The Other Buddha
by Edna Zapanta Manlapaz

Our temperament is basically the same, both of us driven by a barely flexible work ethic which, whatever its pitfalls, ensures professional success.

We―my 99 year old father and I―are seated in the car on our way to his hometown of Sta Rita in Pampanga.  It is a drive he takes nearly every day, always in the company of  driver and caregiver.  From time to time, usually on weekends, I accompany him on this sentimental journey home.

Seated beside him, I note the long familiar features.  His grey hair is  cropped so closely to his skull that he appears bald, showing the round contours of his heavy head.  For a man his advanced age, his skin is surprisingly free of deep wrinkles, the fat of his cheeks erasing the lines that would ordinarily be there.

The same full cheeks appear on my face, visibly marking me as my father’s daughter.  While my two brothers bear the Castillian features of our mother, I have the Malay ones.  It is not only in terms of looks that my father and I share resemblance.  Our temperament is basically the same, both of us driven by a barely flexible work ethic which, whatever its pitfalls, ensures professional success.  In his case, my father is recognized as one of the pioneers of the real estate market in Makati.
In fact that is how my brothers and I picture him during those boom years:  walking briskly around the construction site, wearing a yellow helmet on his head and holding blueprint plans in his hands.

It is a mental  photograph of him taken with a telephoto lens, a metaphor of the distance from which we regarded him during those work-intensive years.

Not so, in later years, when he arranged for us to work in the family office, learning by closely supervised apprenticeship under a master.  My two brothers initially found him a hard taskmaster but not I. It was not difficult for me to move in rhythm with whatever pace he set, having long ago followed that same pace in my own chosen career as an academic.

...I have come to accept the silence as his preferred mode of being.  And so whenever we are together, seated at table having supper or going out for a long drive, we sit comfortably in silence, glad for each other’s company.

In time, even my brothers began to adapt to our father’s pace which, as he grew older, began to slacken.  The slower pace suited all of us, including our father, who surprised us all by exhibiting flashes of humor that often had us all laughing.  Regular hours at the office, frequently punctuated by  laughter, bound us together ―parent and children, sibling and sibling―in a strong web of affection that now supports our father in his old age.

Seated beside him now in the car, I look sideways at my father’s full and heavy cheeks. At the same time, I listen to the breath going in and out of his wide nostrils.  The steady rhythm of his breathing assures me that he is taking a nap, the only thing besides food, that he now enjoys.

Even when he is not asleep, my father and I seldom speak, normal conversation no longer a real option.  Like all elderly people who have grown deaf, my father has steadily retreated into the refuge of silence. Does he want a second cup of coffee?  Yes, please.  Does he need an additional blanket?  No, thank you.  Does he feel like going out for dinner?  Not tonight.

At first his truncated speech, his long stretches of silence made me uncomfortable, prompting me to cheery chatter intended to spur his speech.  But over time I have come to accept the silence as his preferred mode of being.  And so whenever we are together, seated at table having supper or going out for a long drive, we sit comfortably in silence, glad for each other’s company.

Look!

I am startled by my father’s voice, tremolous with excitement.  Using his stubby index finger, he points outside the car’s window.

The clouds.  Beautiful, beautiful!

It has become his personal mantra, an exclamation he makes from time to time during these long drives.

The clouds.  Beautiful, beautiful!

He never elaborates.  He never asks for a reaction. He simply exclaims his delight.

Like most inhabitants of terra firma, I used to spend scant attention to clouds.  Whatever for?  They were simply puffs of white up there, high in the sky.  My habitual gaze was focussed much lower, pulled down by the gravitas of human activities: driving the kids to school, standing in line at the supermarket, renewing my driver’s license, withdrawing cash from the ATM, proofreading a manuscript.  Who could spare the time to look up and observe clouds?

But on these long silent drives with my father, there is time to spare.  Time to peer out the window and notice the clouds out there today.  Not the clouds that were there yesterday, when they were a gunmetal grey that exploded into the artillery of hard driving rain.  Not the clouds that may be there tomorrow, a sheer swish of white against a cerulean sky.  Today, the clouds up there are like giant sails steered by the wind.

Not always so.

As Zen master Shunryu Suzuki says, not always so. Life, like clouds, is always in flux, changing contours every moment.

Clouds.  Beautiful, beautiful!
Look! Next year, I shall be there, among the clouds.

The exclamation―made for the first time and never again since―catches me unaware.

But it is then―at the breaking of his voice into loud peals of laughter― that I recognize him:  the laughing buddha, my father.

[Editor’s note: This essay will appear in  a feschrift to honor a Philippine national artist in 2012. Permission to print in this issue is given by the author. The essay is a companion piece to “Buddha” http://www.oovrag.com/essays/essay2008a-7.shtml]

© Edna Zapanta Manlapaz

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