call him der-fa:-)

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“Did you have a good night of sleep?” my father would ask. “I had, thanks to you and your shorts” and we will both laugh.
Those nights of never ending nightmares meant discomfort for my father too. He had to put up sleeping beside me and wearing those shorts I prepared for him because in my queer imagination,”it"was doing “wonders” to combat my bedtime nemesis. My parting phrase wasn't the conventional "See you in my dreams!" but “See you in my nightmares, Papa!”
Even after my nightmare scares, I watched him closely as possible. He frequented an enigmatic enclave in our backyard. I counted his trips daily and when it reached twelve, I brushed all hesitations of going there myself. I thought he built me a playhouse because the structure looked the part. I went inside; giddy to find out what’s there. Unknown to me, fighting cocks were kept flying in every direction. I run away sobbing. I felt cheated that my father cared to build something for the cocks and none for me.
To appease my jealousy, he and my mother commissioned carpenters to build Ate and I a playhouse.A sudden urge of elation filled me as it appeared imposing compared to my previous object of envy. But on the second day, I noticed how the cocks conspicuously grew more in number. Papa said the cocks were gifts not commodities he bought. He added he was not as attached to them as I thought he was. Unwilling to start a tantrum, I gave him the cold shoulder shrug. I run to the playhouse and spotted manures on its balcony. I went ballistic. I launched my vendetta by throwing two stones per cock. The smaller ones were for making a toilet bowl out of my playhouse. The larger ones were for those times Papa spent in kneading their feathers, feeding them with what looked to me as oatmeal, and nursing them back to health. I was the cock’s Cruella de Vil. My sight was enough reason for them to go amuck.
My hatred extended to all age groups of their specie. Even the tiny chicks fresh from eggshells weren’t spared. I drowned them in the tub. Papa caught me redhanded.During his interrogation, I said in exaggerated insincerity “Papa, I just wanted to give them a bath”. He gave me a look that was more amused than annoyed.
He was the quintessential provincial man-one who loved the laid back and carefree compass of rustic lifestyle. There was nothing he loved to do more than commune with nature. Blessed with a green thumb, he would let me sit beside him as he planted varied fruit trees. He would tell me that planting pays off for every seedling you bury may reward you with multiple harvests.
So in my perverted logic, I tweaked the principle of multiplicity. I gathered all my pencils in loam soil. I made sure there was enough distance because Papa told me distance is essential to avoid overlapping. My pencils never multiplied in number. They met their untimely demise on my hands. I should have known that my father wanted me to appreciate nature, not rupture.
A semblance of sameness from the rest disinterests him. He wanted whatever he gave me to be different. When he noticed that everybody’s baskets were filled with bougainvilleas, he took me to a floral estate fronting the beach so I could fill my Flores de Mayo baskets with fragrant calachuchis. All eyes and noses were on me as I traversed the narrow alley of the chapel and showered a fistful of petals in wanton freedom.
When I whimpered I couldn’t catch a butterfly on my palm, he brought home a huge brown one inside the container. The captivity may have signified more harm than good in the ecosystem but for all it’s worth, it was a sure manifestation of a splendid truth-he was willing to look beyond all my naughty streaks and do everything humanly possible to show me he cared.
In the haywire days of schooling, when tuition shaving and allowance padding was the popular scheme, I’d troop into money transfer booths and register the same old password he sends me “miss you”.
During my bonafide bum stint at home, he would call me from his office just to tell me that he spotted our dog making love with another dog and that I need not worry because the other dog was of a good breed. He listened to my stories about Barack Obama and why I adore him like crazy. The next day, he flipped through the pages of time magazine and read about the US President whose keynote speech made me cry. He kept bringing newspapers, waving it like a prized bone to a sniffing dog, asking me if I was done reading it. I’d say no, take a dive at the newspaper, and peruse it from top to bottom, irrespective of the fact that I already finished reading it as early as one am in the internet. Having a good father is genetic lottery .As they say; it’s easier for a father to have a child than for a child to have a real father. He wasn’t the kind of father who overdoses on sermons or was dependent on leather belts to instill discipline. My sisters and I grew up thinking that ours was a democratic household wherein we are free to talk without the horror of a maimed tongue or a bruised limb.
As proof, when my younger sister chided his bet Oscar de la Hoya as too slow and too old against Floyd Mayweather; he didn’t display the outrage of a fan. Instead, he was game to strike a deal that if de la Hoya losses, my sister’s wishes will be his commands. For one week, my sister enjoyed posting what to buy and what to do in the front door. He played the good sport, faithfully delivering the caprices of a seventeen year old.
He would always tell us that his greatest achievement was raising four independent girls whom at twelve can already make it on their own. I would have second the motion except for the fact that he didn’t just raise four; he raised five including my dewy-eyed Mom. But raising us would be too light a word to put it. He did more than that. He gave all of us a decent shot at life.
Like the gustiness of the wind, the years quickly passed. My nightmares have become anecdotal cobwebs. But he continued to be every inch of a savior that he was. He was there, tending to me when I was frail and febrile after incurring eight bee bites.He was with me, commiserating, when my heart was shrunken in despair and copious tear were welling out of my eyes. He was beside me, an hour and forty minutes before my twenty second birthday. In a narrow chair, he skimped with the space we shared as he listened to one of my favorite tracks. He reaffirmed it was a gem and as he placed back the headset on my ears, told me in a toothless smile that he loves me more.
Last New Year's eve, I made an oath to myself that everyday, I will wake up believing that if I try harder maybe my weaker faculties can still have its chance. I completely gave up on music though. But in a squeaky voice and spooky tune, I will still be crooning Tim McGraw’s "My little girl" song because I know that back home, a fifty-nine year old man who means the world to me, likes it as much as I do.