The passage of time: A memory from out of nowhere

My dad told me to ditch school and go to the mall with him instead!

So what if your dad invited you to go to the mall? you ask. This is something that my parents and I do on a normal basis.

In the middle of me reading my latest read, Storyworthy (haven’t finished it as of writing this), I don’t know why but I suddenly got reminded of the time when my dad invited me to go to the mall one day while I was in college.

Now I know that for a lot of you, this will be the most boring topic. So what if your dad invited you to go to the mall? you ask. This is something that my parents and I do on a normal basis.

But I grew up with a seaman for a father. I couldn’t remember a time in my life when he wasn’t a seaman. As a matter of fact, he was at it for so long that he was already one even before he settled down and had me.

This meant that I grew up with my father just occasionally being around. When I got older, I remember trying to count the total span of time my dad and I spent together and I kid you not, I think I could count it with just two hands.

But that’s a topic for a different day. For now, let me share with you the story of that fateful day when he was the one who encouraged me to skip school and instead go to the mall with him.

So the story goes like this: it was a random weekday—I don’t even recall what day of the week it was. All I could remember was that it was sometime in the summer; perhaps March or April. I was getting ready for school, all dressed up, but still had enough time to walk around the house. My dad suddenly came out of nowhere and enticed me to ditch school so we can go to the mall instead. Now, again, this was not something my father often did. Since he worked away from home for months on end (sometimes even working overseas for more than a year), he liked staying at home when his contract ended and he was finally on break. Therefore, while other classmates and friends would go out with their parents like it was part of their every day lives, this was not something that my siblings and I were familiar with. When our dad was home, more often than not, we also would just be at home with him (unless we were in school).

I smiled at him as I noted the importance of that day. I don’t know what made me think that that little exchange was important but I knew, while it was happening, that it was something I would never forget my entire life. Perhaps it was because it was so out-of-the-blue, so unexpected. But regardless of how meaningful that day was, I wasn’t able to indulge him in his request. “I would love to, Dad, but I can’t,” I told him.

“Come on, anak,” he started, “I would even take a shower for you.” This made me laugh at him. My dad and I both knew that he wasn’t the biggest fan of showering. Of course, he would shower every day, but he was an overweight man and it was the summer, so he had been sweating profusely and wasn’t the freshest during our conversation. Besides, most of the time, he never cared for how he looked. He couldn’t care less about how he appeared to other people. But he knew that it made me, his daughter in college, a little embarrassed every time we would be somewhere and I would think he didn’t look like a father who held a good job because he couldn’t be bothered with dressing up for the mall.

I know. I was an insufferable child then.

“Dad, normally, I would be flattered but even if you didn’t make the offer, I would still have taken you up on your invitation. How often do you ask us to go to the mall with you, right? But I really can’t today because I have midterms,” I added, letting him know that it wasn’t that I didn’t want to go out or be seen with him, it was just that my school obligation wouldn’t allow me to say yes. How could I miss my midterms for the sake of going to the mall? Missing the midterms would have meant having to make up for it at some point and since everyone already took theirs, I may have ended up with a more difficult version of the exams. Besides, I couldn’t deal with the possibility of a delay in me receiving my grade or worse, receiving a grade that was much lower than I expected.

When I told my dad that, he nodded. It seemed that he finally understood why we couldn’t play truant and spend the afternoon together. And a part of me recognized the biggest irony of that day: as a child, I wanted nothing more than to see my dad more often, to spend time with him the same way my classmates and friends got to spend time with their own fathers. But when the day came that it was my father who wanted to spend time with me, it was me who couldn’t do that with him anymore because I was growing up and starting to have obligations that I couldn’t just set aside. I told him that we’ll just hang out when I get home but since my school was far, it would be late by the time I get back and we wouldn’t be able to go to the mall anymore.

A couple of months after that day, my father went for what he expected to be his last stint at being a ship captain working overseas. He was getting on in age, the work was getting tougher on his body, and maybe he too realized that his children were growing up and he was missing a lot of our milestones, with him being away from us most of our lives. He was getting ready for retirement and have started planting that idea in our heads.

But that break he had when I was going to summer school turned out to be his last break. Later that year, during the week when I was wondering why I haven’t heard from him for a while, which was very much unlike him, I got a call from his company. Apparently, my father suffered a heart attack while out at sea and since the weather was bad on that day, they couldn’t get a boat out to him and he passed away in his ship, unable to get the medical help he needed in order to survive.

I never got to see my dad again. I didn’t even get to talk to him, didn’t get the chance to say good bye.

I’m old now. I’m in an age that, if I was so inclined, I could have kids of my own. And every now and then, that day when my dad invited me to go to the mall comes back to me.

I like sharing this story with friends who say they don’t get to spend as much time with their kids as they want to because they’re too busy with work. I tell them how, when I was a kid, all I wanted to do was hang out with my dad but I couldn’t because he needed to work. But when he finally had enough time to hang out with me, I couldn’t because I was getting older and life was starting to get in the way.

I never hated him for being away. He did a good job of making us understand why he needed to leave us behind for months on end. However, it doesn’t change the fact that we grew up knowing we didn’t get to spend enough time with him.

If I knew that I would never see my dad again, I would have thrown caution to the wind and hung out with him when he asked me to. Who knew how our lives would have turned out if we ended up playing hooky on that day instead of being responsible?

I miss my dad. Every year, on important days in my life, I often wonder if he would’ve been proud of me had he gotten the chance to witness me grow up. I think I turned out ok. At least I would like to think so.

How about you? Do you get to spend time with your parents? Or if you’re one, do you set aside time in your day or week to spend with your kids? I hope you do because life has a funny way of dealing with us and we never know how much of it we have left.