the fruit does not fall far from the tree

It was a blustery day today, a day that might make Winniether Pooh think of raiding a bee's nest for honey. Daddy had to go get new fenders for my brother's car. Mommy had to in buy cloth in Divisoria and then go to a meeting in CCP. They asked us to go with them, and then left us at the Starbucks in Diosdado Macapagal highway while they do their errands. As they pulled away, I said to Jacqui, "We're like Hansel and Gretel."

Daddy comes back for us right away, of course. We've already eaten lunch so we just sit with him as he eats. In this blustery day, I'm actually in a good mood. I'm not sick as I was the last few days. I manage to catch the joke he makes about getting a veggie sandwich because he has enough meat from his chef's salad. But the fragile truce threatens to unravel. That irritation with him slowly tries to creep in, scratching the surface. Which is understandable. Just the other day, we had exploded at each other, saying hurtful things, almost unforgivable things. Maybe I hadn't forgiven him yet. After finishing his lunch, he wants to sit outside so he can smoke. Outside, I shiver in my tank top, starting to think this blustery day was full of crap.

I figure he hasn't forgiven me yet, either. He wants to talk about what we had fought about - not the fight itself but the circumstances that surrounded it. It's like he hasn't achieved closure with it yet; we had stopped screaming at each other because he had deduced that I was just like him - rebellious and abrasive; the difference was I wasn't reprimanded as much by my mother not to take things against my father, without whom I would not exist. We stopped fighting because it had become my mother's fault. I was too sick to argue anymore. Anyway, he wants to talk about what he won't stop talking about the past week and I try not to be rebellious and abrasive. I chide myself that I do owe him something - I would after all not exist without him. I'm also probably just in that weird mood because I've been reading Simona Vinci and her depression drenched stories and today, the story I was reading was about a woman sick of all men and was trying to purge herself of them. I was not so overly dramatic to imagine I wanted to purge myself of my own father.

And as I was convincing myself of this, Daddy got up and switched seats so that his body would block me from the blast of wind that made me shiver.

I look at my Dad, my frustrating Dad, my rebellious and abrasive Dad, and I start to understand why this thing he won't leave alone is so important to him. I stop feeling frustrated and we carry on a decent conversation; perhaps the conversation we would have had last Monday if I didn't take stuff he said the wrong way. Perhaps not.

Later, he goes into Starbucks and gets a drink. It turns out he buys it for me, it's a White Chocolate Mocha, which I actually don't buy anymore, but it's nice. Maybe we are the same; maybe when I'm not frustrating, rebellious, abrasive and not going on and on nonstop about something that's bothering me, I'm an okay human being.

When it's time to pick my mom up from CCP, he tells us to be careful with the fenders that are lying in the back of the Brazilia; he warns us, the edges are sharp. Automatically, my sister and I feel our fingers along the edges to check how sharp and we laugh. We recount that story to my mom, with my sister saying, "Ang titigas ng ulo no?" My mom agrees and says, "Manang mana." My dad chuckles.