Remembrance and Thanksgiving

Haiku

Twenty-five years passed
I can still see you clearly
Your voice still booming

This is my favorite photograph of my father, taken right before the Lion's Club Induction at the Aklan Cultural Center. It was an opportunity to use the word "isputing" which was street talk for 'dressed to impress'. He was tasked to introduce their Guest of Honor and I, a Grade V pupil, wrote his spiel. 

Though I literally am the spitting image of Nanay, I was closer to Tatay, a World War II veteran and a boxing aficionado who absolutely had no qualms about my being gay.

This was taken after I won my first writing competition when I was a High School Junior.

He always insisted on getting a copy of all my published articles and when I became a correspondent for a Singapore-based publishing firm producing lifestyle magazines exclusively for a major credit card company's Gold Account holders, I had a problem because I only get one copy per issue. Of course he had them. Frustrated that he could not give away copies to relatives and friends, I was compelled to write Entertainment features for Manila Bulletin's Panorama Magazine which came out on Sundays. He bought them by the dozen.  

People are invariably surprised to find out that Tatay served as Chairman of the Poblacion Barangay Council of our hometown, Libacao. And let me hasten to add, he was elected, not appointed, the latter being what people always assumed, because, though he understood the language and it nuances, he could not speak Aklanon.
This is inscribed on the marker of their project, The Cry of Balintawak, a triangular shaped monument at the entrance of Poblacion proper.