A lesson from a frustrated grandpa

By Herbert Vego

THIS writer is 71 years young – or 11 years old as a senior citizen. No regrets; I am still capable of writing, which I have been doing for a living for 51 straight years since 1970. With good health and mental stability, I hope and pray to write for the rest of my life.

I am no believer in numerology. But curiosity drove me to consult a numerology website on what number 71 stands for. Here are a few excerpts:

“A person with the number 71 tends to be focused on building things intended to last for many generations, whether material or social, structures that have meaning. Thinking things through before proceeding is important to 71. “

Hmm, do I have “many generations” to look forward to?

You see, while a “71-ner” normally ages into a grandfather or even a great grandpa, I am not one. My one and only son has remained single at 48, with no plan of turning “double”.

But why should I worry when my unmarried son, a nurse in New York City, enjoys the freedom to spend his hard-earned money with no woman breathing down his neck?

I could not blame him for staying single. He could not forget how his mom and I had lived hard, foregoing leisure and pleasure, to see him through college. He would not want to replicate our past.

I was a young college student when the song “Father and Son” popularized the advice of a father to his son: “If you want, you can marry. Look at me, I am old but am happy.”

Since I wanted to be happy in 1972 at age 22, I emptied my bank account to marry my fiancée against the will of my parents, thinking I had the means to build a happy family.

Little did I know that I would not be so happy. A series of expensive events buried me deep in debt within the first three years of my married life: frequent hospitalization of my wife due to epilepsy, a miscarriage of what could have been our first baby, the birth of our only son and her subsequent ectopic pregnancy that necessitated surgery.

After only nine years, we separated. But that did not prevent me from footing the education of my son until he finished college; and from having another partner.

If I were to be born again, I would not marry until I would have stashed away lasting wealth. True freedom is having the means to overcome the basic problems of family life. I pity the unemployed and underemployed living miserably because they had not prepared for the vicissitudes of transition from aloneness to marital state.

No wonder, when the now Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act (RA 10354) was still being debated in Congress, I wrote supportive columns asking hard-up couples to practice family planning.

I remember a beautiful cousin (now deceased) whom I could hardly recognize as a married woman because her once sparkling eyes had dulled; her pinky cheeks had paled and sunk; and her body curves had shrunk. She came to my office together with a thin boy whom I guessed to be her child.

“I now have six children,” she revealed, as if explaining why her husband’s income was not enough.

“Why so many?” I asked.

“So that when my man and I grow old, they will be there to take good care of us.”

I could have disagreed but opted to nod. I thought to myself that their children would no longer be with them by then, since they would have also married with another generation of kids to worry over.

Such a familiar vicious cycle merits serious attention: Parents work themselves to death to secure the future of their children, who likewise repeat the same fate. As the cycle goes on from one generation to the next, the “bright future” never comes.

If it’s any consolation, my son has broken that cycle, making me a happy non-grandfather.