Remembering My Father

Gabriel Zafra Aguilar
(10 December 1913 - 31 July 1990)
In memoriam


He was born in 1913, and were he alive today he would be 97 years old. But he passed away from congestive heart failure on July 31, 1990, two weeks after two massive earthquakes rocked our home city nearly to complete obliteration.

Twenty years my mother's senior, he was every inch the old world gentleman, dapper, discreet, reserved; but also a bundle of rich contradictions. He was Old Spice cologne and aftershave, once a month haircuts at Koken's Barbershop on Session Road. Before he quit cold turkey, he used to smoke a pack of Salem Menthol Lights every day, and go rolling-in the-streets drunk with his buddies. He was all meals on time, and my buttons done all the way up to my collar before I left home for school (of course as soon as I was past the gate, I loosened a few).

On a regular basis, he brought books and reading material home for me as treats: Alice in Wonderland, Nancy Drew, The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated Classics, crossword puzzles, Little Women, Don Quixote... He pinned my drawings on the inside of his cabinet door, where they shared space with his best suits and ties. He taught me how to type a legal brief, and why proofreading was so essential. He said the rosary every morning in his bathrobe, before he had his bath (always before, never after). One night in my childhood, he returned from a sumptuous Chinese lauriat to which he'd been invited, with a take-out box of Abalone soup; he woke everyone up, insisting we should have a taste of this rarity of dishes, now, while it was hot and good. On New Year's eve, like an excited schoolboy, he was the first to light firecrackers, but also the first to quit.

His family claimed roots going back to a little town called Zafra, somewhere in Spain. When my parents married in 1960, he was a lawyer still on the cusp of his career. My mother, on the other hand, had been trying to put herself through college by working as a cashier at a restaurant called The Midway, when they first met.

My mother was a farmer's daughter, and my paternal grandmother did not approve.

Still, because my father was her unico hijo, her only son, grudgingly she gave in to the nuptials; but not without staging one last protest. This is the story I have been told: on their wedding night*, my parents had to share their bed with my grandmother. (Is it any surprise that I became a writer?)

I was barely three when we moved to Baguio City from Manila, so he could take up the post of City Sheriff. It wasn't until the last 15 years or so of his public service career that he was appointed one of 4 circuit judges in the City Court, up until his retirement. During this time, he never took one bribe though there were plenty of opportunities, and one didn't even have to ask. Neither were we wealthy, nor impoverished-- but I got through school, we had a roof over our heads, and we never really went hungry.

In the year before the 1990 earthquake, my father, whose health was poorly, said one afternoon in an uncharacteristic burst of emotion as I coaxed socks over his edema-filled ankles, "I wish I had something more to leave you in this life."

Ah, but Papa, you've given me so much: your love for language and order, your love of flavor and zest; your willing embrace of the world; your inquisitive mind, your love for books and music and art...


- - -

Note *

I wrote a short story called "Wedding Night", which was published in the North American Review in January 2001; the story is based on this family anecdote.