Diary Game Season 3|June 21,2021|Tatay's Tale

Yesterday we celebrate Father's day. I would never know how all father think and feel towards there children. Some can be called best, good but others may not be the case. I am grateful God has given me a father to be called. He is best in his on own ways but worst to some ways. They couldn't choose their children and we couldn't choose our parents either. In the family you would learn to appreciate everyone when times goes by. That is how I felt towards my father. I was not proud, I compared him to others but that was the past. It was when I was so blind the true value of him and what he does for us. He was not a good provider, it was never enough but he is always present and has never abandoned us. That was the most important.

In his younger years, fathered a big family with 9 children, he was in his prime strength. Many fields were cleared to farm the land. He was sometimes paid and some other times worked as tenant. Now that he is in his senior years we had those talks about his past working on the fields. I was fascinated on how he describe the difference of his time to now. How productive the land before. How the weather was and the harvest. The old farming ways that he knows that is not applicable today. How people or younger generation today despise the job of working as they were. While on the hammock as he swayed slowly I listened eagerly. In his time, he remembered how vast the rice fields they had to plow for many days. How many sweats has fallen from his head to the wet ground earning centavos. Yes he said about coins, have you heard the 'isa ka dako'? Five pesos could enjoyed many days at the beach with his friends during breaks with lot of fresh sea foods and fresh catch and of course a lot of drinking of 'tuba'. He was a drunkard. He worked so hard and when he got his pay, he would enjoy himself.

How many carabaos he owned, he couldn't count. Always had to let go of some if it couldn't be used for plowing. So today even if he don't plow anymore, he couldn't live without one. He make sure he have carabao to tend to as if his body is used to wake up early in the morning and visit his beast. All of his days he farm root crops. He tilted the soil. Sow the seeds, let them grow. Clean the weeds and wait. Lot of waiting there was and there is. Patient until the harvest.

But the other side of being hardworking was his vice of being a drunkard and the excessive smoking, to the point that we his children had to loan in a sari sari store for cigarettes for him. I just couldn't get it. I hated that part of him. He always was drunk and if he was drunk our home was not peaceful at all. I could hear the fighting of our parents. The cries of our mother and us. I couldn't get it but time goes by and it builds into more hatred. I prayed for a better father, but I failed. I should have prayed to God my father to change his ways. But anyway that was the past, I already forgiven him for that.

Today, he is my best of friends. I have learned so much from him. He was best in his own ways but worst at some but he is my father. I love him. He is my teacher to the best of living simply and how to be content of what a single day brings. Who knows how to work hard and enjoy after the labor. No pressure just simple life. Who knows how to endure hardships but did stay there because he live a simple life he is not bothered by anything else but farm life. I wonder what are those dreams he had other than what he has?