My Father's Hands

      My Father's Hands

             I remember how we cried when my "Atang" (father) died. I was just 9 years old. I remember vividly how the funeral went... how I waited for hours everyday on his wake... how family traditions and culture unfolded each day... how I tried to sleep each night during his wake... how I met the different members of our extended family... how I met the people we call friends.

            I remember how his last painting looked like. No matter how I try to erase it from my memory, it's just painted there... stuck forever. It's like a permanent ink, a mental tattoo. I have that high regard for my father that every bit of those memories I have of him, will forever be there... more precious than anything I could ever buy for myself.

One of the earlier paintings of my Atang

            It's interesting how I remember his smell:  the distinct smell of oil paint, mixed with the stinking scent of his cigarettes and his body odor that signifies days of not having shower. I have captured his silence when he paints, and his happiness when he succeeded in finishing a painting. Somehow I learned that a colored canvass can transform his face into a dignified man.

            I would always wait for that moment when he would sign his name. That was the moment where I would tell myself, "He wrote his sentence!" The signature is his period, the full stop; to all the words he wanted to express in such a big piece of ART. For me it's a wonder... a white canvass turns into a book, into a story, into an art, into a source of existence for our family, and more it brings out that dignified look on my father's face. His sense of fulfillment is all wrapped-up in the different colors of every painting he had created.

              I can imagine my father's hands, as they move on every painting he had created before he died...