Cc: Marvin Fausto
(Today is Father’s Day and I wish to share what my son Martin Fausto wrote about his father.)
My father always starts his financial talks and advices with this first step: KNOW YOURSELF. Now in the middle of job hunting, I’ve been pondering more deeply into my identity. I guess I have to know myself well so that I can make the right decision in landing my first job. In doing so during these past rainy days I have been thinking a bit more about one half of my being – my father.
Ever since my first awareness of manhood (thanks to the voluptuous Darna played by Anjanette Abayari), I remember desperately trying to create an identity different from that of my father. Maybe because since I was a baby I’ve always heard family and friends (and even strangers) say “Marvin na Marvin! Carbon Copy!” And of course even our names are almost identical, thanks to the fourth letter which distinguishes the senior from the junior.
While growing up I notice more and more our similarities. I stand up like him, laugh like him. Heck, we even have the same taste in women! A good friend of mine even pointed out that we have the same sense of humor.
Now with all these, I consciously and subconsciously exerted effort to veer away from being the “carbon copy of Marvin.” My father is an athletic guy. He can easily pick up a sport. When I was a kid, I was the same. I always got good reviews from my coaches when I first picked up tennis, swimming, volleyball, even golf. But somehow, I managed not to get seriously into any of those. My dad’s favorite subject is Math. Even if my Math grades were decent, I tend to consider it not to be my strength. But I must admit I enjoyed Finance in college, and of course I do keep a quarterly Balance Sheet as a family tradition.
One day while having a lunch date with my mom she asked me, “What is wrong with being like Papa anyway? Why are you trying hard not to be like him?”
That got me thinking. What is so wrong about being like Marvin Fausto? I’ll tell you what my dad is like.
When I was an infant and was very sick with clogged nose that I couldn’t breathe, Papa didn’t hesitate to suck the mucous from my nose to relieve me! Now, I don’t know if I could do that when my turn comes. During the days when I was a little boy addicted to watching Lion King on VHS and reading the book, I always felt and even told everybody that Papa is a great dad. He was my Mufasa. He loved to play rough games with us, to the point of scaring our mom.
He is a handyman that he fixes house problems the way he solves Math problems. He sees to it that within the three to four hours he spends with us at night, he finds out how our day was. He loves listening to our stories no matter how tired and stressed he was from work and traffic. He loves to watch great TV shows and movies with us in his man cave. He is very disciplined with his food intake and his exercise especially his running as he trains for his first marathon this year.
Papa is very kind and patient. He deals with unpleasant circumstances with calm and composure and sometimes, unbelievable optimism. His family and in-laws love and respect him dearly because he feels the same for them. I’ve heard how his colleagues and friends from work admire his being professional and fair and how they learn not just work skills from him but also life lessons. And of course, as my mom would put it, she is a happy person because she married a great man.
Tying it all together, I believe that a success indicator of being a father is that no matter how much a son desires to be his own self, at the end of the day, he still wants to be like him.
Just like my dad who has never admitted up to this day that he fancied then Ms. Rose Fres that morning their eyes first met at Far East Bank, I guess I’d also keep it to myself, I won’t openly admit that I do yearn to develop that one half of my being.
To my Mufasa, Happy Father’s Day!
