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By Lenin Mae Vargas

Normal children during weekends, like me, see playing as a prize after all the days being at school. These are the days that I can finally take a rest from doing assignments, taking quizzes, recitations and most importantly from waking up so early. And that’s how I started loving weekends.My weekend routine starts at 9am by watching cartoons and animes. I usually spend my whole morning staying in front of our television that sometimes I forget to eat my breakfast and lunch. By the time the clock’s small hands points at two, it’s a sign for me to go out and meet my friends to play. I would only go home until the city lights starts to turn on and if I think that it’s already time to feed my hungry stomach. And that’s how my father started hating me every weekend.

My father would always complain about my weekend behavior. He thinks that I become so lazy and irresponsible. I start to forget doing my household chores. Most importantly, I start to forget that I exist in the family. My father would always think that I have my own world. That the kind of world I have only revolves to those fantasies I have --- to play.

But everything changed because of a two hundred fifty pesos bill.

It was a sunny Sunday morning. My mother was busy arranging the vegetables she had brought from the market while my father was busy fixing the leaking faucet in our sink. On the other hand, my siblings were also busy helping them and doing their assigned household chores. The scene was like seeing a picture in my Home Economic books portraying a perfect family except that you can’t see a child in the picture sitting without doing anything. My family was an exception then because of me. My father, who totally surrendered to my laziness and irresponsible behavior, asked me to run errands. He asked me to give the extra 250 pesos money to my aunt. So I agreed to what he asked and I thought that it was the easiest and the only way to sneak out from the house because my father won’t allow me to go out that day.

While walking towards my Aunt’s house, I met my friends and playmates along the way. They were bragging me to join them in playing tumbang preso since they only need one more player to complete the game. I was hesitating whether to give the money first before playing or playing before giving it to my aunt. But since it was still early that day, I put the money in my back pocket to keep it safe and decided to join and play with them. I felt freed from my father that day.

I was so overjoyed that I almost forgot that the city lights had turned on already. It was too late for me to remember that I was being asked for an errand. I hurriedly ran towards my Aunt’s house. I was running so fast that I was able to arrive there within two minutes, which basically took me six minutes before. I searched for my back pocket to get the money. But I was surprised to feel nothing inside it. Then I realized that I had lost the money!

I searched in the places I have been to. I went to and fro the streets I had passed. I even went to my friends’ houses to ask them. But I never found any answers to my questions or hints to where I should find it. I was afraid to go home. I am afraid because I have two reasons to be afraid of – going home late and losing the money. And all I only do was to cry over what was done.


I arrived at our house’s door preparing to act like nothing happened. I hurriedly wiped my tears so that my parents would not wonder, though, they might not really wonder at all and just think that I fought with my playmates. But I wasn’t asked to go out then at the first placed. I went inside still acting normal. But my mother, who was waiting for me since the time I went outside, asked me where the hell I was from. I tried to lie and make her believed that I was at aunt’s house watching movie with my cousins. I thought I won the game. My mother smiled at me and said, “Nagsisinungaling ka pa. Tinawanagan ko tita mo at sinabi sa akin na hindi mo binigay ang pera. Saan ang pera, Lenin? (You are lying. I called your aunt and she said that you didn’t give her the money. Where is the money, Lenin?). She can read my mind. I was freezed by what she just said and I started to cry again.


My father was very angry after hearing it from my mother. I saw how his face turned red, how his eyes bulged as if ready to pop out anytime, how his eyebrows raised as if it almost reached his head and how his clenched teeth tightened. I knew that time that he was really bursting into anger. He became my nightmare.

I was crying so hard while he was saying some hurtful words to me. He was calling me names: stupid, irresponsible and lazy. I didn’t even have the time to catch what he was trying to say since I was deafened by my own whimper. In every thing he says, I can only say sorry, just sorry, and always sorry. He was getting so mad that his voice was rising anymore. It was like he was ready to explode any moment. I felt like my soul was parting away.

After a minute, he stopped murmuring words to me. I thought that he had forgiven me already. He even went outside. I felt it was really over. But to my surprise I saw my father holding his belt in his right hand coming inside again. The belt was tightly wrapped in his hand and its tail was long enough to reach me once he beat me with it. Without hesitation, he hit me with his belt. I remembered how the buckle from his belt touched my skin. I even remembered how many times it touched me – eight times. It left lines and wounds all over my body. My earth started to get dimmer and dimmer and the pain from the buckle had subsided in my veins. He only stopped when my mother was crying so hard begging him to stop.

After that, my father and I didn’t speak for one month. I don’t know if it’s because I felt guilty over what I had done or he felt that he was just too much with me. And that’s when I started to hate weekends. I hated to see him not talking to me. I felt that I truly never existed in the family.

The incident made me experienced lots of first times. It was the first time I was grounded to go out from the house and to even watch my favorite cartoon movies. It was the first time I had scars in my legs intentionally. It was the first time I cried very hard. It was the first time I felt that my father don’t love me anymore. It was the first time I saw my father become very angry and did such a thing. I had always known my father as a nice man. He was raised buttered with love from his parents. Perhaps, I was too much for him already. Perhaps, after all, I deserved the beating.

After the incident, I learned how to value money. That even if it means just a little cent, it matters most especially to our parents who earned it with their sweat and blood, especially my father. He had been the provider of our family. He worked so hard just to provide the things we need and want. He sees money as one of the most important factor to make us keep on living. He was not born to use gold spoon when he eats so he strived so hard to make his and his family’s life good enough to eat three times a day. The incident made me understood why he was so affected when I lost the money. I realized that I am fortunate than him to experience what we have. That maybe I never appreciated his hard works.

I had learned how to value responsibility because of him. That one doesn’t need to be old first to learn and do responsibilities. I realized that I became too lazy and irresponsible that I almost forget that I am growing up already. That I should be the one acting as a model to my two younger siblings since I am older to them.

My father has been the great father to me and to my siblings. Though, I never appreciated it in some ways. I am born incapable of expressing my feelings. I thought that it is not necessary anymore. It’s all in the mind and it is automatic. However, how incapable I was, there is still someone who would be there to make it change. And that’s my father. Whenever I remember how he work so hard for us, how he handled those sleepless night working, how his asthma attacks when he is really tired, how he always reminds us to study harder and how he tolerated my stubbornness and irresponsible behavior, I felt crying. I felt so guilty to all the things I have done. I never was a good daughter to my good father.


From that time, I had strived hard to make him trust me again. To make him believe that I grew up and learned from my mistakes. I proved it to him by doing well in my class. I topped and will top my class. I got and will get awards and citations. I gave him and will give him medals and honors. He is the reason why I worked hard to pass UPCAT. I know it would be his happiness seeing one of his children studying in a premier university –- UP. In every possible way, I don’t want to disappoint him anymore. It’s not that I don’t want to be beaten again but it was my own way of showing him that I already grow up. That I can handle things the way I wanted them to be.

I may have lost the two hundred pesos but rewarded him by proving him by doing my best in everything I do. But whatever I do I can’t still repay what I had lost. H e keeps on giving. I always had debts to pay. If I’ll make a list of it, it would be so long that it will take me eternity to pay for it. Perhaps, the real value of fatherhood is to give everything without asking something in return.