My Tatay

With my new home's (www.poeticlicenserenewed.blogspot.com) construction underway and transitions to a rather abrasive genre and issues, just like the way we introduced this site to everyone, we are bound to bring in some of the contents of the demised blogs we've taken care of for the past years. As an integral part of my approach to life structured under the melodramatic irony of things, jumping into another site is never an attempt to move on, hehe. But as the cliche kills us for the nth time, "moving experiences" are bound to make the grade...

My Tatay

January 15, 2008—it was the date of all dates that should've taken place the moment these pair of eyes saw daylight…

I have been living by and by at the confines of what I and my surrounding molded upon me and after all of these 26 years of struggle and otherwise, I have been feeling great knowing the direction I'm taking has been smoothen and broaden by those experiences. I should no longer elaborate on life's ups and downs since its constancy is no longer news to everyone—as every breathing organism get along with it very well. And through these theses of living holding true no matter what, question is who befits who and who completes who comes in the hanging conclusion of everything.

What came as of late on that fated day completes the missing link of my whole being, the unknown quantity of the equation that solves my whole being.

I grew up fatherless. No, my father didn't die nor lost in oblivion but for sure you've heard of these things. I am pretty much an emotional person but this fact was the kind of thing I never put too much weight with. It's not my concern at all, but deep inside I knew there's something missing within me. That situation caused me aplenty of explanation to the world—which, based on my character, I never did.

Fact is I never reeled from believing I would someday meet my real father. And as it seems that every element surrounding me gives motivation to wait, if not pursue, I trusted these instincts of mine to connive with hope. Though my mom and I never ever discussed about it all this time until recently that she concerned meeting my origin, I knew she wondered about the feeling I must have growing up with no one to look up to. I can understand her, perhaps on my side I wouldn't want to inflict any of that pain on her, assuming there is, to inquire about him. My mom now is in Canada so she sent an SMS saying,"Hi Mac, are you interested to know or meet your real father? I know you're matured enough to understand." It never occurred on me such a chance but I didn't answer back. I'm mulling over that this set up could get me nothing but false hope. And then she called me to inform that she actually contacted my real father and told that he just recuperated from a stroke—which nearly paralyzed him and taken away half of what he is. She gave me contact numbers of my siblings and relatives on my father side which apparently my mom got as well upon contacting them and the rendezvous is to be slated.

Then from there on things get to start sending shiver to my bones. I'm being taken back to my childhood days on my place in Pangasinan as someone that had been taken special care of sufficing the absence of my biological father. Been ridiculed as well, kids my age bully their way toward me 'cause they believe I'm helpless and no one can defend for me.

My father does live on the mountainous region of cordillera, in the province of Kalinga and that is to say I have an Igorot blood. Just before Kuya Herbert (my older brother on the fatherside) and I met, I told him thru SMS that I am in Baguio City few months ago and told my girlfriend that's with me by that time that I'm having such feeling that it would be sooner that I'll meet my father. My brother told me, "you've got those feelings maybe because you belong here in the cordillera region. You're an Igorot. Igorot means people of the mountain."

It never failed to amuse me that I was even part of a bloodline from a minority origin. Though, I must say, the closest association of moi to a higher place was being an activist way back college and before dreamt of trudging the struggle of the mountains (I will no longer elaborate on this point). It's funny I'm beginning to dress myself on my thoughts with those bahag and everything, dancing my way to some rituals I can only see on movies or documentaries relating stories of the minorities.

When it was time to see my father, it was hard to absorb everything. Both of us went awkward as we didn't know if we have to hug or just simply shook our hands (the latter that we did as we never knew what to really do by then). I was just stealing glances off him, trying to figure out how I was able to be created by this man, just like me, even the air he breathes was full of intrigues of the past. We just had a simple question and answer thing but my heart longed to embrace him, probably tell him I survived everything without him. All this time, I longed for those times I should've had him on my side braving my storms, but never was I resentful he never had the chance to saw those phase of my life. I never harbored indignant thoughts blaming him for whatever that happened to me, after all, who am I now would only translate to be part of his glory—with or without his presence.

My siblings accepted me wholeheartedly and it was an addition to an already heavy cast of characters in my life. They all have their stories to tell, moments to wonder what could've been growing up together as brothers and sisters known to one another. We are all starting all over, as if, like a clichéd telenovelas, this one deserves a second book—another set of characters to deliver their lines.