handshake. I'd like you to know that it worked Daddy, and I'm happy to have two gentlemen shake hands over my best interest.

I remember you giving me my first philosophy books. They were by Khalil Gibran, about 4 or 5 of them in a pretty little box. I remember the book covers came in rainbow colors and I remember feeling proud and all grown-up knowing you believed I had it in me to understand what was in them.

I remember spending summers in summer classes... dancing the hula, learning how to swim, playing the piano. I remember summers in YWCA, being picked up by one of your secretaries and being brought back to your office where I played secretary until it was time to go home.

I remember Hi-Top Supermarket where you always bought me a bottle of Horlick's Malteds cause there were times when they were all I cared to eat.

You were a jealous one too, I remember. You had to acknowledge the existence of Jay in my life and my need to form memories with him. Still you could not stand not being the only man in my life. It made you upset. So you withdrew and chose not to be there on occasions I would have wanted so much to share with you... the Ms Nursing pageant, for instance, or the dinner at Auntie Dens when I graduated from nursing school.

And there are the darker things too, unspoken of but which we struggled to understand and live with... or survive... just the same. These things weren't easy. It took a lot of growing up, of dying within ourselves so they didn't tear us apart.

When you caught TB and you were so scared we'd catch it too that you kept us all at arms' length and dealt with it all by yourself. I knew you were sick and I wanted to be there for you, to take care of you, but you pushed me away. I had to make up an alternative life because I had to fill in the spaces, the gaps, where there should have been Daddy moments. And every little thing that I stuffed those gaps with left a larger hole in what, up till then, was the only thing that remained steadfast in my life... that I was a daughter to you.

I remember how you once, in my young and impressionable years, got so upset with Mommy, how that got me so confused, how you seemed to me such a different man at that moment, how it first occurred to me that there could be reasons not to like Daddy after all. That realization scared me so much, Daddy, because no matter how many times you had to send me to bed without dinner in the past, I always came down in the morning in your arms, loving you even more. There was no disliking Daddy for me... ever. The thought was almost a sacrilege.

I remember how you were so strict that I could barely keep friends cause I was hardly allowed to go anywhere 'fun.' Oh I had my share of parties and adventures, not that you had to know about them all the time. You were such a child when you got upset that you just had to let it out no matter where we were, or who was present, or what the occasion was. You never apologized either, but in so many ways you would let us know that neither you were being too happy with yourself.

I'm turning up line after line of this stuff Daddy, and I'm not even sure how this would help me. You will still be gone after I strike the last key. I will still remember how you looked inside your coffin. I thought the things people said about you at your wake would add up to the things I already know and remember and somehow help me understand you better. Maybe I was waiting to be told that you left in God's gracious time and that everything has finally been made perfect. Isn't that what we, the ones that are left behind, are all seeking to know all the time?

While what was said may be true and good, they didn't really make me go beyond proud. Now that you are gone, they are just things that people say. But that's alright. I guess there's nothing more to add to what I already have... nothing especially that a random someone has had the good fortune to encounter in his lifetime. I will leave that alone. That is your legacy to them.

My father is this... my father is that...

In my heart of hearts, all I care about only goes up until... my father...

I miss you. Oh God, I miss you.