My son’s father

One of my life’s greatest blessings is that my only child Chino has a great father. Chino was already gifted at birth because God gave him Ed.

Ed adored Chino the minute he laid his eyes on him, counting his 10 little fingers and toes with pride. “A boy!” Ed announced to me proudly when I was wheeled out of the delivery room. “Water!” I replied, since my lips and throat were parched after going through labor.

When I returned to work at Malacañang, some 20 minutes away from our Makati home, Ed would make it a point to go home during his lunch break to check on the baby, who was sometimes being babysat by my mom. Father and son bonded early as I was across the Pasig River, building my career as a journalist.

Ed always loved gadgets, and so one day, he brought home a “pee-pee” bell, a contraption that you could insert in the folds of the baby’s nappy that would ring every time he urinated. And so we would all race to the baby whenever the bell rang (it sounded like the bell of the sorbetero), until one night, the pee-pee bell got jammed and it rang and rang till we were forced to lock it (the bell, not the baby) inside the closet for the sake of our sanity. But Ed was happy he discovered and bought that bell, probably the reason Chino is so “techie” now.

When Chino was in grade school and I was often working late in the newsroom, Ed was the basketball dad, the baseball dad, the PTA dad. Once, when I was free to leave the office in Port Area early and was able to attend one such PTA meeting, I was surprised that so many women on campus were greeting him, “Hi, Ed!”

“Who are they?” I snorted. “Joanne, they’re our co-parents!” he replied. I know what was in the back of his head: It’s not my fault that I attend the PTA meetings more often than you do and so they know my name!

Ed was so devoted to Chino he would drive all the way from Makati to Katipunan to bring the ID Chino forgot, the homework he didn’t finish, the missing school supplies. He would initially get irritated whenever Chino would call or beep him that he had forgotten something, but always relented.

While I was very grade-conscious, Ed looked beyond grades. Once, when I was disappointed over some academic mark, he told me, “Did you know that Chino created his class’ website?”

During Chino’s Grade Seven dance on campus, Ed and I had a major fight. I wanted to pick Chino up at the stroke of 10 p.m. while Ed wanted us to patiently wait it out in the car even when it was already 10:15 p.m. I don’t remember how we patched things up, but I remember how happy Chino was that we didn’t make a Cinderella out of him.

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Ed wasn’t strict with Chino, but he didn’t want to be soft on him either. He wanted him to ride the school bus and face up to bullies.

Once, when I complained that one older playmate was too bossy, Ed would shrug it off and say, “That will toughen him up.” Though I was seething, Chino was not the least bit bothered.

Once, Chino came home with some specks of blood on his white shirt. He was in first grade then and he had gotten into a fight with a fourth grader, who had a slightly bloodied nose. “Oh, Ed! What will the boy’s parents do? They might sue us!”

To which Ed replied, “Joanne, if my fourth-grade son were beaten up by a first-grader, I’d keep quiet about it.” True enough, Chino and the fourth grader ended up good friends.

There was one “tough” battle I won, though. When we moved to the south, and Chino was spending almost two hours one way to get to school, I insisted we hire a driver and dedicate a car to him. Ed still wanted Chino to ride the school bus to toughen him — but eventually relented.

When Chino was into Hulk Hogan and Ultimate Warrior, he was constantly honing his wrestling skills on his dad, who ever so patiently let him. Actually, I think Ed, an only son himself (with four sisters), enjoyed wrestling with his son and probably had an inner Hulk Hogan in his lean frame!

If Chino is Daddy’s buddy, our prematurely-born girl Joanna would have been Daddy’s girl. He probably would have delivered her ID to her school every day if she had forgotten it every day, and would have insisted she went home from the dance at 9:45 p.m.

But we lost Joanna at birth. That was the only time my mother saw Ed cry — when she, Ed and his parents buried our little girl at the Manila Memorial Park the day after she was born. I was still in bed, hurting to the core. Ed had to say goodbye for both of us.

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Ed’s mantra in child rearing has always been, “I just want Chino to be happy. That’s the bottom line.” The rest he trusts his son to be aware of, and Chino, now a manager at BDO, has not let his father — and mother — down.

Ed and I may not be perfect spouses to each other, but he is, and has always been, the perfect dad to our son.

Happy Father’s Day, Ed. You’re the best there is.

(You may e-mail me at [email protected].)