Fathers and Son
Kai Alfonso in Ang Pinoy Stories
May 19, 2020 • 3 min Read
Labels rule our lives.
Our parents, siblings, friends, elders, teachers, even strangers, and the social media, unknowingly give us labels, especially when we are still in developing to be adults. The labels are then subconsciously engrained in our personalities. Like our post-it reminders, they stick. Negative affirmations describing our physical aspects such as “lampa,” “mahina,” “pango,” and “pangit” hit us deep.
Some of them can be lies. Unfortunately, repetition of such lies becomes the truth in our lives.
I once had a heart to heart to talk with my Nanay regarding this. She is fond of telling everyone how she loves my son, but the phrase I always hear, after the affirmative loving is “Kawawa naman kasi wala siyang Papa.” I would always counter this phrase with “Of course not, he is blessed because we are his family.”
I became a single parent by choice when my boyfriend who got me pregnant left for Kuwait. He had a three-year contract there and I was at the height of my career. It was pointless for me to try to stop him. But deep in my heart I wanted him to make that decision himself and stay. So when I learned that he actually left, I stopped communicating. There were labels, of course. Foremost were “dalagang ina” and “disgrasyada” but at 33 and being able to fend for myself and my son and stand on my own two feet, not even my family can question me and I refused to submit to whatever labels society threw my way.
My son grew up with my mother until he was one year old, after which we stayed with my sister in Manila. Wherever we were, I made it a point that family for him is not limited to both of us only, so he called my brothers and brother-in-laws Daddy and Papa, and my sisters Mama. He grew accustomed to this family set up that when he was asked by his kinder teacher to draw his family he made three sets. One with me and my mother, one with my brother’s family in the province, and one with my sister where we stayed. He never stopped to convince his teacher until he was allowed to draw all the three. Early on, he defined family according to what is true to him. Today he has four families. On his 16th birthday I allowed his father’s family with his 3 siblings and his wife to embrace him.
In our province in La Union, he is my brother’s son; in our subdivision in Bulacan, everyone knows he is my brother-in-law’s son; with his father in Zamboanga, he is his son; and in our condo in Manila, I am both a father and mother to him. I hope he doesn’t miss anything. After all, he has so many fathers who love him.
I always taught my son that he was complete and nobody could put labels on him nor should he allow labels. He should focus on what he has at the moment, appreciate the present, and not ascribe to the fallacies our world would try to name us. Today at 18, he is a varsity player and enjoys an athletic scholarship and training.
God who is our Father has given us our true identity and we are His. We ought to live in this truth, knowing we are a child of God and let this set us free from the bondage of a hurting identity given by this world.
