It was my mother who told me that I was a troublesome baby. My mother had a miscarriage before I was conceived.  When she finally got pregnant again, they prayed for a boy: they got a girl instead…. me. I was fine on my first month of life as my mother breast-fed me but when she weaned me off and started giving me infant formula, I developed lactose intolerance to cow’s milk.  Lactose intolerance was not something people knew about in 1967.  So my parents, frantic with a colicky baby who developed rashes and was always crying, had to learn how to pacify me.

Dad pacified me.  He carried me, rocked me to sleep, burped me, fed me, changed me.  Dad was my mom. My mother had palpitations and my mom had a dress shop.  She worked full-time from our home.  My Dad kept odd hours because he was a police investigator with the Mandaluyong Police and he was a struggling law student at the FEU.  From the very start, I was Daddy’s little girl. Circumstances conspired to make me Daddy’s little girl.  See, my mother gave birth to my sister, Rachel,  in 1969 but she died fourteen hours after she was born.  My brother was  not born until 1970.  I had Dad three years all to myself.

I was his shadow.  When I woke up, he was next to me, sleeping in the bed because he had come home from his shift at the police headquarters at 6am.  He prepared our breakfast (usually oatmeal or lugaw).  He gave me my bath.  He studied and read his law books while I played on the floor next to him.  Sometimes, he would get bored or agitated with his readings.  He would get restless and take my hand and he’d put my slippers on me and said we were taking a walk.

We lived in an apartment atop the Fernando’s Grocery on Shaw Boulevard.  My mother had a dress shop and a beauty parlor in front.  We lived behind my mom’s shop.  To get to our kitchen, there was a long flight of stairs.  I don’t know how many times I fell down those stairs (two times, I think) and it was always Dad who picked me up.  He never ran to get me, he was never perturbed or nervous.  From the top of the stairs, he would say, “Bimbi, what happened?  Are you hurt?  Get up.”  When I got up, that’s when he’d come down and inspect the damage.  There would be trip to the doctor later that day, maybe an x-ray, and it would be Dad who would take me.

I remember trying to reach his gun which was always kept in the kisame above the bed.  I bounced on the bed and stretched out my right arm to grab the gun and heard a pop!  I didn’t reach the gun, I fractured my clavicle!  My Dad took me to the Orthopedic to get a cast on my right shoulder.  When I healed, he taught me the parts of the gun.  He taught me how to clean a gun.  He told me he would teach me to fire it when I grew up and I can hold the gun. He made me promise not to touch the gun until he told me I could. I never touched a gun ever again.

When I skinned my knee playing, Dad would walk with me to Farmacia Lina at the crossroads of Shaw Boulevard and Acacia Lane.  He dressed my wound with agua oxygenada and merthiolate.  He would ask “Are you brave?  You have to be, because this will hurt but it will heal the wound faster. Are you ready?” And I always found it in me to be brave, because Dad wanted me to be brave.

It was my Dad who took me to the pediatrician at St. Luke’s for all my shots.  He told me I can squeeze his hand when it hurt but I cannot cry or throw a tantrum.  I never did.  We’d buy cinnamon rolls from the bakeshop outside St. Luke’s afterward.

Lest you think my Dad spoiled me, think again.  As much as my Dad loved me, his discipline was unbending. Once, I think, I played a trick on our househelp.  She was terribly afraid of the dark and she was taking a bath in the bathroom.  The light switch was outside the bathroom, just on the side of the door. I took a stool, climbed it and turned the light off in the bathroom.  Inday screamed.  She slipped and fell.  She didn’t get hurt but boy was Dad angry with me.  He told me it was cruel and mean to do that to other people. He told me to apologize to the househelp.  I refused.  What ensued was a spanking I would remember for the rest of my life. My Dad said, “Say sorry.” I would answer, “No.” And my Dad would spank me. The dialog and the spanking went on for what seemed like hours! Had this been done today, my Dad would be jailed for child abuse.  But I was three, maybe four, and I had a will of steel.  My Dad was determined to bend that will of steel and make it reasonable and righteous.

I finally gave up and said sorry.  My Dad was so relieved.  I hugged him. I was crying like anything.  I was not sorry I played a trick on the househelp.  I was sorry to see my Dad so upset with me.  I felt that the longer I held back, the farther and farther away he’d be from me. I thought he wouldn’t love me anymore!  That is why I gave in.

I would like to say that that marked the first and the last clash of wills between my Dad and I.  But, it was not.  We clashed on so many issues, I can’t remember them anymore.  But just as I dug in, I would think of how my stubbornness hurt my Dad and then I would think how unreasonable I was, and I usually repented and became obedient.  Obedience was and is never easy for me.  I only obey when I want to obey, when I believe it reasonable to obey.  My Dad’s iron will made sure I saw reason every time.

My Dad took me everywhere.  He took me in the mobile patrol; he took me to the Mandaluyong Jail, sometimes.  He took me to the munisipyo, he made me shake hands with the Chief of Police, the Warden, the Municipal Treasurer, everyone.  My Dad would always say, “Say hello, Bimbi, shake hands.”  This is how I lost all hint of shyness. People think I am confident, it’s a skill my Dad constantly drilled into me. My Dad took me to law school when I was three!  I have pictures with his classmates to prove it. He took me with him on his out-of-town preaching engagements.  I was my Dad’s shadow.

Sometimes, on our walks, my Dad would take me up Shaw Boulevard.  He would point out to me the streets: Luna Mencias, Pilar Street, the Waterous Hospital. Villa San Miguel, the palace of the Archbishop of Manila.  Our walks usually took us to Cherry Foodarama. Sometimes he would buy me a Magnolia drumstick and we’d share it.  Sometimes he’d buy halo-halo at the restaurant inside Cherry and we’d share it.

The best memory of those walks was when we’d buy one-fourth kilo of grapes.  I love the Toledo weighing scale.  It was bright and shiny, it had so many numbers on it and the one-fourth kilo of grapes looked so small a pile on the mirror-like basin of the weighing platform.  That was all he could afford on a policeman’s salary of P180 a month, only one-fourth kilo of grapes.

On our way out, after we had paid for the grapes and it was put in a brown paper bag, my Dad would take me to the weighing scale for people.  It was green and it stood like a grandfather clock.  He would weigh me and stand me next to the ruler on its neck.  He would say, “You’re growing up.”

The walk back to the house would be tiring for me (I was just three, after all).  My Dad would put me on his shoulders, holding onto my legs as we walked back to the house.  If I was sleepy, he’d say, “Bimbi, who made the sky?”  And I would answer “God.”  He would ask me next “Where is God?” “He’s in heaven.” “Where is heaven?”   “I don’t know, Dad. Where is heaven?”  “I guess we’ll find out when we die, anak.”

On our walks, he would make me recite the verses I had learned.  He’d ask me to sing the alphabet song, many other Sunday School songs and even hymns (this is why I have a good memory, I guess.)  When we get home, my Dad would wash the grapes and divide the grapes into three cups.  He’d say, “One for Mommy, one for Daddy and one for Bimbi.”  He would then cover mom’s cup with a saucer.  He’d start peeling my grapes for me.  He would remove the seeds and feed me the grapes. After that, he’d eat his grapes.  If I wanted more, he’d share his with me.  I have always felt that I was Daddy’s little girl.  And because of spending my formative years with my Dad this way, my Dad was my first teacher, my first friend and playmate.

My Dad became a lawyer in 1972.  He had many other accomplishments.  He has made himself known as a tough-talking and hard-nosed lawyer.  To me, though, he was the first model of what a good man is: tenderness and affection.  He was also brave (he always left before 10 pm to fight criminals and put them in jail).  He was smart (he read so many books!)  He was persevering (he was a houseboy, a yard boy, a preacher and then he became a lawyer).  He rose from poverty and ignorance when he left Agusan del Sur at 12 years of age to come to Manila and be a houseboy only so he could study.  He was spiritual– he taught me about God.  I have always thought highly of Dad.  I still do.

I told myself, he would be the standard not only for myself; he would be the example I would like to emulate.  I would always measure myself by the standards Dad has set because they were good standards.  As I grew up, I also told myself, I will marry no man unless he measured up to my Dad.

My Dad will be turning 74 in August.  He has had a minor heart attack and he has other health concerns but this has not diminished his diligence (he still appears in court everyday), his mental acuteness or his will to fight.

For those who know me, my Dad is open and vocal about how much he loves me.  But I daresay that he is also quite uninhibited when he derides and ridicules my choices, particularly, the choice of the man I married and the fact that I married at all.  At first, he said he thought I was a boy and wouldn’t get married.  Then he said I had married too early (I was 27 when I got married!)  He then said I was naive (I was a lawyer when I got married!).  My husband said my Dad has problems with letting me go, is all, because I was his little girl. He had problems letting my other siblings go, as well.

On the night before my wedding, he said he wouldn’t attend. We had a clash of wills about that. But it is perhaps because of my father’s love for me that he dragged his feet to my wedding.  He came.  He looked like he had been orphaned and tortured (you can see from the wedding pictures).  But he was there and I thought that it may take time, but he would come around eventually and see that I had not made a mistake.  I thought he would see that I am happy and he would be happy for me, because I was his little girl.

I thought you  understood, Dad: beneath the obvious difference in packaging, you and my husband share the same intrinsic qualities.  Beneath the difference in personality, the same strength of character, indomitable will and unwavering faith are common to you. The same diligence, perseverance and tining ng loob is what I see.  This is what makes me love my husband: the same things that make me love you, Dad.

I thought you understood the Elektra complex, Dad.  Little girls will always “marry” their Dads.  I can’t really marry you because you already belong to mom.  I had to find my own man.  And I did.  I found a good man. You know why I think he’s a good man?  He is so much like you.

You’re both lawyers, you both struggle and fight for justice and righteousness.  You refuse corruption.  You always stand for what is right even when you are all alone.  You go on and do your job even when the odds are all stacked up against you, when even before you start, you know that you will probably lose, you fight anyway, you play the game anyway with flair and aplomb. You both endure: sickness and hardship have come and gone but you are both still here, still alive and kicking.

That’s why I married him, Dad, because he reminds me of you.  He has that same love, tenderness and affection you gave me when I was little girl.  It’s the same love, tenderness and affection he gives our children. He is wise and reasoned, just like you. He is brave like you.  He makes me laugh and think, just like you. He walks with me, all the time.  He holds my hand. He talks to me all the time. He gives me the same kind of attention you used to give me. We’re always together, just like we were always together when I was small.  He’s a good man, Dad, just like you. He reminds me of the Dad I knew when I was three, the Dad you were before you became this hotshot busy lawyer.

Time is running short for you and for me: you’re 74, I am 45.  How much more time do we have, really?  There’s not much time to fight and bicker and disagree.  If you cannot trust the man I married (what father can, after all?), then trust my judgment. If you cannot love the man I married (what father can, after all?), then trust that you raised me right.  You raised me to be a good judge of character; you raised me to know right from wrong; and you raised me to choose to do the right thing.  You’ve set the tone and set the standard for personal excellence.  You’ve given the model, and believe me, you’ve taught me well how to obey.

I love you, Dad.  I always will. I was sick on Father’s Day and I didn’t get the chance to greet you. I want to take this opportunity to greet you a happy birthday before everyone else (never mind that it’s still a month away…).