Ama

This is not a love fest. This is not about writing about how great and principled and wonderful a father “Ama” was. I loved my father, and many of his friends and relatives will tell you what a tough man he was to love. It’s time that I do something cathartic for the soul as I write about our family history, and why I am who I am now.

My father was manic depressive.

Even know, I can’t fully grasp what being a manic depressive is, how many of the things he did were beyond his control and how many could’ve been managed if we sought to understand the disease and help him get through it. The textbook definition of manic depressive is: an illness or "bipolar mood disorder" is a disturbance of a person's mood characterized by alternating periods of depression and mania. Switching from one mood to another is referred to as a mood swing. Mood swings can be mild, moderate or severe and are accompanied by changes in thinking and behaviour.

For me, this is what manic-depressive means.

Ama could never hold down a job. In my youth, I accepted the reasons he gave us; that he couldn’t work with a bastard of a boss, the Directors of the company were all unfair, that the company policies were unethical, etc, etc. My form of hero worship envisioned him as a principled man who would rather lose his job than his dignity. Perhaps this was true some of the times, but with age comes clarity, and the hazy views of my youth have shown the facts as they are - he couldn’t hold down a job because he simply couldn’t get along with people.

…and yet, despite the lack of money, we managed to take family vacations. Whenever money came in, Ama’s generous spirit wouldn’t hold on to it. Let’s get one thing clear though, we were far from an impoverished family, we were decidedly middle class. It was at this point that my Ina realized that she could not rely on Ama. So she decided to work and start a career and in the end, become the true breadwinner of the family.

In a tiny tiny nutshell, this, to me (and perhaps not to you or anyone else) explains why I have no guilt about buying things for myself, my unapologetic belief that I have earned it. It’s not that I felt deprived growing up, perhaps I did, but to me contentment and happiness can’t be delayed, and if it is within my reach, then I grasp it and take hold.

Then there is all the drama mood swings attract and all the embarrassing scenes that go with it. But that’s another entry and if you will excuse me, I can’t do that, not now, not yet.