By: Chaz Vanhaltren
Every year, I blow out the candles on my birthday cake. People clap, sing, and tell me to make a wish. Yet, every flame reminds me that birthdays are not only measured by how many candles are lit, but also by who is missing when they are blown out.
I was six years old when my grandmother handed me the phone during lunchtime on July 20, 2015. I can still hear my mother’s words on the other line as if they were spoken yesterday: “Ga bulag mi ni Daddy nimo.”
At that age, I did not understand what bulag meant. It was only as the years passed that I realized a single word had quietly changed the course of my childhood. My mother came home from Manila, but my relationship with my father slowly faded into occasional appearances as though someone could walk in and out of a child’s life and expect everything to remain the same.
The hardest part was never that he left. It was realizing that every absence became another memory he would never share with me. Every birthday, achievement, ordinary day added another candle to the cake, while the space beside it grew larger.
People often think parental neglect only happens when a child is abandoned completely. Sometimes, it looks like an inconsistency. It looks like promises that disappear, conversations that never happen, and years that pass without realizing how much a child has grown. The wounds are invisible, but they remain long after the candles have been blown out.
As I grew older, I began seeing reflections of my story in others. Friends who longed for parents who were emotionally present. Children who learned to celebrate milestones without expecting everyone who should have been there to actually show up. Many of us hide our pain because life keeps moving. Reality continues, birthdays come and go, and the world does not stop long enough for us to process what absence feels like.
Being a parent is more than providing food or buying gifts. It is choosing to stay, to listen, to guide, and to love consistently. No parent is perfect, but every child deserves to feel that they are worth showing up for.
Today, I no longer measure birthdays by the empty chair at the table. I measure them by the people who chose to stay: my family, friends, and those who became the support I needed. They taught me that my worth has never depended on the parent who was absent.
When I blow out my birthday candles now, I do not wish for someone who failed to stay. I remind myself that no empty seat can ever diminish the person I am becoming.
