My Life Story - Part II

Before anything else I'd like to introduce my parents first, my father ( Gener Gomez Guevarra, not his real name) was born in Gingoog City. In his early age of seven his parents were both passed away, and his only sibling also died early. He was taken cared by his grandmother until he was about 9 year old or a little older and when he was good enough to take chances about what life ahead, he decided to work as a helper in a logging company and from there he had learned what kind of life he was getting into. In the years ahead as he got older he was able to develop his honed skills as a driver mechanic in that same company where he started to work earlier of his childhood. As I thought of his situation, I felt so sad and so sorry for my father because he probably had not enjoyed his boyhood having had the time to be a real kid. A time where he would be with his peers and friends to experience what a child's life like. He said, once in a while when time permits would tell us when we were still younger, that at the age of twelve (12) he was already good at smoking and alcohol drinkers, which, I was pretty sure, he learned them because he was in a crowd which supposedly he was not with.

Circumstances had played an important role in his life, which he had no choice but to accept what it had offered him. Sometimes, as I thought of things and the life we have, whether we like it or not, we have to accept the fact that life can be so cruel and so unfair. But then again, as I think of it deeply those circumstances had happened because our ancestors had never done anything to make themselves better, they had never developed a kind of life that the following generations ahead of them would well benefit because they had worked hard and better themselves, so that those generations that followed them will benefit and never suffer and would not gone through so much hardship. What we sow today will be reaped by the generations ahead of us. These conditions we are experiencing right now somehow had been an effect of what our ancestors or parents had sowed. As the Roman poet, Juvenal said: "It's not easy for people to rise out of obscurity when they have to face straitened circumstances at home."

It is therefore, imperative that we have to do all that we can do to make our lives better today if we don't want our future generations will suffer or experience the same circumstances or conditions as what we have experiencing right now. But I'd like to impress your mind that I never regretted to go through with this kind of life I have right now but I know If given the chance again to revisit my past and change something, I would have done some changes to make. Like what I had said in my Part-I entry, I do love every moment I have spent with my loveones. They are one of those many inspirations I have in this life.

My father never had the chance to finish a formal education and I don't blame him or whatsoever because I perfectly understood his condition, instead I felt so sorry for him because he had no choice but to accept what had laid for him if he wanted to continue living. He did. When he was at his late 20s, the company had sent him to come along with the company's expansion for logging in Samar, where he met my mother and married her. He got married at at the age of thirty (30) and my mother was only twenty (20) then.

In the beginning of their marriage, my father didn't stayed long at logging company while it was in Samar. He decided to work for his own, as he was already confident with his skills. He became one of those sought after mechanics in our town. They resided in Catarman, Northern Samar. From there on he started to make his own family, just by his own, no relatives or anyone else to pull back on but by himself and my mother. Writing right now at this stage, I became a bit emotional and feeling proud of my father because, I realized, he was so brave. One way or another, he really stood up for what he had done and one of those were to rear up and care for his family. I believed in the beginning, if I can recalled it right, we were living modestly.He earned sufficiently enough for our needs, I could hardly remember that we were short for our necessities. We even had some relatives who lived with us. One of my many cousins who was older than us became like my parents favorite and treated her like their eldest daughter and they even sent her to school. My dad was at the prime of his career, so I knew my parents were doing good financially.   

For continuation....