After the defense, Professor Santos came to shake my family and me hands. When it was Dad Ben’s turn, he suddenly stopped, looked at him closely, and then his expression changed.
I was born into an incomplete family. When I learned to walk, my parents separated. My mother Lorna took me back to Nueva Ecija, a poor rural area with only rice fields, sun, wind, and gossip. I don’t remember my biological father’s face, but I know that my early years were lacking in both material and emotional things.
When I was four years old, my mother remarried. This man was a construction worker. He came to my mother with nothing: no home, no money—just a thin back, tanned skin, and cement-stained hands.
At first, I didn’t like him: he was strange, he left early and came home late, and his body always smelled of sweat and construction dust. But he was the first to fix my old bicycle, to help me sew up my torn sandals without saying a word. I made a mess, he didn’t scold me—he quietly cleaned it up. When I was bullied at school, he didn’t scold me like my mother; he just quietly rode his old bicycle to pick me up. On the way, he only said one sentence:
— “Dad doesn’t force you to call me dad, but Dad is always there for you when you need him.”
I was silent. From that day on, I called him Dad.
Throughout my childhood, my memories of Dad Ben were of an old bicycle, a dusty construction uniform, and the nights when he would come home at night, with dark circles under his eyes, and his hands still covered in lime and mortar. No matter how late that night was, he never forgot to ask:
— “How was school today?”
He was not highly educated, could not explain difficult equations or complex paragraphs, but always emphasized:
— “You may not be the best in class, but you must study well. Wherever you go, people will look at you and people will respect you.”
My mother was a farmer, Dad was a construction worker. The family lived on a meager income. I was a good student but I understood the situation, I did not dare to dream big. When I passed the entrance exam to the university in Manila, my mother cried; Dad just sat on the veranda, smoking cheap cigarettes. The next day, he sold the only motorcycle, and pooled his mother’s savings so that I could study.
The day he took me to the city, Dad was wearing an old baseball cap, a wrinkled polo shirt, his back soaked with sweat, but he still held a box of “hometown gifts”: a few kilos of rice, a jar of dried/tinapa and a few bags of roasted peanuts. Before he left the room, he looked at me:
— “Try your best, son. Study hard.”
I didn’t cry. But when I opened the lunch box my mother had wrapped in banana leaves, underneath was a piece of paper folded in four, with the words written on it:
— “Dad doesn’t know what you’re studying, but whatever you’re studying, Dad will do it. Don’t worry.”
I studied for four years in college and then in graduate school. Dad was still working. His hands became rougher and rougher, his back more and more stooped. When I got home, I saw him sitting at the foot of the scaffolding, panting from climbing the scaffolding all day, and my heart sank. I told him to rest, but he waved his hand:
— “Dad can still do this. When I’m tired, I think: I’m raising a PhD—and I feel proud.”
I smiled, not daring to say that studying for a PhD requires extra work, requires more effort. But he was the reason I didn’t give up.
On the day of his PhD thesis defense at UP Diliman, I begged Dad for a long time before he agreed to go. He borrowed a suit from his cousin, wore shoes that were a size too small, and wore a new hat he bought at the district market. He sat in the back row of the auditorium, trying to sit up straight, and his eyes never left mine.
After the defense, Prof. Santos shook hands with me and my family. When he reached Dad, he suddenly stopped, looked closely, and smiled:
— “You are Mang Ben, right? When I was a child, my house was near the construction site you worked at in Quezon City. I remember the time you carried an injured worker down the scaffolding, even though you yourself were injured.”
Before Dad could speak, the teacher had already… Moved:
– “I did not expect to see you here today, as the father of a new PhD. This is truly an honor.”
I turned around: Dad Ben smiled—a gentle smile but his eyes were red. At that moment, I understood: in his entire life, he had never asked me to pay him. Now, he was being recognized—not because of me, but because of what he had quietly cultivated for 25 years.
Now, I am a university teacher in Manila, with a small family. Dad doesn’t build anymore: he grows vegetables, raises chickens, reads the newspaper in the morning, and rides his bike around the barangay in the afternoon. Every now and then, he calls to show me the vegetable beds behind the house, telling me to get chickens and eggs for my grandson to eat. I ask:
— “Does Dad regret the effort he put into his life for his son?”
He laughs:
— “No regrets. Dad worked his whole life—but what he is most proud of is building a son like you.”
I don’t answer. I just watch his hands on the screen—the hands that carry my future.
I am a PhD. Dad Ben is a construction worker. He didn’t build a house for me—he “built” a person
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