9/52 Fathers and Sons (Part 2)

He would often relate how he was stupefied as a six year old when the Spanish executed the Filipino intellectual Jose Rizal in a park surrounded by wealthy neighborhoods. A childhood marked by revolutions and colonial domination nurtured the prevalent ambitiousness of his generation. He recounted stories of how he proudly served both American and New Commonwealth masters because of their discipline and adamant penchant for excellence, how the war unnecessarily ravaged the rustic mountain city he helped build, how it rose from the ruins, regaining and eventually losing its grandeur as the Summer Capital of the Philippines. Relating those stories was an exercise that paid off in his senile years as I would fill in his narratives when his memory would fail him.

Being landed did not always equate to being wealthy. Such was the circumstance that my grandfather was born into that he had to walk in slippers more than 10 kilometers every week to a boarding house whose mosquito infested basement room he had occupied while studying by candlelight to be a doctor. He also walked the school route with precious shoes in tow as slippers were cheaper to repair or replace.

As one of the early graduates of the State Medical School, he was entrusted with many prominent responsibilities including the directorship of the Benguet Hospital in Baguio and serving as the personal physician of the President. He made his rounds on horseback servicing the medical needs of the mining towns that flourished in the early days of the Summer Capital. As a representative in the UN and holding various key positions in the pioneer and post war era of the city, he made a name for himself and engaged briefly in politics until he realized the growing graft and corruption would swallow him body and soul.

A tough childhood must have driven his ambition for himself as well as those for his children. He bestowed a particular favor on his eldest son whom he had named after him. As an achiever and gifted child, grand plans and foundations in business or law were laid before the scion but it was not to be so. The priesthood had a stronger calling for a man who stood his ground to follow his destiny. It was only much later through memoirs that I found out that he sneaked out twice to enter the seminary and with gun in hand, my grandfather demanded his release. Failing in that, he sued in court and likewise failed. He only succeeded when the President and an influential general drafted him to the Army and again only to lose him to the Jesuits after the war and finally losing him completely to a brain tumor soon after.

Just before puberty, my grandmother died and I was relegated to his flat to keep him company during meals, recreation and visiting construction sites. I took his daily blood pressure readings, did errands and later drove him around town and down to the hot springs. Although as a growing boy I lived in my own world, the subconscious/subliminal effects of my grandfather’s environment influenced much of how I would perceive and relate to the world.

While my mother and siblings had to make do with the best that my father brought home, I enjoyed country club meals, snacks and a library, long walks at the golf course, hot showers and massage, healthy dinners and long games of chess intertwined with glorious stories of the pioneer days of the mountain city. I was like a pup trailing his parent as he went by his daily business allowing me to observe how a man of stature related to the world around him and experienced what being privileged was like. There were no lectures, apprenticeship and indoctrination. It was simply hang around, see and do. With his soft hand that allowed me to imbibe the fruits of good living, I began to aspire to become a doctor just like him and not some traveling salesman whose face and arms were burnt from too much sun and had very little to offer except an iron hand that kept me focused on the hardships of life…or so I thought.

Although the life away from my family was more comfortable, there was an air of discomfort for being different. My parents had become my guardians and my siblings became more like cousins and I an only child, which propelled my individualism to an irreversible extent. It was difficult to live like a have not in a have environment or a have in a have not. There was a sense of duality that swung my personality to extremes. Was I or was I not? Living in one roof with two separate worlds that had very few common denominators in what mattered to me would make me question my loyalty and belongingness especially when one would attempt to invalidate the other. I was confused on whose side I should be on. Was my emerging multiple personality a survival mechanism? It doesn’t require much to imagine what happens when I switched on the wrong one in a particular situation. Switching invalidated the other and making a stand pit them both against each other.

Caught in the conflict between two worlds of kinship and fearful of losing my identity, if not my sanity, there was only one choice…step back and move out thinking perhaps, my absence would calm the storm. I once had one father, then conveniently two, and finally none. The adventure had began.