By Manny Piñol
(Note: I wrote this article last year when she graduated from medicine. On Wednesday, April 27, she will complete her internship.)
She was a frail-looking little girl who was turning 9 and I was a chain-smoking newly elected Governor of North Cotabato when she asked me for a very unique birthday gift.
“Papa for my birthday gift I would like to ask you to stop smoking,” my second daughter Josa Bernadette asked me that morning of Sept. 20, 1998, two days before her ninth birthday.
How do you say no to that innocent plea from a young girl who at a young age already understood the perils of smoking.
The following morning, Sept. 21, 1998, I gave up smoking and since that day until today, not a single stick of cigarette ever touched by lips.
That was almost 17 years ago.
Today, that little girl marched on the red carpet of the convention hall of SM Lanang in Davao City along with 160 others to receive her diploma as medical doctor.
I had this strange feeling of joy and nostalgia.
I felt happy that I have another child who has become a doctor (her older sister, Maria Krista, is also a doctor) but at the same time loneliness gnawed my heart knowing that soon she, just like her older sister, will embark on a journey to search her own place in this world.
Somehow, my only consolation is the poem of Khalil Gibran in his book The Prophet where he wrote about “Children.”
“Your children are not your children.
“They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
“They come through you but not from you,
“And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
“You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
“For they have their own thoughts.
“You may house their bodies but not their souls,
“For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.”
I believe I have fulfilled my duties as a father to give my children the education that they need as they step into a bigger and more competitive world.
From hereon, I can only watch my young girl flap her wings and fly to where she would like to find her destiny.
“You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
“The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.”
(These pictures were taken were taken during her graduation last year. MP)
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