for our fathers

All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair. The hands that hold a child’s glass often commit the mistake that parents rarely recognize – the mistake of molding their children to an authoritarian replica of themselves; succumbing into a dream of reliving their blemished lives through their children; attempting to correct the errata of their past.

These hands fulfill their own dream not their child’s, leaving smudges and stains on the frail glass. That moment when my father told me, in the sweetest, nicest way… that I wasn’t good enough, I felt a crack mark on my glass. It had always been painful falling behind his expectations. And though failures make me strong, one day those little cracks will break me and I know so. All those times I felt he wished he didn’t have me as a child made me firm yet brittle, leaving me with an unconscious fear of failure. I want him to love me. I cannot fail.
The way he constantly compares me to anyone who is better smothers me, to a point I could no longer feel myself, seeing myself only with respect to others, compared to others, giving up a part of me.

I never really had an exact thought of why I wanted to be like my father. All I knew was that I needed to comply with his standards. I grew up with the notion that the purpose of sons was to be what their fathers were, or better. I wanted to be able to do the things my father does even though the thought of it didn’t make much sense. To a son, it doesn’t need sense. It is the unspoken agreement. Even before he can devote himself to God or to any woman, a boy will always devote himself to his father, even foolishly, even beyond explanation. Fathers and sons often resort to the unspoken agreement. They seem to do everything internally, unlike mothers and daughters who do girl-talks. A tap in the shoulder is often capable of making more sense than a 1000-word essay possibly will. A tap in the shoulder is capable of saying it all – approval, appreciation, concern, love.

One night, an unexpected spontaneous profound conversation with my dad came about. It suddenly made sense. It wasn’t that my father didn’t love me as much as I wish he did. It was that He had a different way of doing it. He was always pushing me to be the best I could be, sometimes I stumbled, often I didn’t. The problem of men is that they seldom communicate. They often feel that they are “supposed to” - supposed to know, supposed understand, supposed to be capable, supposed to be able. Men think too much, assume too much, expect too much. They just don’t know it. Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. Having difficulty accepting the fact that their children are already grown-ups, fathers often arrive in a conflict with their sons, afraid of the concept of them losing control over their sons’ actions – losing grip of the glass.

Whenever my dad distanced himself, he took a part of me; a surge of coldness detached a part of me from my self. I couldn’t feel the same warmth I felt with my mom. I wasn’t supposed to, I think. Maybe my dad felt I wasn’t supposed to. My dad is a great person, but wasn’t an excellent teacher. He knew me, but didn’t understand me. He was impatient. Yet, I am what I am because I wanted to be like him. I love my dad, I just don’t show it. He knows it though, I think. Most sons don’t show it, not until after it’s too late. Sons don’t say “I love you.” to their fathers, we’re not expected to. Sadly, time will probably come when I’ll look back to the time when I could still, at least, see His love though I couldn’t feel it the way I needed to.

A father’s life is a life of sacrifice. I understand. That life ends, but its love doesn’t. It passes to the next generation, and to the next, and to the next in a cyclic process. That is why fathers want to have sons, so they could live forever, so they could be remembered through their children… and they are! A fatherly love is never lost.

However, lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that’s all. You can’t see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around the dance floor. But when those senses weaken, another heightens - memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it.

When the inevitable comes, I hope all of us have enough memories to supply that utmost fatherly love. Until then, I’ll keep on pretending. I’ll keep on living a life full of a son’s suppressed love.

sorry for the sadness shown