Very special day

As a father to one daughter and five sons, yesterday is really a special day for me, being fathers’ day. Even if some commercial value has been attached to its celebration, I still deeply felt that I am really that “special” to my children including our daughter Joyce who already left us 13 years ago to be with our Father in heaven; that I am being remembered and honored by them as their father. I could not really help but feel their love for me manifested and expressed more in their hearts than in their lips and external gestures.

Setting aside a special day for fathers (and also for mothers) is really one of the most sensible and highly appreciated moves in our present materialistic society. All the commercial establishments may really benefit from it but it has at least also provided me and all the other fathers in this world the opportunity to also honor and remember, in a special way, our own fathers. Hence, as far as I am concerned, yesterday was really an occasion not only to be honored and remembered by my children who are still with us in this world, but also and more importantly, a time to remember and honor my own father who passed away thirty three (33) years ago.

My father’s sojourn on earth lasted for 81 years. He was born on May 1, 1899 as the oldest and the only brother of four other daughters of Lino P. Sison and Adela Abesamis, in Penaranda, Nueva Ecija. Based on the recollection of his sisters as narrated to us, he was a caring and very protective kuya to them aside from being a devoted, loving and obedient son of their parents. Indeed, he followed the footsteps of his father Lino who was the school supervisor of the teachers in the province. He also became an educator and first taught at the Philippine Normal School where he met my mother who was one of his students.

What I cannot forget up to now is how my father was able to beget rear and support ten of us his children, with the equally amazing cooperation and unforgettable assistance of my mother Natalia Celestial Sison. Raising such a big family and providing us ten children with a decent, generally comfortable life and well rounded education until we all became professionals is really quite remarkable. It is the best argument against the advocates of birth control through artificial methods to limit the size of the family supposedly for solving our problem of poverty.

Of course having ten children also has its downside particularly on the time that our parents can devote to each one of us especially in the case of our father. Admittedly, as the main breadwinner, our father has less time for us than our mother. And so as expected we became closer and more intimate to our mother than our father.

Even then, I could still remember that my father and I also had some kind of intimate bonding moments especially when I was still a small boy. Most unforgettable for me were those times we spent together while on vacation in Penaranda, Nueva Ecija. The two of us would usually go swimming at the almost crystal clear and deep blue waters of the river teeming with fishes of all kinds. He would usually bring me to the deeper potion of the river riding a bamboo raft to teach me how to swim. Seeing the river’s depth somehow instilled fear in me who could not swim. So for a moment I thought he did not really care much for my life because he would throw me into the water. But when I was already deep down and would see him smiling and coaxing me to come to him, I realized that he was really teaching me how to swim. He was just indeed being a good teacher by applying the basic rule that “the only way to learn how to swim is to swim.” Instructions would not suffice.

And true enough I learned not only how to swim at such an early age. That early lesson in life enabled me to eventually get rid of all my fears especially the fear of failure. I learned how to take chances and venture into unchartered courses in my earthly sojourn, full of faith that somebody is watching and always ready to help and take care of me if necessary like a father to his children.

Another unforgettable edifying trait I learned about my late father was his extreme care and concern for our mother and for us his children. Before the outbreak of the war when I was only three years old, my father was assigned to teach in far away Zamboanga forcing him to temporarily transfer residence there with my two older brothers. So when the war broke out, they were stranded there. Yet because he was so worried about our safety in Manila, he and my two brothers hired a sailboat cum rowboat or banca intrepidly hopping from island to island until they reached Manila and evacuated the family to the safer hinterlands of Nueva Ecija.

My intimate experience with my father during my early years when I was just growing up also taught me how to become independent and be on my own. Thus right after the Japanese occupation when I saw my father and mother having a hard time making both ends meet, I also tried to help by selling newspapers in the early morning before going to school. I also tried to help them in the small eatery they established to tide us over to better times.

Admittedly my relationship with my father was not as intimate and close as other father-son relationships might have been. We really did not have that much personal one on one bonding. Yet now I realize that maintaining such discreet and authoritative distance between father and son is one way of instilling discipline, respect for authority and filial reverence.

Somehow my father also reminds me of the Father of us all in heaven who loves us, provides, protects and guides us.

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