When I go home during my college days, my father makes it a point to invite me and drink with him within the vacation week. As a precautious teenager coming from the minor seminary, it seemed a test to me, as if he was to gauge if I was really drinking while I was away at college or I had been a good while away from home. So much so that I always beg off, first because I was guilty and second because it was awkward for the young eldest son to be drinking with his father considering also that it is not allowed legally.
I did that for many times. I only drink outside the house but never with my father. Until such time that he really convinced me to drink with him one evening. I can never forget that December night on the 22nd of 2004 when after the visitors had gone; only my father and I remained at the table, with me glancing awkwardly on my glass of beer and him with his favorite wine.
He strummed the guitar first and sang the “How Can I Tell Her” song by Lobo before everything was settled. After a few moments of impersonal greetings, he trudged me to memory lane and looking far to the road outside, he began to tell me his story.
He was the second of 9 children in an island far away from the town center. As a young boy, he was already helping the family in their needs. With no money to buy food they raised their own and it meant lots of hard work. Together with my uncle, they would get up at 3am to gather root crops like sweet potato for their breakfast and it meant walking barefoot to their farm about a kilometer away. After they gathered food, they would pasture the cows, fetch water from a nearby brook and get ready for school which is 1 ride boat and about 5 kilometer walk to the town center. In going home, they would leave their notebooks in a house and swim back to the island because no boats are available for them. On other days, they would wake up at 1am and fish using a crude method and he was grumbling because he had no sweater on and it was early morning. And it was during those cold mornings where they would go and fish until the sun rises and they would go back to their school routine.
And when he would tag along with my grandmother to the market, he was always embarrassed because of his typical poor shirt and torn shorts. He was also ashamed to ask for anything from my grandmother for it would mean that he can’t go with her anymore anytime because she’ll accuse him of . He was thus contented as sight-seer and a tag along.
When he awakened from his trip to memory lane, he told me that we were very fortunate. For he promised himself to exert all his effort to give his children the brightest future he can give. He risked taking the board exams and went to the city with only a few cents. He did not remember eating anything during his two day exams there. He married late so that he can establish himself and for us not to experience the same.
I don’t know how to relate my father’s story to the story of the Syro-Phoenician woman in the gospel today. But most probably my father can. He didn’t tell me he was humiliated while still growing up, but most probably he was.
As a Gentile and as a woman in first century Palestine, she was scorned by the Jews. But her “dream” to let her small daughter recover from sickness was enough to risk anything including maybe her dignity as a human person – “I’ll endure everything for the sake of my daughter.”. The woman must have been deeply humiliated for being treated like a dog. But her love for her small daughter –she was willing to sacrifice herself. Just like my father, just like God.
Thus after our conversation and drinking session, I came to see my father in a different light. This is a man who loves me and suffers for my sake for my future…
Just like God, almost like God, how much more God!
Whoah that was a nice thought up there! Keep this up! You have an affair with your mother and this time you have a really lovable and mature father. I admire you bro! I’m just sad though that you stopped writing.