BY JULIA CARREON-LAGOC
IN celebration of Father’s Day, June 15, I ask for your kind indulgence, dear reader, in sharing with me this remembrance of my father. I’m here in the heartland of the U.S. of A., still jet-lagged, my mind taking whiffs of nostalgia for Bayan Ko. Sweet reminiscence is no respecter of time and place, and thus, this repost about my father. Read on:
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A seed gets planted in the garden of our young minds, fondly nurtured in the growing-up years in the hope that it may blossom and bear fruit in the ensuing years. That’s how this writer got into the business (and hobby) of writing.
My father, the late Simplicio C. Carreon, Sr., would tell me after reading the fine (!) pieces I wrote in grade school, You’re going to be a journalist. Well, it does inspire the spirit when your father believes in you.
However, I considered his remarks compensatory because I was not blessed with my parents’ knack for figures which my sisters and brothers had inherited.
Father was a terrrific Math major while my mother, Cristeta Rivera, was a whiz at getting perfect Math scores. Titang, the neighbors knew, was the wife with a distaste for political life. She would have preferred for my father to continue being high school principal rather than run for public office.
Simplicio Sr. was mayor of Oton for 12 years. Yes, he was re-elected twice. Newly elected government officials may take his daring for making a lot of enemies in his first term of office.
He uprooted the houses squatting at the back of the Oton Municipal Building, a wide area where now sit the Multi-purpose Gymnasium, the Puericulture Center, the Senior Citizens Bldg., a series of shops, and a parking lot for trisikads, tricycles, jeeps, etc. It was a to-hell-with-all-comers attitude for as long as one has the public good in mind.
Father was a terrific swimmer; else, how could he have survived when the ship he was a passenger sank in Manila Bay when it ran into a mine during World War II? Reason for him to teach all his children how to swim. Thus, early in our childhood, Sundays would find us kids by Oton’s seaside, father dividing the bread and soft drink after we had taken a dip in the waters. We turned out, brothers and sisters, all fine swimmers. Appetite was robust after a Sunday outing, and father used to say, “Eat lunch like a carabao and sleep like a carabao.” Ah, the simple life of long ago.
If I have to classify our economic status then, I would say Tatay and Nanay belonged to the lower-middle category. It was kayud — every letter of the word meant painstaking sacrifice on their part — sending seven children through college.
Education enabled us in the second generation to rise to the rung of the middle-middle, that is truly middle class. Progress is evident in the third generation — I would say in the upper-middle bracket — who now enjoy the finer things in life: tours, cruises, museums, art, etc. At least, a step above the kayud that I and Rudy, the hubby, doggedly kept on for our son and daughters to earn a college diploma.
1993 was Tatay’s final journey to Shakespeare’s “undiscovered country where no traveler ever returns.” A Mass was officiated by Fr. Ronnie Carreon, his grandson, who said in his homily that Tatay was a poor town official and died a poor town official. The audience understood the truth behind his statement.
Father wished for me to throw in nuggets of wisdom in things I write. What father meant was to abide by the dictates of conscience in putting words into print. Henceforth, in my own small way, make a difference through writing — onward a one-way street without crooked detours, and always for the uplift of mankind.
To be assertive, to cry against injustice, to protest where there are “deviations from the norm” — these beliefs I have imbibed from my old folks. Injustice, prejudice, deviations from the norm. It seems all of printer’s ink is never mighty enough to go battle these plagues of society.
But there is passion enough to WRITE about these things, and RIGHT them, too. I think I could hear my old man prodding from across the Great Divide, You’re a journalist. Try to make a difference no matter how little. Yes, Tatay, I will.
What more can I say? With a heart full of gratitude, you are lovingly and prayerfully remembered. (juliaclagoc@yahoo.com)/PN
