My Father and Gay Pride

The author and his dad (Source: the author's Facebook post)

I had to tell Dad one day, and it was that weekend. Driving from Berkeley to be with him at his Fresno farm I was slightly nervous but was not afraid. He never gave me a sense he'd violently react. He was a strict father when we were younger, but the intent was to make us morally upright. Everybody was equal and no one was to be mistreated, something he learned having been a young field worker on California farms and later as a soldier in the U.S. Army. We were to eat all the food on our plate, something from his poor peasant days in Pangasinan.

At around four years of age, he taught me how to walk erect like a soldier. I failed miserably. I walked with a sway and softness despite many attempts on the living room floor. His face turned very stern, and I softly begged, "Please Dad, no more..." and I let loose the tears. My yaya (nanny) at a distance, rushed to me and whisked me away. I noticed that his face went into a grimace, realizing he had hurt me. We never had those walking lessons again.

It was a red setting sun, outlining the grape vines and the plum trees on his farm. We had walked that whole afternoon and were now headed home.

Dad, I hesitantly said, I have something to tell you. He slowly came to a halt, surveyed the length of his farm bordered by a long road with a lone car sputtering at a distance. When there was no other sound except a few birds singing and a gentle evening wind, he slowly looked at me, his face having remembered that certain pitch in my voice, the one that begged to him long ago.

He said, "I know, son. I know." We gazed at each other in the dimming light, the tears glimmering from the dying red rays.

My Dad's embrace was always warm and caressing with his Old Spice wafting about. It was the embrace of peasants, holding aloft their children full of light squeezes and excessive kisses first preceded by their noses touching faces and inhaling deeply to intensify affection.

We walked home arms on each other's shoulder. I whispered thank you and my lips neared his neck. I inhaled deeply, very deeply, before I kissed it.

Happy Father's Day. Happy Gay Pride, Dad.

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John L. Silva is executive director of the Ortigas Library, a research library in Manila.

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