“I told you not to climb trees, didn’t I? his father shouted as he ordered him to kneel on the landing in the staircase.

He meekly obliged, pleased that he didn’t get the customary beating with the belt buckle.

He knelt with his bare feet almost touching the corner. With only his bare legs and pair of short pants in the faint sunlight streaming through the nearby window, he looked like a genuflecting statue in a candle-lit church.

“It wasn’t a tall tree,” he whispered as if to mitigate the crime that his father thought he committed. He would have hurriedly climbed down the tree had he heard his father’s motorcycle, but his father had turned the engine off to coast to the house in silence. It was his way of catching them in the middle of committing an offense.

He noticed his brothers and sisters walking by him with a sympathetic look on their faces.

“You’re lucky that it was not you that he caught,” he thought as he was taking in their comforting gaze.

While he was shifting his bent knees, he noticed faint stings on his feet.

He looked down and was surprised to see few crawling red things.

In trying to trace the source, he turned towards the corner and was aghast to see several rows of crawling insects.

His father made him kneel next to a colony of red ants!

He tried to shake the ants off while biting his lips to avoid crying. However, the pain got to a point that he started to sob. Unfortunately, as the stings became more painful and plentiful, his weeping became more audible.

It was then that he saw his father running down the top flight of stairs with his mom wailing as she tried to stop him.

As he stood up, he saw his dad’s fist quickly hitting his face.

He recoiled as flashes of light that looked like stars engulfed his vision.

He couldn’t remember anymore what happened after that. Somehow recollecting the aftermath was impossible. Either it was difficult for him to do so or he intentionally blotted it out of his mind.

“Hey, what’s the matter?” his friend asked when noticing him being fixated on one framed picture amongst the many on the table in his friend’s foyer.

“I am appreciating this one,” he said as he held up the framed picture for his friend to see.

“Oh, it’s my Dad and I fishing.”

“That’s nice.”

“We were so close. He would take me anywhere. We always had a good time,” his friend said fondly.

His eyes misted over as he gently laid the framed picture back to its original place.

He wished that his dad had been just as caring. He wished that he had been present when he graduated with honors in the Elementary, in High School, and in College. He wished that the one-on-one with him had been longer instead of the less than 5 minutes of combined moments in the 21 years of growing up in the household.

He wished that his Dad had given him some affection. He would remember him just as fondly.

His friend patted him on the back as he let out a deep and long-drawn sigh.