Wednesday, March 29, 2006
In the name of the father
By Henrylito D. Tacio
Regarding Henry
HUMORIST Erma Bombeck, the author of several books including the best-selling, "You Know It's Time To Go Home When You Looked Like Your Passport Picture," once told a story of a little lost girl who doesn't know whether she would miss her departing father:
"One morning, my father didn't get up and go to work. He went to the hospital and died the next day. I hadn't thought that much about him before. He was just someone who left and came home and seemed glad to see everyone at night. He opened the jar of pickles when no one else could. He was the only one in the house who wasn't afraid to go into the basement by himself.
"He cut himself shaving, but no one kissed it or got excited about it. It was understood when it rained, he got the car and brought it around the door. When anyone was sick, he went out to get the prescription filled. He took lots of pictures but he was never in them.
"Whenever I played house, the mother doll had a lot to do. I never knew what to do with the daddy doll, so I had him say, 'I'm going off to work now,' and threw him under the bed.
"The funeral was in our living room and a lot of people came and brought all kinds of good food and cakes. We had never had so much company before. I went to my room and felt under the bed for the daddy doll. When I found him, I dusted him off and put him on my bed. He never did anything. I didn't know his leaving would hurt so much.
"A father is a man who expects his son to be as good a man as he meant to be," said Frank A. Clark. To which another one remarked, "A father is someone who carries pictures where his money used to be."
Here's what an 8-year-old boy thinks about his father: "He can climb the highest mountain or swim the biggest ocean. He can fly the fastest plane and fight the strongest tiger. My father can do anything. But most of the time, he just carries out the garbage."
Paul Harvey describes a father in these words: "A father is a thing that is forced to endure childbirth without an anesthetic. A father never feels worthy of the worship in a child's eyes. He's never quite the hero his daughter thinks, never quite the man his son believes him to be, and this worries him, sometimes. So, he works too hard to try and smooth the rough places in the road for those of his own who will follow him. Fathers are what give daughters away to other men who aren't nearly good enough, so they can have grandchildren who are smarter than anybody's. Fathers make bets with insurance companies about who'll live the longest. One day, they lose and the bet's paid off to the part of them they leave behind."
One expert advices: "Live so that your son, when people tell him that he reminds them of you, will stick out his chest, not his tongue," said one. C. Neil Strait reminds: "The best gift to his son is the gift of himself -- his time. For material things mean little, if there is not someone to share them with."
Only the female species get pregnant and deliver babies. But then, there are some "mythic males" who actually gave birth. Take the case of Adam, the first man. Genesis 2:21-22 states: "And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man."
Pandora came from Hephaestus. On orders from Greek god Zeus, Hephaestus created her in his smithy. (His own mother, Hera, disgusted that Hephaestus was clubfooted, hurled him out of "heaven".)
Zeus was the person credited for delivering Athena. While walking beside a lake in Libya, he was smitten with a violent headache and roared with pain. Shortly thereafter, out of his skull jumped the goddess Athena, fully armed. Later, he gave birth to Dionysos from his thigh.
Indian goddess Tara evolved from the tears of Avalokitesvara. Vishnu, on the other hand, produced a lotus from his forehead and on the left was his future consort, Lakshmi. Of course, everyone it seems remember his or her father.
Da Chen could not forget his dad. In an article, which was published in Reader's Digest, he wrote: "My father died 11 years ago, around American Father's Day, in southern China, without my being there to bid him goodbye. I had been living in the United States for five years and was preparing for the bar exam. My family didn't tell me until the exams were over. When I learned of his death, I collapsed into my sister's arms and cried the whole night."
There were so many things he remembered about his father. Here's one of them: "My father rarely prayed, but when his father was dying, I watched as he knelt before our hidden shrine and asked Buddha to take a few years off his own life and add them to Grandpa's. With tears rolling down, his face, my father smiled as if Buddha had accepted his deal. In that brief moment, he taught me what it really meant to be a son."
For comments, write me at tasyo2002@yahoo.com
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