Childrenville

Many years after my father died, I returned to the Philippines of my childhood and met one of my father’s closest friends who told me a secret. “Your father,” he said, “was hard on you when you were growing up, and that was him, hard as stone. I never saw him cry. Only once. He came to me one night with a crumpled piece of note. It was something you had written. You ran away from home remember? He could not comprehend how you could have written something so wounding. He was visibly hurt, in tears. But I also remember how easily he shifted from that hurt, how his face suddenly lit up and he exclaimed, “But damn, what my son wrote was brilliant!” He was hurt but he was proud of you.”

This is part of Willi P's Palanca-slamming entry, Lost in Childrenville. It is about his Dad and is 23-pages long so if you want to read it, leave your email add at the end of the beep.