This story originally appeared in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on June 29, 2006.
I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.
Umberto Eco, “Foucault’s Pendulum”
I look like my father, this earned me a special place in his heart, so I was able to get away with anything as far as he was concerned.
Father was quiet man, whose tongue loosened only under the influence of alcohol. I cannot remember ever having had heart to heart conversations with him. In fact, I cannot remember any “big moments” with him. I cannot remember being spanked or spanked or scolded by him, things my siblings had experienced. His presence in my life was something that I look for granted.
He passed away when I was in college. And that’s when I realized how true was the saying that we only appreciate the presence of people in our lives when they’re gone. The death of my father left a longing within me that can never be replaced.
I’ve known many people who deal with this hollowness with regret, telling themselves they should have done some things differently or feeling sorry that they were not better daughters. But I have no such regrets. I know I was not exactly the best daughter a father could have, but I had been me and I think my father appreciated that we had no “big moments” together, but in that short span of time between my birth and his death, our lives overlapped. Every minute of it, I was his daughter and he was my dad. I was the person that I am and he treated me in the only way he knew. I didn’t want to change anything because I knew it would be unlike my father to wish that I did.
I was in my final year in college when I met my other dad, and he was in his last year at the university, too. I was graduating, he was retiring. While some professors were either addressed as “Doctor,” “Prof,” “Sir” or “Ma’am,” he was better known and referred to by his initials: CRR. (I think some students didn’t even know what CRR stood for.)
He taught the bloodiest course in Agricultural Engineering during our time. Some students took the course twice, other thrice, and still others more times that that. My transcript of records shows that I took it only once, it felt like I took it seven times.
It was a very demanding course, mentally and physically, but the real agony started when I failed to take the final exams. He gave me a 4.0, a conditional failure, and I had to work hard for the rest of my college days to get it changed to a 3.0. I took a total of six exams, the results of which I would tell me was the schedule for the next one. And every time I got that response, I became more and more frustrated.
There were times I wished that I had flunked it outright because that would have spared me from spending time in the limbo of suspense and uncertainly. I felt that I was being challenged intellectually. I was obsessed with the course. I took all the examinations he was willing to give. I stopped asking for the results. I felt so uncertain, I was afraid, I was hurt but I was too stubborn to give up.
Despite everything, I couldn’t get myself to get mad at him. Sometimes when I was doing some experiments form thesis, he would come near and observe what I was doing. At first, I didn’t appreciate it. I didn’t like the pressure from his presence. I saw it as torture, a test that I was failing miserably.
Eventually got used to it. I realized that he was just trying to help. He saw things, small problems and inconveniences I either didn’t notice or chose to ignore, and he suggested ways to solve them.
The torture about my grade of 4.0 ended one day soon after I had completed the defense of my thesis and finished writing it. I was going to graduate, and only the 4.0 was in the way of my march to the stage to receive my diploma. So I went to his office and asked him, “Sir, am I graduating?”
He told me to inquire from the college secretary the next day.
I had waited the whole semester, so another day wouldn’t matter, I told myself, but even then I already knew the answer and I knew I deserved it.
When I went to the office of the college secretary, he gave me the thumbs-up sign the moment he saw me. I felt like crying.
I went to my professor’s room and said a hurried thanks after that.
I think he might have exaggerated the torture a bit but maybe he wanted me to get serious and remind me that I can’t get away with poor performance so easily. Maybe he was preparing me for the world out there, and giving me the kind of lesson only a father can give.
In my thesis’ acknowledgments, I wrote: “Thanks to Dr. Carlos del Rosario for all the concern, the lectures, fatherly preaching and challenges. All of my life, I guess, I will never see, a grade as lovely as your 3.0.”
In case he didn’t get to read that one and he happens to read this piece instead, I’ll say it again: “Thank you, Sir Daddy.”
From my two dads, I got no long talk or big words, only great lessons.
