THE DAY I SAW MY FATHER CRIED…
I could still remember that day, how will I forget it? … It was in the midst of summer when my sister Lila arrived home with a soggy and obfuscated expression. It was as if she never had slept for many nights. There was something agonizing inside her that makes her so uneasy. My sister had changed a lot. She was pale and became fatter than the last time I saw her.
Strain had filled the air between mama and my sister that day. They were talking over something that is very serious while waiting for father, which she never really do. That is why it was unusual to see my sister in the living room, uneasily waiting for our father.
The sunrays were acerbic when father arrived. His face was soaked in red and went even redder when he saw Lila. Every time father looks like that, we avoid committing mistakes. He is different from any father I’ve known. And our family is also different from some family I have known. Father has the stiffest philosophies in life. Whatever father told us must be obeyed and not be violated. He is a man of discipline and we are very scared to disobey him. I could rarely see him around chatting with some of our neighbors; he is not fond of that. Every time he is in the house he would spend the whole day in the garage fixing up things or reading a book and sometimes a paper.
Mama told us how our father was raised and how he had lived his younger years. He grew up in a poor family. At the early age his father died and a year after his mother followed. He learned to stand on his own feet and did not rely on anybody. Father struggled hardly to finish his education; he was the most determined man our mother ever described.
When father found a stable job he asked my mama to marry him and then came we, I and Lila.
We were raised in a traditional and strict home under the guidance of our father. We were not allowed to play unless we never finished our house chores, which I hated most. During my childhood years I always love staying in the neighborhood, playing with my childhood friends.
One summer day, Father made me ran for an errand. On the way home I saw my playmates playing around so I stopped over and played with them until the dark caught me. Father had imposed a rule that everybody must be home by six o’clock and that night I broke it with the unfinished errand my father gave me. He was very angry when I reached home. His fierce eyes made me tremble. I was punished kneeing in the salt for hours and cried the whole night because of my aching knee that fevered me. I hated father for that. He had always been like that, so strict and hard to break.
Father was born with the assiduousness in his system. He was the strict and most discipline man I ever knew however he could be good if you will just follow his words. I could remember when I got the first honor in the 6th grade, we’ve gone out and celebrated. He also let me join the beach party I’ve ever been asking for permission. How I ever wish he could be like that always yet, the daily routine after the beach party never changed, from school to home from home to school. There are things that my father never does, like spending time in drinking session with our neighbors, going out to fiesta and spending an afternoon in the Binggo house. I also never saw him cried, sometimes I ever wondered if father ever have cried, because I never saw him even on the death of his uncle. It seems that he is too hard to break. Sometimes I thought what would make him cry.
We grew up with the attrition in our heart that as everyday comes it was growing as we are. Lila was the eldest, and had perhaps more blind reasons to let the little seed of rage in her heart grow faster. It seems to her that father prohibited her to live a young normal life. Lila was restrained from the normal things that teenagers usually does for fun. She was not allowed to go into the outings and parties with her friends, or to join any activities, which has no connection to studies. Until one day she met Rico, a boy from the other town. He was Lila’s’ puppy love but when father discovered that, she was warned to focus her attention on studies and not to anything else. But one afternoon father caught Lila together with Rico and he dragged her home.
From that day I never saw Lila with the boy again. She was very embarrassed and forced to focus on her studies until she graduated. I could feel the little plant of hatred on Lila’s core although she doesn’t speak of that. It was strong and growing.
She was sent to school in the City College and persistently stayed in my auntie’s house although my father was not really agree. Lila changed easily maybe because father was no longer there to check her actions.
One night I was supposed to ask mama over something I stopped when I heard father talking. I know that eavesdropping was wrong but I listened still. They were arguing over Lila’s stay in the city. Father was against about it. “You know the reason Mila, and you know its right, I am just protecting my children. I would never want them to take the wrong path. It would kill me to see any of my children lost in the wilderness. Someday they will understand that.”
Somehow I was able to understand my father yet maybe I was too childish and ravenous for freedom that I wanted to reach college as early as possible to escape from fathers’ stiffness. I want to feel what Lila used to tell me. The things she can do in the city without father. She can go out with friends, she can party; she can do things she was not allowed to do.
Lila continued her college and I graduated from elementary… Rarely would Lila come home. Sometimes I would hear my parents argue about Lila’s staying in the city. But aside from that nothing more serious came. I thought things would just be fine until that day came. When father arrived Lila was very confused and scared, father’s face reddened more when he saw her. He did not utter a word nor look at Lila. Mama took father into one chair and stayed with him. I just sit in the corner and watched as Lila started to burst into tears. Father was very angry about what Lila said that I did not hear. He stand on his feet and slapped Lila, I heard him uttered a phrase in a loud voice, “Now you know why I was so strict with you and Lisa? I have gone through a lot of hard things Lila. I never wanted my children to follow that. But I failed on you.” Father turned away and went to his room, as he passed me by I saw something streamed down from fathers face. Tears. And as I looked at my father it seemed that in that quick of time all the attrition and hatred I planted on my heart melted away. Then in the midst of that hot day the rain came…it was cold and somehow it washed my heart and mind.
Lila left home after that day and came back after a week together with a man she introduced as her boyfriend and soon be the father of her child. Lila was not able to finish her studies. She has no choice but to get married for her coming baby. I slowly understood why my father cried after a long time of stiffness and hardness he’d shown. After that day that I saw my father cried I have learned to value his words more and tried to understand him in the best way I could. #