His Dad and Him

There are a lot of stories about how people are in this world. There are jillions of ways of opposing someone, loving someone, telling someone whether they’re right or wrong, how they build life. And amongst those stories I’ve heard, the stories of how a child was raised are my favorites.

I’ve noticed how each person will stay a child within the presence of their parents; how they are grown but still will be a child. How they always act a certain way in front of their parents simply because it’s how the parents expected them to be. We, as a child, will never be able to choose a side except if one of our parents broke our heart, or maybe not choosing any of the two because we couldn’t decide who hurts us more.

I’ve seen some very discipline parents, and I’ve seen very nice parents. Both ways raised a very different kind of human being. None the less, they are still beings.

But today, here’s a story about this guy whom his dad grew him in a disciplinitarian home; a son who never had more embrace than his dad’s cold and sharp reminders. He never even met him for more than an hour a week because of his dad’s tight schedule.

He knows that his dad knows everything; and therefore he stayed a kid within his presence – he doesn’t want to oppose his dad even though he would always enjoy a good debate with someone so accountable, someone reliable for the fact stated, but most importantly someone who bore him. But he never had any chance to do it with him outside the time his dad gives to him – which was only once every month.

He stayed a kid so that it’s easier to pretend that he’s not there when his dad scolds him; because he knows exactly what would happen if he did it at the wrong time with the wrong audience. He stayed because someone else besides him knows him as well as the facts. And arguing with dad over a fixed matter is going to be useless because he knows who will win.

And today, he just wanted to stay silent and accentuate his dad just through his physical features. They really looked alike. Some of his dad’s features are his. He wanted to remember how he enjoyed his dad’s lecture when he was young, how his dad’s passion for people is what taught him to study hard and be as smart and accountable as his dad is so that one day he will be able to be like him; how God is an inevitable quantity for humans to keep learning about; and how he really wanted to just get out of the way and let dad do all the talk instead of him. Alas, the time comes for his dad to ask him to speak. He didn’t object, but his childness evaporates as soon as his first word emerges.

People say he resembles his dad more by spirit rather than just physically, but they will never now – not until he speak, at least.

Like a mask, his pride took over and he talked flawlessly. He has forgotten what he wanted to do initially and get carried into the formation of ideas his dad encouraged.

But it wasn’t just me who saw what happened. Everybody saw it. Their father and son relationship is rather mechanical than human. There’s a tension in their talk, in their way of treating each other.

And I saw it.

I couldn’t be wrong.

There has to be something.

I’m always good at observing, but I do not ask good questions as much, sadly.

That’s why this story of father and sonhood ends here, this way. All I know about them is that some people will translate their tension as “natural” because that’s what dad and sons are supposed to do – that it will  be awkward to do anything else such as a hug. But some others, like me, will translate it as a “tension”, because even though they are partners bounded by blood, nobody have known his dad better than him, his son. Everybody else can seem closer to his dad because they never know what he really is like inside – and its just unfair because they never knew the monster inside his dad and acted like they knew his dad so much better than he did –red