Facebooked

I was rudely awakened one morning, not very long ago, when I was roused from sleep by a great family uproar in the other room over money, over what seemed to be a great deal of money. Money in my family is not something to be rudely awakened about. It can give you a heart attack.

By family I mean one Waray wife and three half-Waray daughters. If you are not familiar with Warays --- they take to money the way ducks take to water. And I do not say this in a disparaging way but out of a true sense of respect for an amazing way of life.

Based on personal observations from 25 years of being married to one, there seems to be only two types of Warays, those who have big money and flaunt it in a big way, and those who have only so much and still flaunt it anyway.

Try testing this out at the nearest shopping mall. Cebu is about as far away from Waray country as it is from any other region of ethnicity. Yet chances are you are more likely to find a Waray merrily checking out the merchandise than any other non-Cebuano visitor to that mall.

Even to this day, after years of immersion in Waray culture, the naturally stingy Cebuano in me has never gotten truly comfortable with the Waray practice of throwing away wads of money at a social ritual called "pasayaw" during fiestas and weddings.

It was this Waray philosophy underscoring the uselessness of money if you do not spend it that, on hearing the Warays in my family in an uproar over money, made me jump out of my bed and run to my trousers hanging on a nail by the wall to see if my wallet was still there.

It was. And so was whatever money I had inside. So what the heck was agitating my Waray girls? I can make out the youngest screaming (Warays are also very loud people, FYI) something about buying a piano.

From the sounds the older girls made, I cannot discern much except that they seemed to sickeningly refer to amounts of money, huge amounts of money. Five thousand pesos. Ten thousand pesos. Twenty thousand. I could hardly breathe.

So I went to the other room, knees limp, ready to give out. What the heck is going on, I demanded. Being the main source of money is the single greatest equalizer in my circle of Warays, and growling mightily in its defense offers me great leverage.

Having instantly commanded attention, I began demanding explanations. No. I was not in the mood for explanations. I was issuing directives: Piano? Nobody is buying a piano! Five thousand? What five thousand? I don't have five thousand! I don't have any money!

 My family suddenly burst out laughing. "But papa, it is just in Facebook. I am buying a piano for my restaurant in Facebook," my 10-year-old youngest daughter exclaimed. For the first time I noticed all four Warays were huddled around the sole family laptop.

Facebook? Why is there a restaurant in Facebook? I must have asked several more questions but I will not be repeating them anymore because they were getting ridiculous. The technological gap has conspired with the age gap to make the chasm dividing us too wide for me to cross.

There are farms and restaurants and other games in Facebook, new discoveries on the Internet, and everything else that have left me and eventually all fathers behind, and which I and all fathers will never be able to catch up with or understand even if we tried.

And then I realized how this was so like life itself. Daughters will grow up and fathers can only watch as the space widens between them in heartbeats carefully measured to allow for independence and dignity not to overwhelm each other.

How I wish I was Waray too with my moments, that I might go on a binge. But fathers have to be Cebuano, I guess, pinching and saving on the day to day. Where once hugging and horseplay came aplenty, I am now rationed to a kiss on the forehead, and an occasional "mwah" by text.