The Exculpation 2.0

My 1-year old sis has OC tendencies in the way she wants to arrange flashcards into a row; whereas, when given a battallion of stuffed toys [mostly, sheep. One is named Lamborghini] throws them out of her crib like unwelcome guests.

When I was a kid, walking down the school corridor, I’d fit my feet inside the boxes made by the tile floors. I’d step inside one, skip the following box, then step and skip. Step & skip. The rhythm made me happy; but when people start to walk past you, keeping the pattern becomes difficult. Maybe that’s why I’m irascible when my routine is disrupted [like whenever Ate Tin asks me to bring food for her boyfriend who’s my officemate].

In a conversation with my brother he said each time he’d go for a bath, he hangs his towel first, slides it to the left, and then hang his clothes. He confesses it’s a routine he follows without apparent reason except that deviating from the action makes him uneasy.

Mama & Ate Tin are also o.c. in some way, I’m just not sure how. But while Boboy & I were taking about it, they happily chimed in.

Bantot with all his talk of badminton, confessed that he felt there was something incipient in him, something supernatural. Like a power, a non-human superpower. He knows it’s crazy but he just feels like there’s something torpid waiting to be stirred.

Papa does not figure in such conversations. I don’t know what he could’ve shared if he were there. I think his being pusillanimous is inversely proportional to his children’s audacity. When I come to think of it, this is the rootcause of my tenebrous childhood: my misoneist & callow father.

He spent only less than a month in Saipan, mother expected him to last at least for the entire contract. We were heavily indebted. From that point, my parents’ war never had a real ceasefire. He said the job was too exhausting, delivering 5-gallon bottled water. That was in the early 90s. Later on Mama said, your father’s afraid of technology. He worried he couldn’t use an ATM, or call from overseas, take elevators. That’s what scared him. The little things.

I didn’t know what to believe. But seeing him, observing his reactions to certain things, his take on some issues, his beliefs manifested in his words released here and there–I guess Mama was right. He’s a misoneist.

He is, after all, the seed of a bad childhood. A boy among 14 children of parents who favored a certain daughter, a certain son from among the brood–that can really corrode your confidence. My father, unfortunately, never stepped away from his family’s queer culture– a nebula of negativity and unpolished ways.

This is not entirely a disparagement, I’ve been doing that for years and it’s time to exculpate him. These are simply laying down of facts.

Mama could’ve gone a different way, but she chose B.
A. Prevarication. Protect us from the truth and measure her words to us, in creating an image: that Papa is a good father & we should all appreciate him.

B. The Naked Truth. Bare all, denigrate her husband to her children. After all, she was just sharing sentiments and they have the right to the truth, no need to mask what is conspicuously a familial problem.

For a time I pondered that if Mom had gone on path A, then we would not have treated Pa the way we did, We would not have belittled him so many times–and for every alcohol-induced speech that kept us up on schoolnights, he kept saying “You all treat me like shit!” And that would only provoke a hidden smirk on my face because of course I felt, I still do only partially, that it’s all his fault, why shouldn’t he equate to shit? But after the vicious cycle of war & reconciliation you get tired and realize you have to take blame. We never respected the man when we were kids and so bent on that, the deprecation reached exponential levels that it hurt the man and prevented him from breaking free. I’m sorry for my father.

When I have children, they won’t have to ponder on these things. To sieve the truth or give them unadulterated facts. Because I’ll try, I’ve been hoping, to find a decent partner.

I had a high school classmate whose yearbook ambition said: I want to be a good father. I laughed at that. Now I understood. I understand him now.