When I was in grade school, my weekends and summers were usually spent at my cousins�s place. My cousins were three girls around the same age as me. They were my regular playmates. My mother would drop me off their house which was about three kilometres away from ours, to be able to attend to her responsibilities at home which she had neglected due to her work, like bringing my younger brothers (my youngest sister wasn�t born yet at this time) to the clinic for check-up, or supervising the cleaning of this or that part of our house.
We were better off than my cousins at that time, my father being able to work abroad and earn dollars. He used to send me and my brothers hi-tech toys. But although I had better play things than them, they were never envious; in fact it was I who had reasons to be. One summer night proved that I was.
My youngest cousin and I were left alone in their house that night. His father was with us earlier, but he sneaked out of the house unnoticed when we were busy with the television. Her sisters went to visit their grandparents with their mother. A couple of hours passed but my uncle still hasn�t showed up. My cousin began to cry around midnight. She was afraid. But not because it�s dark and we were alone. We were not afraid of the things that scare little boys and girls at night such as a monster hiding under the bed. There were two of us; we could fight the evil lurking in the dark.
My cousin was afraid that her father had abandoned us. Abandoned her.
I cried with her the whole night. He was a father figure to me and I can�t help but think negative. I knew that outside he was less safe than us. We cried until sleep overpowered us.
I was awakened by the heat of the sun coming into the room via the window that we had forgotten to lock the night before. I heard the faint giggle of my cousin. I opened my eyes. She was with my uncle. He was hugging her father and asking where he had been. I can�t remember if he answered the question, I was so captured by the moment. A father with his daughter. A daughter with her father.
They were a picture the eye of a painter or a photographer would like to immortalize in canvass or film. And I, even though was in the background with them, would be carefully erased from the scene so as not to spoil it.
In my young age it was the first time that I felt real emotional pain. It was different from not being able to have the Barbie doll I�ve been wanting for Christmas. It was worst than that for a child. I would like my cousin to be me, her father my own father. But will power alone could never make my wish come true. He was there when she needed him, his hug melting all the fears and pains away.
My father was out of the country that time, as he was most of my childhood. He sent me and my brother (my other brother and sister were not yet born) imported toys other children would kill for, including my cousins, but somehow even the most expensive toys I was very willing to give up to make him stay us.
I was just a child then, but I remember the scene in my cousins� room until this day. I have my share of moments with my father but they were later in my life. I couldn�t blame him, of course, for missing out on the crucial moments in my life, even if I want to. I can�t. He was a victim like me. We are victims still. And there are hundreds of thousands, if not already millions of us.
I remember the film Anak which starred Vilma Santos and Claudine Barretto. Vilma�s character came back to the Philippines after years of working as a domestic worker abroad to put up a small business. She did this to be close to her daughter (played by Claudine) and son, whom she did not see grow up. Her son was open to the idea, but her elder child hinted that she rather stay away from them for good.
Claudine�s character was a rebel: a school drop-out who became involved with a group of drug-addicts, engaged in unsafe premarital sex and eventually gotten herself pregnant. She won�t listen to the people who only wish the best for her. She was a mother�s headache.
Our society labels people like Claudine�s character delinquents, irresponsible human beings, black sheep, among others. Most of them shouldn�t be. Most of them are products, not of their parents� irresponsibility, but rather of this same society�s insensitivity to the needs of its people.
Thousands of Vilmas leave the country unwillingly everyday. Thousands of families get broken everyday. Thousands of children become rotten everyday. All of these needlessly happen because one government forgets its responsibility to provide jobs for its people everyday.
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