Accents
Supermarket dads
The second Sunday of June, the 18th, was Father's Day, internationally celebrated too, and while gifts for fathers are still enticingly displayed in the malls, I'd like to put in some fatherhood statements for the "haligi sang balay" (post or pillar of the household). Agree with me or not, we've been having a surfeit of motherhood statements to the point of being generally unfair to fathers. Fact is motherhood statements themselves have become so trite, many have been abused by overuse. Not fatherhood statements, however. Now to even up the scale one bit...
Just a stone's throw from where my husband Rudy and I temporarily reside is Iloilo City's supermarket. Here I meet fathers thick in the commerce of daily existence. Like the supermarket moms I featured for Mother's Day, these are ordinary people in the humdrum struggle to eke out a livelihood, ordinary lives that make up the huge base of the social pyramid.
I was dressed in my favorite Liz Claiborne T-shirt that I bought for P20 at the supermarket's "ukay-ukay." The signature T-shirt drowned the capri pants I got at a chain store in the US. Rufino Aurillo, Jr., 44, "ukay-ukay" vendor, and his wife Margarita were spreading out the pile of assorted used garments. I told the couple I wasn't buying any; I was into interviewing for a column, and they obliged. They've been into the "ukay-ukay" business since 1992, were into sari-sari store before that. Rufino said he was short one semester for a Marine Engineering diploma, but lack of finances and marriage stopped the desire to travel the seas as a marine engineer. Their eldest daughter, Pearly Joy, is an Accountancy student. Their son hopes to be a computer technician. Two other children are still in the elementary. Would they be able to see all four through college? "Only the future can tell."
Allen Panilla, 28, another 'ukay-ukay" vendor was standing by. He sighed that his bundles of used clothing had cost him P5,000 but thus far in the morning he has sold only P500 worth. "Wala-wala gid" -- the easiest way of expressing dissatisfaction, and "lousy" is the closest English equivalent I could think of. Indeed business is sluggish -- the common complaint from the moms and dads I've talked to. Allen didn't finish high school. He doesn't blame his parents for his not getting any further in his education; he blames poverty for this. He said he's a product of a broken family, and again blames poverty being the cause of his parents' separation.. Allen remembered, "I had only P200 when my wife gave birth to our first-born." His wife tends a small "tiangge" (sari-sari store) in Baluarte, and together they try their best to bring up their two kids. He is determined to send them to school and to finish "even if high school only," which he himself never did.
Alejandro Valaquio, 45, has been a tricycle driver for 20 years now. His tricycle was loaded with goods of a passenger bound for La Paz when I chatted with him. His wife Rosinee tends to their brood of seven. Theirs is a typical extended family with their two married children living with them and the two grandchildren by them. One son drives a "sikad" (mind you, our deplorable counterpart of a Chinese rickshaw) while the other works in a carinderia. Alejandro rents the tricycle for P150/day. Never, he said, is he ever going to have one he can call his own for "How can I afford P72,000 for a brand-new one or P110.00 for the installment plan?"
Joselito Maleriado, 43, sells bamboo barbecue sticks, is paid P3,000/month for his efforts by the stall owner. His wife Rebecca makes the sticks in Igbaras, their hometown, and Joselito says she earns more than he does. His daughter Glorie is a working student at CPU, a freshman in BSE, one child is in high school, and two are in the elementary. His dream is for them to finish college, ending our brief chat with "Kun masarangan" (if we can afford it).
Those are fathers, age ranging from 45-28, from middle-age to below, all in the thick of the struggle to "put food on the table," -- a struggle that would cease only when breath gives out -- hard, grueling, and real tough unlike the one enjoyed by the privileged in society. They are typical supermarket fathers all looking forward to a better education for their children, something they themselves have not attained. They are the typical "haligi sang balay," their wives co-haligi, too. It's a partnership all the way. Yes, not one but two posts helping each other earn a living, planning and dreaming together for reachable goals for their children.
I wish I have a sociology professor to ask out right what chance will the fathers I've engaged into conversing make it to Father's Day Roll of Honor, never mind Father's Day Hall of Fame. A generation from now, will they consider themselves successful fathers when they look back down the years to their own brood from ages 45 to 28 like the ones I've just interviewed here? I wish I could dig deep for some profundity that would define the lives of these representative fathers from the mass base of the Philippine social pyramid.
(Comments to lagoc@hargray.com)