As a child, I was totally unaware that a father goes through a lot of stresses, worse than that a father may have grown from a child to adult fully immersed in a sea of stresses--stress of having been born to a poor family, stress of having to struggle day by day hoping to improve one's lot by doing menial jobs, stress of having to borrow the extra money that would mean
possible collegiate studies, the stress of having to win a rich girl's hand in marriage sans ulterior motive, stress of moving an entire family from a provincial to a city setting for eventual advancement in graduate studies and improvement in income, stress of multiple surgical operations of a spouse, stress of meeting the monetary needs of four ambitious children going to medical school and the constant stress that came with the graduate school studies, teaching and free-lance writing.
As a father now, I understand that acting as a fiscalizer in the just disbursement of funds, angry mood can ensue. It was my father's anger that reminded us constantly to avoid excesses
in expense. It was through his angry mood that we were awakened to frugality. We may have been the last in the neighborhood to own "items of importance" like a t.v. set, a refrigerator, a
hi-fi phonograph or a family car but the timing was just perfect. We got them all, only at the time we could afford them. It was his anger that shook us to realize, intermittently at times when we would forget, that education is the foremost goal in one's life. It was in his angry moods that we gleaned the wisdom of setting priorities in life--not to engage in useless
gatherings to talk about other people, but to get involved instead in the advancement of the mind (cultural events such as oratorical contests, stage dramas, writing competitions).
As I have grown older and have increasingly been involved in the ramifications of being alive, as a son, and now as a father, the more I realize that I am simply reliving somebody
elses's life with little or no significant variations from his. Outside of the fact that I was lucky to have been born in a financially stable family our dissimilarities stop there. It seems, in fact that I can not write or talk about my father (in these aspects in life) without feeling that I am actually referring to myself.
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