The optional father

Last Sunday, I saw a lot of Facebook posts about Father’s Day. Curious about its origins, I checked the Internet and found that it is an afterthought to Mother’s Day and was first celebrated in the United

States. I do not recall it being celebrated when I was a child in the 1980’s. I guess it is one of the effects of the web and globalization.

 As with Mother’s Day, I’m glad that we have Father’s Day, never mind all the commercialized trappings that come with it. I have become more appreciative of my parents after I became a parent myself. One Sunday a year to reflect on how special they are is just not long enough.

 Father’s Day had me thinking about this advice: “Just have a child.

 You don’t need a husband to do that.” I’ve heard this statement repeated several times, probably more often now that my friends and I are in our mid- or late thirties. For single women who have fears about the ticking of their biological clocks, it may sound logical but it is advice I am afraid to give. While getting pregnant and having a baby can be done easily without a husband, raising a child is challenging enough even with one around. It is also difficult for me to imagine a childhood without a father because I am among the lucky ones who had a father who was present while I was growing up.

 Before becoming a stage father became an in thing, my father was one.

 He brought a photographer with him when I was in kindergarten. I wasn’t even the star of the field demonstration in my school but I had a lot of pictures taken of me. In the grade school that my siblings and I went to, he was present at most school programs. When my mother was out of town when those happened, he made sure to be there himself.

 That is why he will never forget how I stayed in the pool long after the race was over when I joined my school’s swimming competition.

 My father had a lot to do with why three out of four of us siblings became lawyers. The brainwashing started early. My siblings and I got “My daddy is a lawyer” shirts when we were small. We visited his office often and liked the swivel chairs found there. It also helped that all of us are afraid of blood and corpses, encounters with both being essential so we could become doctors like our mother.

I credit him for my love of stories. While my parents are both excellent storytellers, my father was particularly good at telling scary ones. When I was about nine, I kept a long piece of wood beside my bed to hit the wakwak, white lady, sigbin, and other beings he described too vividly, just in case any of them showed up. I don’t do that now but I still turn all the lights on when I need to work late at night. He may not have spent as much time with us as my mother did but I guess we were always in his thoughts. When he went on business trips, for example, we always got presents when he returned home: clothes if he went to Manila, toys if Zamboanga, and chocolates probably bought at the airport. I already know what I’ll say the next time I’m with my friends and the issue of becoming a mom without a husband or partner comes up. It can be done. Having the support of family and friends would make things easier. And if she wants her child to have a happy childhood, she should be there for her child when it matters, attend school events and be a stage mom when the occasion calls for it, ensure that her child knows that she is loved, and tell her child a lot of stories.