We, the older kids, called him Papa. I don’t know when we started calling him Daddy.
He gave me a gold chain bracelet for my 17th birthday. He had it engraved I think at Mommy’s suggestion. It was inscribed with my name and the wrong date 9/19/48. I wore it all the time and was devastated when I lost it trying on clothes at a SFO dress shop.
He taught me how to use a kitchen knife safely, with the fingers of my left hand curled away from the blade.
He once told me about a cocktail he liked that he’d just tried the night before, an Americano. He told me how it’s made:
He introduced me to good Chinese food. We had lunch at a restaurant in Binondo and he ordered several dishes for just the two of us. I particularly remember stir fried shrimp with cashews.
He was always worried about me being thin and sickly so he’d buy me tomato juice (he’d have it chilling in the fridge but I never took to it), cook me calf’s liver (seared briefly in a very hot pan), and make me French toast for breakfast.
He’d come home in the middle of a workday to bring me grapes whenever I was sick.
He once stayed up all night seated upright in a chair at my bedside when I had pneumonitis.
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He’d beam and compliment me on how I looked when I got all dressed up for something.
Once, we were walking through something that could only have been an aisle in some dry goods market, me walking behind him. I remember the dress I was wearing: a sleeveless black and white floaty, pleated Diane Freís dress. Looking back at me and smiling proudly, he said, “Ngayon lang ba sila nakakita ng maganda?”
He kept a picture of me in his wallet. He said he’d see me looking at him every time he opened it. It stopped him betting on the horses.
One day he told me to have my front tooth fixed. He looked very worried; he said it looked loose.
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On one of Mommy and Daddy’s holidays in Singapore, Daddy told me, “Alam mo, wala na si Pareng Carding.”
He then told me about his dear friend. How he and Carding Capili together courted his future wife because Carding was too shy. He was very proper and a very neat person (he’d pick up dust and lint on his desk top with his pinkie finger).
One day, I saw Daddy looking out longingly at the empty tennis court downstairs in Wing On Life Garden. “Puede pa kaya ako pumalo?” He said. So we went down and tried to hit a few balls. I was a hopeless hitter so he quickly tired.
I upset him once when Mommy and I forgot all about him waiting for us while we were shopping. He had nowhere to sit and had gotten very tired.
He loved having high tea at the ShangriLa’s Compass Rose. He’d always put down other places where the servers didn’t kneel before him to give him his tea.
He once laughingly complained in his dead-pan delivery as we were getting ready to go out for dinner. “Ang hirap nito, kailangan ka nang magbihis, tapos mag-iingglis ka pa!”
Once, while we were enjoying a monorail drive around Sentosa, he mused, “Wala sa mga kaibigan ko ang nakaranas ng ganito.”
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Daddy called me one day from Manila to tell me he was feeling very weak. He was crying and could hardly speak.
Stuart and I decided we should spend more time in Manila so we got rid of our long-staying Ambuklao tenant, got all our stuff out of storage and moved in ourselves. Stuart shuttled back & forth to Singapore.
Daddy helped me unpack boxes and set up the kitchen. He changed all the plugs in our Singapore appliances to Manila plugs, leaving those that had built-in fuses because they were safer.
Daddy was always all about safety. I remember Yaya Conching telling me about Daddy sitting on the stairs in Ambuklao fuming about a suspected leak in the gas tank in my kitchen. He’d been shouting at everybody, telling the maids to go get Ezy. When no one came, he started yelling in the street. Yaya said they were all trembling in fear.
Some mornings, when for some reason I was home alone, I’d find him sitting in the rocking chair in Ambuklao’s back porch, waiting for me to wake up and open the door.
Some days he’d walk in at lunchtime asking “Ano’ng ulam mo?” So we’d have lunch together.
He came for merienda almost daily. We’d chat and I’d have Yaya walk behind him as he walked home. He was so weak and thin, almost transparent like a leaf wafting in the wind but he refused to have anybody hold his arm to steady him. I’d watch them until he turned into the house in La Mesa.
Once, as he watched Stuart and me get in the car to go to the airport, he sobbed softly, covering his mouth tightly with his hand. I’ll never forget the sound of him whimpering, almost like a whining.
Whenever I left to join Stuart in Singapore, Daddy would already be in the car when Tito Danilo came to take me to the airport. Without fail.
For a long time after he died, I regularly went to St James first to say goodbye to Daddy before leaving for the airport.
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