Post by kapziel on Aug 22, 2008 1:53:02 GMT -5
NOTE: I read the subtext stating that we should post the name, but due to privacy, I would like to keep my father's name a secret.
The language being spoken in several instances over the course of the piece is a dialect of the Philippines known as Tagalog. I've made sure to translate each phrase for the reader.
As usual, any feedback or criticism is greatly appreciated.
As a final note, I wouldn't really call this a biography, since it doesn't really cover his entire life, rather, a period of stages in his life that I felt deserved to be written about, since it exemplified a change in his character. I apologize if this isn't the correct board to post this in, but it seemed like the only appropriate one from the non-fiction list. Without more palaver, allow me to present the piece...
"The Filipino Hero I Once Knew"
I knew very little about my father, and what I did know was what I was able to gather between tirades and nonsensical ramblings; all of which he only went through when he was furious. My father was never really angry. He would be upset, and then there would be a huge gap between being upset and being so furious that nothing that came out of his mouth would make even the slightest bit of sense. If there were steps one had to take between losing their patience and throwing a fit, my father was a habitual step skipper.
He was also very reserved and very quiet. When it came to family arguments, he remained silent (for the most part) and had my mother deal with all the screaming and disciplinary actions. This hardly meant that he wasn’t the kind to get angry; in the contrary, he was the kind of man who collected his fury and allowed it to build up before he unleashed a maelstrom upon our home. When my father was furious, he ruffled his hair until it was a complete mess, and his face would scrunch up until his entire persona was changed from a calm and mild mannered individual into a prehistoric Neanderthal. It was also no surprise that, while his facial expressions were hilarious, they also bordered on the maniacal. He stomped through our apartment, as if searching for some lost, meaningful artifact, and all the while scratching his head as if he had been infected with lice. What truly struck me, as a child, were my father’s eyes. Normally, his eyes seemed depleted, as if he resigned himself to being a father and was simply trying to live his life in that manner which was peaceful and stoic. When he was furious, his eyes were like bars, barely containing a raging murderer. Though these fits never lasted long, they held a lasting impression on me and my sister. When we made mistakes, we tried desperately to hide them from our parents, though in particular, we preferred our mother’s quick temper to the eventual explosion that our father held at bay. When my father was angry, I always thought, ‘Parang nag ka-in nang ma anghang!’ It was as if he ate something spicy!
My father’s anger was what made our family trips throughout Florida more enjoyable. He always drove the family when we went on our trips, and even when he was tired, decided to push on rather than let my mother drive (not that she was a bad driver, my father had a “connection” of sorts to his car). I used to joke around with my sister and played games that annoyed my father, just so that we could get a laugh out of his fits.
My father-though it didn’t seem like it at the time-was also very strict about my schooling. The first (and only) time I failed a class was during middle school pre-algebra. It really wasn’t my fault. My teacher taught things too quickly. At least half the class failed along with me. When my father found out, he ranted, “Mas mahirap yuung buhay ko.” Which meant his life was much harder. He repeated one specific story: when he was my age, everyday, after school, he would gather eggs from the chicken coop in the backyard and sold in the streets in order to pay for his school supplies. He told me about how he sweat under the tropical sun-the Philippines doesn’t have a winter or fall, it feels like summer all year long-and sold those eggs as if his life depended on it. His story would include my grandparents and my three aunts, though he never strayed far from the theme of hardship as a child in the Philippines. Conversations with my father were always limited to these stories and anecdotes of his childhood in comparison to my own, mostly in regards to how his experiences were much more difficult than mine, and that my excuses and failures were of little importance in comparison to how I would make up for them. Other attempts at conversation, whether through the dining table or during family trips, or even time spent together, were minimal at best. Interestingly enough, whenever he went on his random rants, he always included some aspect of Filipino food into the argument.
My father loved food. He brought home food and took the family out to eat at least once a week. He was a voracious eater, and amazingly enough, he was able to stay relatively fit, and the worst that I remember seeing him developing was a small beer belly, which he was rather prompt to get rid of. Though he had a rather diverse appetite, the majority of the things he ate were absolutely awful for his health. He was not a fan of salads then, and would eat the greasiest dishes he could find, ranging from the Peking duck (which exacerbated his health, and smelled absolutely repulsive) to the world famous Hooter’s chicken wings (which consist of about 10% chicken and 90% grease). I remember his motto then was “Kung magka ka-in ka, dapat masarap yuung kina ka-in mo!” He told us if you were going to eat, make sure you enjoyed what you ate.
The American culture affected him and his eating habits in the worst possible way. He ate less and less of our traditional dishes and opted to take home food whenever he could. My mother, though upset, rarely said anything; after all, he brought home food for the family, not only himself. Yet week after week, there would be leftovers of dishes like dinuguan (pork blood stew) and delicious caldereta (beef stew). He ate whatever he wanted, and smoked anywhere from two to three packs of cigarettes a day. Despite warnings from the rest of my family that his excesses would eventually catch up to him, my father retained a childish sense of disapproval, and scoffed at their worries.
“Walang mang ya yare,” he said. He assured us there was nothing to worry about, that nothing would happen.
Through most of my childhood, my father remained in this lifestyle of excess, but still worked as the main breadwinner of the family. Both my parents were nurses, though my father worked at a hospital, in contrast with my mother, who worked at a nursing home. Despite the warnings he was given, and the obvious flaws of his lifestyle (even deemed by his co-workers) he walked forward, his ignorance was a ticket to the inevitable.
During the transition between my middle school and high school years, my father went in for heart surgery. For several days, he complained about having chest pains. When my mother brought him in, the doctors told us that he was going in for quadruple bypass. I was the only one cynical and heartless enough to say, “He had it coming.”
After he recovered, my father became zealous about eating healthy and living a healthy lifestyle. He didn’t push it on the rest of the family, but he gave silent encouragement. When he cooked dinner, it was always a vegetarian menu, and he threw fits at me for sitting around at home when I could have been outside, enjoying the weather. Whenever we had any kind of meat in our meal, he would glare at us, and spoke to us with a condescending tone. However, he remained pretty much the same man that he was before the surgery; he ate, vigorously, but remained quiet and reserved. Despite his heart surgery, he still ate as much as before, but now committed himself to healthier food choices. Whenever he cooked for the family, no meat, pork, or chicken would be used in any of his dishes. As a matter of fact, it was all either seafood or simply vegetables. Dishes such as lumpia (egg-rolls) stuffed with a random assortment of vegetables, or even ukoy (shrimp patty) were fairly common. This was not to say that he was not creative with his dishes. Rather, he became inventive to the point that some dishes were inedible. In particular, whenever my father made stir fry, he would rummage through the refrigerator and the pantry for the most obscure items and simply throw them in. I can’t begin to list the number of failed stir fries that my father cooked throughout the years. Though comedic, the aspect of having to eat it definitely was not. Needless to say, most of his “experimental” dishes were pretty good, though you’d never expect it, from the way it looked. My sister and I learned to cook for ourselves during this period, not because we didn’t like what our parents cooked, but because if we ever wanted to actually eat something we liked, we had to cook it for ourselves.
Though his views on life were different from before, his attitude towards me remained the same; it was condescending, at times, and he seemed to find pleasure in the way he put me down. Our conversations remained strained and forced, as if we were trying to communicate with minimal efforts. When I was a sophomore in high school, I approached my parents about my position as the vice president of the creative writing club. My mother, though supportive of my scholastic endeavors, was adamant-and at times, forceful-about my path towards the field of medicine. My father remained silent about the topic, but was quick to look down upon my dreams of becoming a writer and my plan of getting a degree in English once I went to college.
We only spoke about it once. My sister and I received our report cards that day. As usual, her grades were far superior to mine-this was, of course, due to the fact that she was three years younger than I was, and, whereas I had to learn everything myself with little assistance, I was basically her tutor and assisted her in every weak point she had-and my parents were quick to utilize this as the topic during dinner. To summarize, my mother had quite a field day with her abusive words and arrogant tone, whereas my father remained silent for most of dinner. I had expected this, of course, because my father always kept his opinions to himself until no one else was around to hear it besides who it was meant for.
“So you want to be a writer?” He asked.
“Yeah pop,” I replied. I was surprised; after all, this was coming from the man who, on a daily basis, told me I wouldn’t amount to anything.
“Yeah, enjoy being poor,” he said. He picked up his playing cards and began to shuffle them.
His words stung, as if my dreams and aspirations were backhanded and cast aside. I was embarrassed, and did my best to show my bravado. Whether or not he saw through it, I’ll never know, but he never spoke to me again about being a writer. It felt as if in that one measly conversation, he branded his only son as a failure, through and through.
My father’s attitude changed drastically after the surgery. Though he still worked and remained a father figure in our family, there was a part of him that became very selfish and sought more than what life offered. He became a workaholic, and also became rather cantankerous about money and the bills.
Then, one day, out of nowhere, he announced he was going on a trip to Europe, two days before his departure. He hadn’t hinted at it, nor were there any evidence of any plans or a long term agenda. It took the family entirely by surprise. This happened about a handful of times, and each time, my father was the only one who went. Though he offered to bring me and my sister, it was a rather offhand gesture; he knew we were incapable of going due to school or other planned courses of action. Initially, he didn’t even bother to ask my mother, but eventually, he also began to reach out and invite her, though for her it was also an impossibility; if they both left, nobody would be around to pay the bills-I was, at the time, still underage-and watch over the house. Each time he returned, he brought back minor souvenirs, but rarely spoke of the sights. He allowed the pictures he took to speak for him. To no surprise, he spoke in great lengths about the food. Unfortunately, I was unable to remember most of the dishes he spoke about, mostly because they were so odd and obscure that he hardly remembered what they were called upon returning home.
My father was an avid viewer of the travel channel and the cooking channel. If he wasn’t cooking, sleeping, or playing with his cards, he’d be glued to the television set, for hours at a time, watching guided tours of Europe or foreign dishes being eaten. It was an odd sense of fascination, driven by curiosity and also a rising need to not only continue watching, but eventually experience it first-hand. His addiction to the cooking channel also provided fuel for his rather obscure dishes. Though he stepped away from the experimental factors of cooking, he was also fond of being a food critic of sorts. His opinionated reviews of the dishes being cooked in front of him were, at times, comedic, but were mostly annoying. He would throw rants about how greasy and unhealthy the dishes were; he would be found in the kitchen an hour or two later trying to recreate the same dish using only his memory to figure out the ingredients and steps. These were obviously not as appetizing as the original.
It didn’t take long, however, before my father began to slip with his eating habits. It was never so bad that he would go back to eating steak or pork-chops or anything of that sort-though he did lapse a few times when we went out for dinner-but my father had an insatiable sweet tooth. He brought home a bag of chocolate at least once a month, and consumed most of it before the day was even over. My father also loved the traditional sweet rice cake, suman. This snack is made from glutinous rice dipped in coconut milk, wrapped in banana leaves while being steamed. It remains within the banana leaves up to the moment it is served, and only then is it removed. Though it is already rather sweet, most people who eat it add another sprinkle of sugar to it before consumption. My father ate suman frequently. Though these little slip-ups may seem insignificant, in excess-I’ve learned to attach that word to my father-it bore its own consequences.
Sometime during November of 2007, after a checkup, my father was dealt another crippling hand. He was diagnosed with colon cancer.
The family was crippled; my mother, just prior to this diagnosis, overcame breast cancer. It seemed that disease was running rampant throughout the family (my grandmother, along with several aunts, were also diagnosed with cancer during the same season), and it claimed another victim. He underwent chemotherapy treatments and eventually went in for surgery. The end result was an almost complete removal of his colon, and the use of a colostomy bag for the rest of his life. His passion for food came to a rather abrupt and anti-climactic end.
He wandered the house like a ghost after he returned from the hospital. His excitement over trying new recipes disappeared along with his appetite. He barely ate, and when he did, he was unable to finish even the tiniest morsels of food. A bowl of rice that he would have devoured before his cancer became a challenge for him to even face, let alone consume.
The cancer did change one thing about my father: he became more talkative, specifically towards me. Though these moments of conversation are not as stressed and uncomfortable as the ones we had before, he thoroughly seemed to enjoy being able to speak freely. It was as if the cancer was the key to his opening up towards the family. Instead of patronizing me, he was willing to give advice and made comments about looking out for my well being. I took it by surprise, at first, and then realized that my father was trying to make up for the years of detachment by speaking out to me now. I appreciated it, after all, it took great effort for him to do what he was doing, and I knew that if it were not for two life-changing events, he would not spare even a word for the son that he, I believed, deemed a failure. Yet, when I watched him from afar, he resembled this ethereal being, someone different from the man I used to know.
“Ma laki ka na,” my father told me. He meant, you are a grown up now. He stood by the large window by our living room and stared out into our driveway (we moved into a house after I switched from elementary to middle school). He stood with his hands clasped behind his back. His bravado couldn’t fool me. His eyes scanned the sky and the earth for something. I asked him if he had taken his medication, and he nodded with approval. I stepped out of the house and walked to my car, ready to drive off to class. As I pulled out of the driveway, I looked back through the window and saw that my father had disappeared.
Now, my father is a ghost. Though he speaks more often, there are times where he is still quiet and reserved. He is also beginning to isolate himself, in the way that most living things begin to isolate themselves before death. When he walks, he clutches the colostomy bag close to him, as if he is holding another child, a new sibling to add to the family. My aunt tells me, “Parang may batay yung taty mo.” She means to tell me, it’s like your father is carrying a child. Though he still wears this bravado, this façade of a strong man, a part of me misses the way my father used to be. He had his faults, of course, but it was the man that I learned to accept.
My father, who used to stand with his chest out and his chin high, the example of the Filipino man, now resembles a resigned veteran. His body, scarred by surgery, disease, and weekly chemotherapy treatments, is a mere husk of its once former build.
My father stares at me across the dining room table, and scoffs as I finish eating my dinner. His hands clumsily fold and shuffle his favorite playing cards. I’ve bought him new playing cards, ones with fancy pictures on the back or with several themes (I bought a pack of cards with King Tutankhamen on them when the exhibit came to visit Miami), but he refuses to play with them, let alone touch them. The cards he plays with are old and torn, but he refuses to play with a new deck because he prefers the ones he bought during his solo trips to Europe, as if playing with them gives him a constant reminder of his past; free and without worries and consequences. In his fifties, he looks to be much younger, but he wears a tired expression, a reminder of his altercations against disease and a body that is, without his permission, failing him. He nods as I motion towards his plate, the only one with food still remaining on it. I notice that he has eaten more than he usually does, and I am glad to see that. I sweep it away, along with the rest of the dishes, and as I stare at his plate, I get the sudden feeling that I’m being inspected by the remains of a severed fish head, even being judged by it. Behind me, I hear my father’s playing cards, being shuffled by an unknown specter.
The language being spoken in several instances over the course of the piece is a dialect of the Philippines known as Tagalog. I've made sure to translate each phrase for the reader.
As usual, any feedback or criticism is greatly appreciated.
As a final note, I wouldn't really call this a biography, since it doesn't really cover his entire life, rather, a period of stages in his life that I felt deserved to be written about, since it exemplified a change in his character. I apologize if this isn't the correct board to post this in, but it seemed like the only appropriate one from the non-fiction list. Without more palaver, allow me to present the piece...
"The Filipino Hero I Once Knew"
I knew very little about my father, and what I did know was what I was able to gather between tirades and nonsensical ramblings; all of which he only went through when he was furious. My father was never really angry. He would be upset, and then there would be a huge gap between being upset and being so furious that nothing that came out of his mouth would make even the slightest bit of sense. If there were steps one had to take between losing their patience and throwing a fit, my father was a habitual step skipper.
He was also very reserved and very quiet. When it came to family arguments, he remained silent (for the most part) and had my mother deal with all the screaming and disciplinary actions. This hardly meant that he wasn’t the kind to get angry; in the contrary, he was the kind of man who collected his fury and allowed it to build up before he unleashed a maelstrom upon our home. When my father was furious, he ruffled his hair until it was a complete mess, and his face would scrunch up until his entire persona was changed from a calm and mild mannered individual into a prehistoric Neanderthal. It was also no surprise that, while his facial expressions were hilarious, they also bordered on the maniacal. He stomped through our apartment, as if searching for some lost, meaningful artifact, and all the while scratching his head as if he had been infected with lice. What truly struck me, as a child, were my father’s eyes. Normally, his eyes seemed depleted, as if he resigned himself to being a father and was simply trying to live his life in that manner which was peaceful and stoic. When he was furious, his eyes were like bars, barely containing a raging murderer. Though these fits never lasted long, they held a lasting impression on me and my sister. When we made mistakes, we tried desperately to hide them from our parents, though in particular, we preferred our mother’s quick temper to the eventual explosion that our father held at bay. When my father was angry, I always thought, ‘Parang nag ka-in nang ma anghang!’ It was as if he ate something spicy!
My father’s anger was what made our family trips throughout Florida more enjoyable. He always drove the family when we went on our trips, and even when he was tired, decided to push on rather than let my mother drive (not that she was a bad driver, my father had a “connection” of sorts to his car). I used to joke around with my sister and played games that annoyed my father, just so that we could get a laugh out of his fits.
My father-though it didn’t seem like it at the time-was also very strict about my schooling. The first (and only) time I failed a class was during middle school pre-algebra. It really wasn’t my fault. My teacher taught things too quickly. At least half the class failed along with me. When my father found out, he ranted, “Mas mahirap yuung buhay ko.” Which meant his life was much harder. He repeated one specific story: when he was my age, everyday, after school, he would gather eggs from the chicken coop in the backyard and sold in the streets in order to pay for his school supplies. He told me about how he sweat under the tropical sun-the Philippines doesn’t have a winter or fall, it feels like summer all year long-and sold those eggs as if his life depended on it. His story would include my grandparents and my three aunts, though he never strayed far from the theme of hardship as a child in the Philippines. Conversations with my father were always limited to these stories and anecdotes of his childhood in comparison to my own, mostly in regards to how his experiences were much more difficult than mine, and that my excuses and failures were of little importance in comparison to how I would make up for them. Other attempts at conversation, whether through the dining table or during family trips, or even time spent together, were minimal at best. Interestingly enough, whenever he went on his random rants, he always included some aspect of Filipino food into the argument.
My father loved food. He brought home food and took the family out to eat at least once a week. He was a voracious eater, and amazingly enough, he was able to stay relatively fit, and the worst that I remember seeing him developing was a small beer belly, which he was rather prompt to get rid of. Though he had a rather diverse appetite, the majority of the things he ate were absolutely awful for his health. He was not a fan of salads then, and would eat the greasiest dishes he could find, ranging from the Peking duck (which exacerbated his health, and smelled absolutely repulsive) to the world famous Hooter’s chicken wings (which consist of about 10% chicken and 90% grease). I remember his motto then was “Kung magka ka-in ka, dapat masarap yuung kina ka-in mo!” He told us if you were going to eat, make sure you enjoyed what you ate.
The American culture affected him and his eating habits in the worst possible way. He ate less and less of our traditional dishes and opted to take home food whenever he could. My mother, though upset, rarely said anything; after all, he brought home food for the family, not only himself. Yet week after week, there would be leftovers of dishes like dinuguan (pork blood stew) and delicious caldereta (beef stew). He ate whatever he wanted, and smoked anywhere from two to three packs of cigarettes a day. Despite warnings from the rest of my family that his excesses would eventually catch up to him, my father retained a childish sense of disapproval, and scoffed at their worries.
“Walang mang ya yare,” he said. He assured us there was nothing to worry about, that nothing would happen.
Through most of my childhood, my father remained in this lifestyle of excess, but still worked as the main breadwinner of the family. Both my parents were nurses, though my father worked at a hospital, in contrast with my mother, who worked at a nursing home. Despite the warnings he was given, and the obvious flaws of his lifestyle (even deemed by his co-workers) he walked forward, his ignorance was a ticket to the inevitable.
During the transition between my middle school and high school years, my father went in for heart surgery. For several days, he complained about having chest pains. When my mother brought him in, the doctors told us that he was going in for quadruple bypass. I was the only one cynical and heartless enough to say, “He had it coming.”
After he recovered, my father became zealous about eating healthy and living a healthy lifestyle. He didn’t push it on the rest of the family, but he gave silent encouragement. When he cooked dinner, it was always a vegetarian menu, and he threw fits at me for sitting around at home when I could have been outside, enjoying the weather. Whenever we had any kind of meat in our meal, he would glare at us, and spoke to us with a condescending tone. However, he remained pretty much the same man that he was before the surgery; he ate, vigorously, but remained quiet and reserved. Despite his heart surgery, he still ate as much as before, but now committed himself to healthier food choices. Whenever he cooked for the family, no meat, pork, or chicken would be used in any of his dishes. As a matter of fact, it was all either seafood or simply vegetables. Dishes such as lumpia (egg-rolls) stuffed with a random assortment of vegetables, or even ukoy (shrimp patty) were fairly common. This was not to say that he was not creative with his dishes. Rather, he became inventive to the point that some dishes were inedible. In particular, whenever my father made stir fry, he would rummage through the refrigerator and the pantry for the most obscure items and simply throw them in. I can’t begin to list the number of failed stir fries that my father cooked throughout the years. Though comedic, the aspect of having to eat it definitely was not. Needless to say, most of his “experimental” dishes were pretty good, though you’d never expect it, from the way it looked. My sister and I learned to cook for ourselves during this period, not because we didn’t like what our parents cooked, but because if we ever wanted to actually eat something we liked, we had to cook it for ourselves.
Though his views on life were different from before, his attitude towards me remained the same; it was condescending, at times, and he seemed to find pleasure in the way he put me down. Our conversations remained strained and forced, as if we were trying to communicate with minimal efforts. When I was a sophomore in high school, I approached my parents about my position as the vice president of the creative writing club. My mother, though supportive of my scholastic endeavors, was adamant-and at times, forceful-about my path towards the field of medicine. My father remained silent about the topic, but was quick to look down upon my dreams of becoming a writer and my plan of getting a degree in English once I went to college.
We only spoke about it once. My sister and I received our report cards that day. As usual, her grades were far superior to mine-this was, of course, due to the fact that she was three years younger than I was, and, whereas I had to learn everything myself with little assistance, I was basically her tutor and assisted her in every weak point she had-and my parents were quick to utilize this as the topic during dinner. To summarize, my mother had quite a field day with her abusive words and arrogant tone, whereas my father remained silent for most of dinner. I had expected this, of course, because my father always kept his opinions to himself until no one else was around to hear it besides who it was meant for.
“So you want to be a writer?” He asked.
“Yeah pop,” I replied. I was surprised; after all, this was coming from the man who, on a daily basis, told me I wouldn’t amount to anything.
“Yeah, enjoy being poor,” he said. He picked up his playing cards and began to shuffle them.
His words stung, as if my dreams and aspirations were backhanded and cast aside. I was embarrassed, and did my best to show my bravado. Whether or not he saw through it, I’ll never know, but he never spoke to me again about being a writer. It felt as if in that one measly conversation, he branded his only son as a failure, through and through.
My father’s attitude changed drastically after the surgery. Though he still worked and remained a father figure in our family, there was a part of him that became very selfish and sought more than what life offered. He became a workaholic, and also became rather cantankerous about money and the bills.
Then, one day, out of nowhere, he announced he was going on a trip to Europe, two days before his departure. He hadn’t hinted at it, nor were there any evidence of any plans or a long term agenda. It took the family entirely by surprise. This happened about a handful of times, and each time, my father was the only one who went. Though he offered to bring me and my sister, it was a rather offhand gesture; he knew we were incapable of going due to school or other planned courses of action. Initially, he didn’t even bother to ask my mother, but eventually, he also began to reach out and invite her, though for her it was also an impossibility; if they both left, nobody would be around to pay the bills-I was, at the time, still underage-and watch over the house. Each time he returned, he brought back minor souvenirs, but rarely spoke of the sights. He allowed the pictures he took to speak for him. To no surprise, he spoke in great lengths about the food. Unfortunately, I was unable to remember most of the dishes he spoke about, mostly because they were so odd and obscure that he hardly remembered what they were called upon returning home.
My father was an avid viewer of the travel channel and the cooking channel. If he wasn’t cooking, sleeping, or playing with his cards, he’d be glued to the television set, for hours at a time, watching guided tours of Europe or foreign dishes being eaten. It was an odd sense of fascination, driven by curiosity and also a rising need to not only continue watching, but eventually experience it first-hand. His addiction to the cooking channel also provided fuel for his rather obscure dishes. Though he stepped away from the experimental factors of cooking, he was also fond of being a food critic of sorts. His opinionated reviews of the dishes being cooked in front of him were, at times, comedic, but were mostly annoying. He would throw rants about how greasy and unhealthy the dishes were; he would be found in the kitchen an hour or two later trying to recreate the same dish using only his memory to figure out the ingredients and steps. These were obviously not as appetizing as the original.
It didn’t take long, however, before my father began to slip with his eating habits. It was never so bad that he would go back to eating steak or pork-chops or anything of that sort-though he did lapse a few times when we went out for dinner-but my father had an insatiable sweet tooth. He brought home a bag of chocolate at least once a month, and consumed most of it before the day was even over. My father also loved the traditional sweet rice cake, suman. This snack is made from glutinous rice dipped in coconut milk, wrapped in banana leaves while being steamed. It remains within the banana leaves up to the moment it is served, and only then is it removed. Though it is already rather sweet, most people who eat it add another sprinkle of sugar to it before consumption. My father ate suman frequently. Though these little slip-ups may seem insignificant, in excess-I’ve learned to attach that word to my father-it bore its own consequences.
Sometime during November of 2007, after a checkup, my father was dealt another crippling hand. He was diagnosed with colon cancer.
The family was crippled; my mother, just prior to this diagnosis, overcame breast cancer. It seemed that disease was running rampant throughout the family (my grandmother, along with several aunts, were also diagnosed with cancer during the same season), and it claimed another victim. He underwent chemotherapy treatments and eventually went in for surgery. The end result was an almost complete removal of his colon, and the use of a colostomy bag for the rest of his life. His passion for food came to a rather abrupt and anti-climactic end.
He wandered the house like a ghost after he returned from the hospital. His excitement over trying new recipes disappeared along with his appetite. He barely ate, and when he did, he was unable to finish even the tiniest morsels of food. A bowl of rice that he would have devoured before his cancer became a challenge for him to even face, let alone consume.
The cancer did change one thing about my father: he became more talkative, specifically towards me. Though these moments of conversation are not as stressed and uncomfortable as the ones we had before, he thoroughly seemed to enjoy being able to speak freely. It was as if the cancer was the key to his opening up towards the family. Instead of patronizing me, he was willing to give advice and made comments about looking out for my well being. I took it by surprise, at first, and then realized that my father was trying to make up for the years of detachment by speaking out to me now. I appreciated it, after all, it took great effort for him to do what he was doing, and I knew that if it were not for two life-changing events, he would not spare even a word for the son that he, I believed, deemed a failure. Yet, when I watched him from afar, he resembled this ethereal being, someone different from the man I used to know.
“Ma laki ka na,” my father told me. He meant, you are a grown up now. He stood by the large window by our living room and stared out into our driveway (we moved into a house after I switched from elementary to middle school). He stood with his hands clasped behind his back. His bravado couldn’t fool me. His eyes scanned the sky and the earth for something. I asked him if he had taken his medication, and he nodded with approval. I stepped out of the house and walked to my car, ready to drive off to class. As I pulled out of the driveway, I looked back through the window and saw that my father had disappeared.
Now, my father is a ghost. Though he speaks more often, there are times where he is still quiet and reserved. He is also beginning to isolate himself, in the way that most living things begin to isolate themselves before death. When he walks, he clutches the colostomy bag close to him, as if he is holding another child, a new sibling to add to the family. My aunt tells me, “Parang may batay yung taty mo.” She means to tell me, it’s like your father is carrying a child. Though he still wears this bravado, this façade of a strong man, a part of me misses the way my father used to be. He had his faults, of course, but it was the man that I learned to accept.
My father, who used to stand with his chest out and his chin high, the example of the Filipino man, now resembles a resigned veteran. His body, scarred by surgery, disease, and weekly chemotherapy treatments, is a mere husk of its once former build.
My father stares at me across the dining room table, and scoffs as I finish eating my dinner. His hands clumsily fold and shuffle his favorite playing cards. I’ve bought him new playing cards, ones with fancy pictures on the back or with several themes (I bought a pack of cards with King Tutankhamen on them when the exhibit came to visit Miami), but he refuses to play with them, let alone touch them. The cards he plays with are old and torn, but he refuses to play with a new deck because he prefers the ones he bought during his solo trips to Europe, as if playing with them gives him a constant reminder of his past; free and without worries and consequences. In his fifties, he looks to be much younger, but he wears a tired expression, a reminder of his altercations against disease and a body that is, without his permission, failing him. He nods as I motion towards his plate, the only one with food still remaining on it. I notice that he has eaten more than he usually does, and I am glad to see that. I sweep it away, along with the rest of the dishes, and as I stare at his plate, I get the sudden feeling that I’m being inspected by the remains of a severed fish head, even being judged by it. Behind me, I hear my father’s playing cards, being shuffled by an unknown specter.