"We salute them tomorrow and every day. "
Against the nerve-wracking coronavirus pandemic silent by the walls of Filipino homes, we stand up and celebrate our fathers tomorrow for their influence and in the family — the basic social unit — and their communities outside.
These fathers—many have graduated to being grandparents but remain engine cogs in family affairs and relations given the culture of the Filipino—take center stage every third Sunday of June, following a proclamation in 1988 by then President Corazon Aquino.
We have always raised the thesis that fathers, like mothers, must be celebrated 365 days every common year and 366 each leap year.
We salute them tomorrow, not with the available best food ordered online, washed down by branded red or white wine or anything that approximates material, but with unreeled memories they have built effectively for the younger generations.
An expression of affection and gratitude, said in the language the father is most familiar with, can certainly be better, under the General Community Quarantine circumstances, the protocols and restrictions stalking every family in the urban areas and elsewhere, than previously allowed trips outside the homes and sumptuous lunch and dinner in posh establishments.
Such expression can be a better thread than any to properly recognize and appreciate their contributions to family and society, rightly the foundation of our nationhood.
We cannot deny the importance of the role of parents in what psychologists describe as the behavioral, cognitive and general health as well as well-being zones of the life of an offspring, who may someday become leaders or helpful and substantial members of the communities they are in or even their country on a wall-to-wall scenario.
The wide ranging impact of any country’s political and economic past has been shown, at least in some research studies, to have been influenced by the father, with suggestions of infirm parenting and absence to “the socio-economic legacy” as among the stumbling blocks.
We celebrate our fathers tomorrow, the sturdy and protective walls who give their offspring the security they need in life.