Dad’s Marvelous Journey
By Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas
My father’s laughter took others by surprise. To those who did not know him well, it seemed at odds with what they thought they saw of the man: that hearty, sudden roar, the joie de vivre that sprang spontaneously from this dignified, quiet teacher who carried himself and all he did with such purposefulness. “Such gravitas?” I might suggest; and that would bring forth another laugh — of denial, of demurral, of, ultimately, self-effacement: the man who preferred to disappear into the characters, places and paradoxical predicaments he wrote.
Around the time he turned 75, and was working on his 18th or 19th book, I asked him if he was planning to write his memoirs. He looked at me in some surprise and dismissed the notion with another laugh. He did not need to; not yet…and perhaps not ever. I knew, though he did not need to say it, that his childhood in southern Leyte would live on in the young boy who set the sunbird free, who walked the windy fields, and confronted the village witch only to find the vulnerable and lonely individual misunderstood for her solitary integrity to self.
My father was in The Standard Bearer, and in the idealistic guerrilla fighter of Watch in the Night; he was in both Lamberto and Hilarion Alcantara, the brothers in To Be Free — that sweeping epic novel which spanned that history of the Philippine nation, a book that would have received greater recognition if its publication release had not coincided with the declaration of martial law.
He had already founded the Citizens’ League of Dumaguete, and could be counted on to speak up in faculty meetings to voice, without mincing words, opinions his colleagues were hesitant to articulate.
When the writ of habeas corpus was suspended, and the head of the Philippine Constabulary came to Silliman campus, my father stood up at the faculty assembly; his silent colleagues were looking to him, but as soon as he spoke, the friends nearest to him, fearing for him, said, “Ed, Ed, don’t say it…” But he did.
He looked Fidel Ramos in the eye and said: “You know, don’t you, that your president is turning our country into a dictatorship?”
That was my Dad: he spoke the truth as he saw it, and he was unafraid of the consequences. “What do you care what people say about you?” he’d tell my mother, if she’d express misgivings about being misunderstood for something she’d said or done in good faith, but which were likely to be misinterpreted by others in our little town, where people did not immediately see the nuances that were clear to her poet’s eye.
“As long as you’ve given your best and acted in good conscience,” my Dad would say, “that’s all that matters. It’s between you and God.” And he’d add with a chuckle, “And those others buzzing around with their ambitions to upset you…they’re just mosquitoes.” Then he’d laugh.
Before he came back to Silliman to serve briefly as the University vice president for academic affairs before his retirement, Dad held the same position at Central Mindanao University, returning to Dumaguete each fortnight just so he could spend a little time with his infant granddaughter. When we visited Dad in Musuan, I saw his Bible on his bedside table. On the inside cover, he’d taped a list of the journeys of the 12 disciples, and where they had given their lives: Thomas, the great questioner, who had gone to distant India (as Dad had too, in his own lifetime).
And what a marvelous journey it was for my father. It brought him from walking barefoot, gathering data sent to General MacArthur, to the world’s premier writing program at the University to Iowa; he returned to establish the first writing program in our part of the world — a lifework that is now continuing its second half-century nurturing writers and teaching the skillful power of the written word.
Along the way, he crossed many thresholds of decision: he gave up the offer of American citizenship, because he wanted his children to grow up Filipino, and because he knew where his services would be most useful.
He went to distant places, visible and unseen alike, because for my father, there was always something new to discover. Among all the people I’ve encountered — in academia, in the daily press of fulfilling one’s quota of labor — where knowledge (or the appearance of possessing it) is equated with power, Dad was always ready to say he didn’t know something and wanted to learn more.
During our last summer together, he stood with me at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. We saw the shard of pottery from Brno, made millennia ago. On that humble piece of human work, we saw the fingerprint left there by the man who’d shaped the clay.
On August 5, a hundred years since my father came into the world, I’ll be thinking: That, too, is the mark left by my father’s hand.
