When I was three, I met my father for the first time. He had joined the United States Navy as a Filipino citizen several years before marrying my mother, then moved to Norfolk, Virginia sometime before I was born. Although he was granted automatic U.S. citizenship, it took three more years before he could petition for my mother and me to join him in the United States. We were given federal housing in Wilmington, California, but he was stationed in El Centro, four hours away. For the next four years, I saw my dad only every other weekend. We moved to Japan and stayed for the next three years, but my father was on sea duty nine months out of the year. His last station before retirement was in Fallon, Nevada, where he was finally able to spend more time with us, but by then I was already ten and only beginning to learn how to have a relationship with my father. For the next thirty years and more, it is hard to say whether we ever fully built a proper father and son relationship. I can count on one hand the times I told him, “I love you,” and I can count on the other the times he told me how proud he is of me. My father turns eighty today, and this year it falls on Father’s Day. For a long time I feared we might never build the bond I had seen in other fathers and sons. The question I keep asking myself is this: are we both at peace with the relationship we have, or is there still time and reason to improve it?

My first memory in the U.S. is trying to ride the baggage carousel while my mom struggled with our luggage. I do not actually have a memory of meeting my father for the first time. Even in the years that followed, my relationship with him could be described, harshly, as some guy who visited my mom and me twice a month and on holidays. The infrequent visits did include good memories: trips to McDonald’s, Disneyland, watching sci-fi and hero movies with my dad. What kid did not want to go to Disneyland or see Star Wars. The relationship also included a belt, and the dread I felt whenever I learned my dad was coming home again for the weekend.

When we moved to Yokosuka, Japan in 1979, my father was assigned as the personal cook to the captain on the USS Knox, one of the many jobs he held over his Navy years (yes, the Steven Seagal in Under Siege comparison writes itself, though as far as I know my dad never foiled a hijacking with a galley knife). The Knox was a destroyer in the Pacific 7th Fleet that usually escorted the USS Midway, now decommissioned in San Diego. The fleet was deployed into the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war, and I did not see him for nine months out of the year. When he was home, we started finding activities to enjoy together: Bingo on Wednesday nights, Chinese restaurants in Japan of all places, and Pachinko, a Japanese style pinball game. We were finding things we both liked. We also developed a shared love of movies in those years, since he bought our first VHS player and we watched the Superman movie a dozen or so times together. It was also during this time that I started noticing other fathers take their sons to baseball or soccer practice. That was not possible for us, because my dad was underway at sea whenever tryouts and practice came around. Because of the long stretches between when he was away and when he was home, it often felt as if we had to relearn how to be father and son every single time.

My father’s last Naval deployment was in Fallon, Nevada, about 60 miles east of Reno. It was a small town of around 7,000 people, with a Dairy Queen, a Kentucky Fried Chicken, and a theater that showed movies three months after their original release. Apart from the U.S. Naval Air Station, most of the surrounding area was farms and desert. There was not much to do. My father was the assistant manager at the Officer’s Club, a restaurant and bar exclusive to Naval officers, which meant alternating shifts during the day and in the evenings for dinners and parties. So although he was home every night, there were times I did not see him after coming home from school, because he would not get in until one or two in the morning. Even so, this was probably the period when we grew closest in those early years. My dad started taking me to basketball practices and games. We would sometimes go to Circus Circus and the arcades in Reno. He taught me how to bowl. I also remember him teaching me, around then, how to behave and interact with other people. Written down it sounds normal enough, but it does not capture the awkwardness between us.

Other than those occasional bouts of fun, most of my interaction with my father was formal or serious. He asked me to call him “Sir,” a habit I still slip into in normal conversation at work today. He was strict about my chores. Most of the time he did his own thing and I did mine, keeping our distance until some interaction was required. And yes, the belt was still there whenever I fell out of line. It was also in Nevada that my brother was born. He may not fully appreciate it, but my brother had the benefit of starting a relationship with our father on the day he was born. My father was able to hold him right outside the operating room. At the time, I did not feel envy or jealousy. Looking back, I think that was because I had never had an established bond with my father in the first place. I did not see it as being neglected, or as attention diverted away from me. You cannot take away something that was hardly ever there.

We moved to the Philippines three years later, where my dad has spent his retirement. His pension goes a long way there. We had a maid and a driver growing up. I attended a private Catholic school and later a private technical college, all paid in cash. I had a weekly allowance that, I am a little ashamed to say, was more than some families earned in a month. He helped my mom run her small grocery business at the market, stayed active in the Lions Club, and was involved with Couples for Christ. He still made time for a friendly game of Mahjong with friends.

It was during these years that my relationship with my father started to grow. I began thinking of us as a family. The Filipino language actually has a single word for the bond between a father and son: “mag-ama.” It is hard to translate. The closest I can get is to imagine English with no word for “couple,” where you always had to refer to two married people as husband and wife separately. “Mag-ama” treats a father and son as one unit, not two people standing near each other. It was in these years that I watched my dad learn how to be a father to my little brother, who is ten years younger than me. My belief is that he took the parenting he was figuring out with my brother and tried to apply it to me, with some success. He spent significantly more time with me. He taught me how to drive. He taught me how to cook. The aloofness eased, although I am not sure we ever had many truly deep conversations, not the way I did with my mom during the same years. There was some periodic advice here and there, including a strong opinion about what I should study in college.

My father did not attend college himself, having joined the Navy shortly after turning eighteen. He wanted me to have a degree, and more success in life than he was ever able to reach. He wanted me to carry a title in front of my name: Doctor, Attorney, or Engineer. Although I started my coursework as an Electronics and Communications Engineering major, I switched to Computer Science in my second year. I did not tell him at the time, because I did not want to disappoint him, though I was otherwise open about how my studies were going. In 1996, in the early days of the dot com era, I took a trip to California and applied for a software job just to try it out. Companies were looking for internet-savvy engineers and were willing to take a chance on me. I took the job, and it became the start of my career.

My relationship with my dad plateaued when I left the Philippines. Did we ever truly bond as father and son? In the most literal sense, maybe we did the day I was born. He simply claims me as his son, and I claim him as my dad. But the deeper kind of bond, the kind I had seen in other families, was always harder to claim.

One thing about our family, and something very characteristic of Filipino culture, is that children do not talk back to their parents. Raising your voice in objection to a parent is treated as a sign of disrespect. I have only done it three times in my life with my father. The last was during the summer after my first year in college. We were on vacation in California, and I badly wanted to continue my education in the United States instead of the Philippines. My father was adamant that I would get the same education back home, maybe even better, and I argued that schools in the U.S. were better. Unfortunately, the argument happened in front of all my cousins, aunts, and uncles. Regardless of who was right, yelling at my father alienated me from everyone in that room. I was scolded and told never to do it again.

I flew home to the Philippines the next day and continued my education there. My dad came back a couple of months later and took the first step toward reconciliation. He explained that, even if the colleges in the U.S. were better, he would not have been able to afford to send me there, including food and lodging. He was also fine with me switching to Computer Science if that was what I wanted, and fine with any college I chose, as long as it was in the Philippines. I told him I understood, and that I would do my best. We never said the words, but I know we were both sorry and had forgiven each other. Those couple of months apart had been stressful for me, and I am sure for him too, and that weight lifted almost the moment he arrived back home. He also taught me a lesson that evening before I flew back, one I have carried ever since. Translated into English, he told me: it is not the quality of the college that will make you successful in life, it is the quality of the student.

It is probably those words that drove me. I have kept learning new technologies and developing my leadership skills throughout my career. I still keep in touch with my parents. They visit every two or three years for a couple of months at a time, and I have only been back home four times in the last twenty-five years. When we are apart, I call. It used to be those five dollar calling cards for a thirty minute call to the Philippines. That has since been replaced by Facebook Messenger and FaceTime. To be honest, even though the calls are free now, I still tend to call only about once a month, and I have occasionally missed Father’s Day or called late on his birthday.

In 2021, a scan found masses in his lungs and several other organs. We flew him and my mom back to California for diagnosis and treatment, and for a while I did not know how much time there would be left to say anything at all. It turned out to be stage four cancer. Since then, he has been part of a clinical trial that has held the disease back and given us years we were not sure we would get. He has a CT scan every six weeks and regular lab work so his doctors can keep watch. We have been fortunate, more than I can really put into words. Other than the ordinary signs of old age, you would never know what he is carrying. And today he turns eighty.

There has been another change since I first wrote about my father, a harder one. A couple of years ago, my mom was diagnosed with dementia. It has progressed to the point where she and I can no longer really have a meaningful conversation, which is its own kind of grief, because she was always the parent I could talk to most easily. If there is a silver lining, it is one I did not expect. My father and I now talk far more than we ever used to. Some of it is the practical side of her care, the appointments and the daily details. But a lot of it is just the two of us, finally learning how to talk to each other after all these years. We have grown closer in these last couple of years than in all the decades before them. The bond I spent most of my life wondering about is, quietly, being built right now.

For most of my life I wondered whether we would ever bond the way I once envied in other fathers and sons. I think we finally are. He is responsible for a large part of who I am today, including that lesson he handed me. He was not there for much of the beginning. He spent years at sea, and the two of us spent years learning each other. Regardless, I turned out OK, and we are closer now than we have ever been. So, on his eightieth birthday, and on Father’s Day, I want to tell him plainly how much he has shaped my life, and to say it without waiting for the perfect moment.

Dad, I love you. Happy birthday.