AMANDA

(I just like to share with you one of the finest works of my past favorite writers in the Inquirer, the late Supreme Court Associate Justice Isagani A. Cruz, a man of law and reverence who did speak like a common man mostly in his writings, but with full of poetry in his heart, through his column “Separate Opinion.” I just took the liberty to edit the syntax errors.

This was written around Valentine’s Day of 2008 and I’m glad I found this today in the net (thank you, Google). I remember I cut this out then right after I read but also subsequently misplaced.

He wrote this while he was already in his eighties. Read on, this is from the heart of the romantic.)

"Separate Opinion

Amanda

By Isagani Cruz

Philippine Daily Inquirer

First Posted 19:50:00 02/16/2008

THIS ONE’S FOR THE LADIES WHO WERE young some 60 years ago but still regard love as the Great Adventure that tested and tempted their pure and innocent lives. I write this with wry humor in recollection of how girls were during that less daring time, when the chaperone sat between sweethearts in the movies and the boy paid for all expenses of their date instead of “kkb” or “kanya-kanyang bayad” as at the practical present.

So I leave politics out in the meantime and, for the benefit of the fair sex, write about the more engaging topic of Romance that many of them may still enjoy but only vicariously. I suppose some of them are still secretly recovering from recollections of their own Valentine’s Day that was so different (or maybe not?) from the one celebrated last Thursday by their less inhibited granddaughters. Their reveries are like sniffing the faded fragrance of a wilted rose between the pages of a forgotten book.

I recall that time when I remarked to the late Sen. Ambrosio Padilla that he must have been a quite popular young man, being tall and handsome, a brilliant law student, a star Olympic athlete, and immensely rich to boot (although I did not mention that last attribute). He demurred humbly and said, “No, because I was so skinny then and was very shy with the girls.” I half-believed him because he later won as his bride one of the loveliest ladies in the land, the regal Lily de las Alas.

Mrs. Padilla’s singular grace accentuated the radiance of the Filipino women at the time, along with Aurora Recto and Nelly Lovina, both elegant matrons. Among the younger set were Guia Balmori, Telly Albert, for whom I had a boyhood crush that did not diminish when I first met her personally at the Inquirer when she was already a grandmother, and, of course, the exquisite Susan Magalona. The nation remembers her with pride and affection although she left long ago for other shores where many people might have doubted that she had come from the boondocks of the Philippines.

I was like the modest senator, but only because I was also skinny and shy, that’s all. But I did have a number of girl, i.e., female, friends who probably considered me harmless. Among them were Ester, who later married a hoodlum; Cely, whom I walked daily to her dorm after our classes in UP; Elisa, who researched at the USIS library while I waited for her and smoked outside; Myke, who said to a mutual friend that I have been in love with her for the past 50 years; Cora, who was my phone pal until I sent her a picture of some pug and said it was me; and Mary who never went out except with a suspicious eagle-eyed aunt. And there was Ursula.

Ursula was special because she was exceptionally lovely. Her family moved to a house near ours during the war and we could see each other while she washed the dishes in her kitchen and I read in the afternoons in our porch. One day she wrote me and said, “Hi! Would you like us to be friends?” And then she asked if I had a copy of “Magnificent Obsession” that I might want to lend her. I did and immediately took it to her, and that started our beautiful friendship.

We began exchanging letters every day (remember we were teeners then) until one day the answer I got was not from Ursula but from her sister, who explained that her “ate” was indisposed. It was from Amanda, whom I had hardly noticed before, and the next day it was Ursula who was writing back again. After the war, her family moved back to the province and we lost track of each other until I read the sad news many years later that she had passed away.

Looking back, it is not the enchanting Ursula I mostly remember but her younger sister Amanda. In my mind’s eye, I see her again, a wisp of a girl with long black hair, light brown eyes, a smooth and fair complexion, a cute nose, full red lips and white even teeth. Also, she was two years younger than I, not two years older like Ursula as I discovered from her obituary. Amanda was lovely too, not as extravagantly as Ursula, but in a way I liked and wanted my future wife to be.

I am married now to my caring and beautiful wife Sally, who has given me a happy life. I thank God for making her my eternal and beloved soul-mate.

But every once in a while I think of Amanda and where she might be now if she is still alive after these many vanished years. Why had she written me when her sister could not and why did I not answer her instead of her sister? Could there have been the spark of a mutual fascination that would have changed our separate and distant lives? If I had wooed Amanda and succeeded, could that have brought us together to live happily ever after in some approachable fantasy land?

Old people like us luxuriate only in memories because the future no longer beckons us with promises of excitement and fulfillment. Reminiscences are better for they can be retroactively erased, amended or embellished as the wistful heart dictates. Dreams do for us what reality cannot. So on a lazy afternoon in my quiet garden, or at night when the stars are bright in the lonely skies, I become 17 again and dream, vainly, it is true, like all dreams, of the ephemeral vision of Amanda."

REBOUND

[April 11, 2012 at 12:03pm]

I’s just thankful it coincided with the Holy Week hence it was mistaken for a “penance,” as throughout the period my body suffered all kinds of aches known to man, or in this case, to me, at once.

The culprit? The usual suspect, my first and last love, my ultimate desire, my passion, longing and pride: basketball. It’s the only exercise I knew which could set my body and soul in motion without really trying. As the sight and sound of a bouncing ball is more than enough to bring back to life my dead cells and fading adrenaline.

But not all the best things in life are free. Somewhere, somehow, there’s always a price to pay.

Yeah, in the middle of the game, your never-say-die attitude is there to go on the fight, to make or break. But even in the field of sports you could prove that the Bible is true when it preached about the spirit that is willing and the flesh that is weak.

You could anticipate the ball where it’d be going yet you lost your reflexes as you see it coming, thus the next scene is you’re going up for the rebound, summoning all your spring to jump up high but realizing later you just elevated yourself in the air by not more than five inches high and subsequently securing the ball all by your lonesome but not without it hitting your face first and then it rolled through your chest to diaphragm.

However, playing with the youngsters is an exhilarating feeling. Imagine, running toe to toe with those kids half your age who are your ex-playmates’ kids, banging bodies and rubbing elbows with them aside from cymbals-like crashing of heads. We oldies are just thankful the same old great “hilot" from Gines, Tay Crispin, will always be around when we have twisted ankles and separated joints with free unbearable pain.

But that’s basketball, the game of the tough and the best if not the beast. Jaworski once said if you don’t want to get hurt physically, play chess.

If the game had taught me anything, it’s the principle that if after several tries you’re still scoreless and your offense’s still sour, just stand up and go back after the fall and defend and get the rebound. Never lose hope at anytime and persevere, there’s always a chance to win as it ain’t over till it’s over.

STARTING ALL OVER AGAIN

[April 11, 2014]

One of the hardest parts of life insofar as I am concerned is, after each fall, how to start all over again. Like after my long hiatus from FB due to other concerns, I’d grope for words at once upon re-logging in.

Like when you’re compelled to renew your multi-purpose loan anew after having paid back only some fifty percent, your agony’s end is hard to imagine because you start another long period of extended monthly amortization payment.

When you are still in your early teenage years and starting to feel something special for your opposite gender, you don’t know how to commence conversation with her, much less spill out the words you hope she longs to hear. Or, when you have just been dumped to the floor by someone who for years you adore, and worship as well, it’s hard to teach your heart to beat once more since you would doubt now if it’s still capable to feel.

When you are a fire victim, having lost loved ones and all belongings to the towering inferno which devours everything, despite having no experience whatsoever, still you would sympathize with those victims for you never know too how your next life would begin. We’re all certain that starting anew from the scratch is one of life’s most difficult tasks. It’s like becoming a baby once more: despite fear of falling flat, taking a step is a must.

But while others are at a loss on how to start all over again, other people are insignificantly confused about when does life actually commence.

Like the case of Pro’s and Anti’s regarding the controversial Reproductive Health Bill now in action which the Supreme Court ruled as “not unconstitutional” but struck down its eight provisions thus regarded by many as “win-win” solution. It’s laughable that some religious leaders are in vehement opposition of government funding of youth’s RH education and contraceptives’ provision yet they find no fault in the funding for these same leaders’ personal SUV’s like Pajero and Expedition.

However, many are precisely confused and thus cannot avoid asking: when does a life of a human being would truly be starting?

If we would still care to remember, all human born of a woman are, naturally and scientifically speaking, born winners. If I’d still recall biology right, we were just a sperm cell, racing and reaching first to an egg cell, over several million others.

But, when God actually gives breath and spirit in action, is it during fertilization or conception?

If you ask for my sincerest opinion, I don’t really care about in what stage of creation a human life begins. It’s because I truly believe we will all be judged not on how we started life but how do we live it till it ends.

You think you’re holier because you’re born ahead and have had done for God so many tasks? What do you think then, why did Jesus said that many are called but few chosen thus the last shall be first and the first last (Matthew 20:16)?

In this sports where involved are all the living, the matter’s still on how we played the game. So, if you ask me when it truly starts rolling again, well, life begins at forty-seven.

AND THEN THERE WERE THREE

[April 11, 2015]

Some days ago, the saddest scenes in the globe, at least in Youtube, for the young ones and the young once, like my generation, are many people’s one reaction upon their official confirmation of the departure of Zayn Malik from his popular band One Direction.

The uploaded cries and anguish and some mix of contorted faces, especially by that gay man who tearfully rankles, as if he’d now to face life’s hardest hurdles, show that the pain of losing someone is indeed too hard to overcome, like some heart’s battles, especially if you’re used to hearing his familiar canticles.

And I’d say the internet is ‘luckier’ it’s born only a few years ago and not during those years when melodies were felt like life’s mantles or a soothing balm from all pain, sounding like trickles.  Lest, the net would have already crashed severely if not exterminated totally when John Lennon chose Yoko Ono over his group the world-renown, no, universal phenomenon, called The Beatles.

It was a tragedy for the Beatlemaniacs, as if the day of death of music, and half the world at the time unabashedly wept. That love would be chosen over fame by Lennon was too hard to believe, for he caused his band to disband because he left.

In the local shore, the same thing happened when in Cainta I early woke up, and while sipping my coffee cup, I picked a  Tempo tabloid one morning. I could not understand why there was something inside me then that was terribly saddened upon reading the tabloid’s headline, “Tunaw Na Ang Asin!”

Yup, the jolly musician in me on that day instantly turned into a heartbreak kid. For many years I had lived my life too singing a variety of Asin’s sensible music.

Therefore, upon confirming it was not among usual tabloid’s tricks, there was stinging loss not just for me but to all of the band’s fanatics. Every fan, every one, full well knew right in that moment that the group would never be the same again after that death of Saro Bañares.

Some years back, Reverend Mueda was also with the world that was lacking peace before he responded to the call for a full-time job in His Majesty’s service. He recruited at the time cuties three of Kirayan Norte: Damy, Gard Ray and yours truly, to form a group, then nameless, but I secretly dubbed “The Beatless.”

He’d always convince us to go to the city to visit and be fed by him when he was still at the Iloilo Provincial Governor’s Office. He would make sure we’d be all present during every Jaworski’s and Ginebra’s game at the USA gym, tickets of course courtesy of his.

But Damy was destined to go ahead among us four and his chuckles to my corny jokes will never be heard anymore. But some golden daybreak someday we will all be reunited for non-stop joy of camaraderie, yeah, I’m very sure.

It’s as sure as that thief in Golgotha who, because he instantly believed, Jesus promised him a paradise too great. And we too stand on that same promise since we have what that thief had as well before his own death: faith.

THE HARVEST

[April 11, 2016 at 8:39am]

The Kirayan Baptist Church has successfully culminated last week its Vacation Bible School, or VBS, and I’m still happy for the huge turnout of children aged 4 to 15 from here and from Banuyao and Naulid, our neighboring villages.

We would like to thank all their respective parents for allowing them to join in this summer activities, to learn and hear about the Bible, about Christ and His saving grace, and to promote goodwill and camaraderie among those kids

.

We’d like to thank likewise Pastors John and Ryan and their assistants Ma’am Paopao, Ma’am Jera, Ma’am Kakai and Ma’am Bembem, student volunteers from Doane Seminary, for a job well-done. The joy is truly unparalleled when despite the hardship and pressure and physical struggle under the sun, one gives diligent efforts and total dedication and passion for the work of the Great One.

We know that such efforts are definitely not in vain if our motivation is not the world’s accolades or award. If our desire’s to become partakers of God’s promise: “I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward” (Gen.15:1).

I quietly observed those initially noisy children who could not contain their excitement obviously, especially when their culmination program was finally starting last Saturday. And once more, I saw myself among them, just like four decades ago, when I too was so excited and happy, singing, playing, memorizing verses and listening to a Bible story.

I was sure the happiness and laughter they were having at that time were genuine and pure. Thus it was a delight to see that crowd of innocent young children, the adults of the future.

Some more years from now and each one of them would take his own path, begin his journey and follow every dream and desire of the heart. And like the rest of aging men among us, they’d know that the world waiting for them is composed both of deep happiness and a deeper hurt.

The sight of innocent faces filling the church did me amuse. And I remembered Jesus’ words, “the harvest is plenteous” (Matt. 9:37).

That thick “harvest” in the vast field against the dwindling number of harvesters who also sowed the seeds and the coming of uncertain days in the hearts of those kids are what make the pastors worried. But as it’s written, though some of those seeds may fell by the wayside, among thorns, and on stony places, there’ll be some on good ground to yield fruits, some thirty, some sixty and some in hundred (Mark 4:3).

As the Lord Himself said, “My word. . . shall not return to Me void,” this He told Isaiah the Prophet: “but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it” (Isa.55:11).

GRACE AND JUSTICE

[April 7, 2016 at 6:28pm]

"For I, the LORD, love justice; I hate robbery and wrongdoing” (Isa.61:8).

One of the hottest issues that erupted lately was about these “Panama Papers” which stirred a lot of controversy after their list includes so many “who’s-who” among world leaders and personalities. Last night, April 07, the news said the prime minister of Iceland, one of those in the said list, resigned from his position because the loss of trust and confidence by his constituents denied him peace.

What a breeding! We poor Filipinos could only watch in envy with some of the rest of the human race—the people from Reykjavik in this case—when it comes to a government official’s propriety, honor, and self-respect.  Elsewhere in the world, if there’s prima facie evidence of a public leader’s scandalous act and deed, such leader immediately leaves, here, a controversial official rather runs for a higher office while citing “due process.”

And we all know well how “due process” is being handled by clever lawyers in this country. Some suits, in the average course, are litigated for at least two decades before it attains finality. In fact, if you try to research about some cases already buried in the grave and declared final and executory, could still win, provided you get the services of an old Martial Law attorney.

And may I ask you, what are these “Panama Papers”? I’m sorry, but I lack details, just go read the papers. I mean news in newspapers. Better yet, online or Inquirer’s. In fact again, to tell you honestly, I’ve no idea where exactly is Panama. I heard it only because of its Canal and boxer having “Manos de Piedra.”

Panama Papers could be as deadly as pretty Darby Shaw’s legal documents called the Pelican Brief. They could be like Pandora’s Box, with indicting information against the world’s wealthiest and the filthy rich. As filthy as a Filipino politician who could be among the worst in the world as, you mind only reason and logic about his lifestyle and wealth, and presto, he’s undoubtedly more lethal than Lupin The Third in looting and dividing the spoil, making him hazardous to the nation’s health.

You ask, why do our traditional politicians behave like that? I think it’s because they believe stealing is a privilege in a public office. Or maybe, although they know what they’re doing is a sin indeed, yet, they decide to enjoy it for a while as after all there’s God’s grace.

However, the Christians in Rome had Apostle Paul exhorted: “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid” (Romans 6:1-2). “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof” (v.12), for today’s Lord of Mercy and Grace is tomorrow’s God of Justice.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

[Edited edition from April 6, 2015, post]

“If I forget thee, O [Israel], let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; If I prefer not Israel above my chief joy” (Psalm 137:5-6).

In secondary school, I must be blessed to have a plethora of “maestra,” that our class considered as the cream of the crop of their era. Every one of them would be special in their own right and in an individual field of expertise. However, like in every class, there’s always one with class who’d stand above the rest.

Just like in this politically-ravaged country’s college of court justices, they may all have bright legal minds but only one is ‘primus inter pares.’ Therefore, anent your question, “Who is your most favorite high school teacher?” I must now make myself loud and clear. For even if I’d be examined and cross-examined, I have either answer: Ms. Claire Monteclaro or Ms. Monteclaro, Claire.

Ma’am Claire was first assigned as our reluctant class adviser when we were in the third year. And she ended up so frustrated but brave in declaring she abhorred us all shortly after. It’s because although we had the best and the brightest individuals, our class too included some literal eraser heads and the hardest of skulls.

With a cast of characters like us, no one could blame her definitely then. What, with a class featuring the likes of a Ramil Facurib and Elmor Nim.  For even with only that pair crowding such unruly class section, you don’t just expect trouble, you’d guarantee pandemonium.  Who’s a teacher who wouldn’t lose her decency if not sanity, when in the middle of a lecture, one of the boys would cry out this tone:  “We don’t need no education; We don’t need no thought control; No dark sarcasm in the classroom; Teacher leave them kids alone.”

However, in our fourth year, to our big surprise, we received great news in a flash: We learned that Ma’am Claire practically begged the Admin to handle our class. Well, facts of life indeed are as hard as Pacquiao’s fists: this world is not bereft of martyrs and masochists.

Became more surprising was our final year as Ma’am Claire helped enlist, no, transformed an indifferent guy like me into a certified sentimentalist. Aside from that ‘noisy’ “Sound of Silence” we all did sing, she introduced to the class the Fab Four’s “All My Loving.” And I’d like to expose here the one truth—however inconvenient this to her may be now—by virtue and in the name of my legal rights: Only a handful among us her inner core students know that Ma’am Claire, despite her being a non-Jew, is one of the true-blue Israelites.

I’m so sorry, Ma’am, for revealing your secret finally, may you stretch forth your patience again as I greet you past your special day. I just want you to know that in loving I did you copy, especially your way of loving Padim, for I have loved Israel too for all eternity.

Here’s my warmest and ever fresh happy birthday greetings to you, Oh dear Teacher. Like the usual words I had for you for two years each time in your class I would enter:

“Better late than never.”

THE DISEASE

[Revised from April 5, 2013 post]

Just recently, two news items disturbed, no, shook, rattled and rolled me: One was about the investigation of collusion or conspiracy.  This about our former Supreme Court justices who decided a labor dispute against our own OFW’s and/or their heirs versus a foreign entity.  The other was concerning the Supreme Court of India which struck down the preposterous claim for patent, for an enhanced drug for leukemia by a giant Swiss pharmaceutical company, full of greedy intent.

India, notorious for rape cases and popular for Sushmita Sen, and dubbed “the pharmacy to the world,” is the home of generics.  It’s now known for its wise Supreme Court justices that favored the vast majority, the people’s welfare and their need so basic.

Yeah, around the globe, it’s a hard fact that a pharmaceutical company or a drug corporation sucks. They suck the bulk of all of the peoples’ bucks by overpricing all of the planet’s most important drugs. Since medicines are now also a basic commodity around the world, even the value of those medicines’ taxes, to the held hostage patients are hurled.

We should never be thankful to those drug companies everytime they come up with a new effective drug for a certain disease. In an area called medicine research, they primarily invest, not to help mankind but only for three words: profits, profits, profits.  Among us on this planet take for granted this so-called corporate greed.  Oh, people, it’s dangerous than a killer disease, we’d end up deader than dead.

Time was when the only diseases we have had known about and suffered from were merely a headache, a stomachache or a toothache. You don’t have to look around for proof, Exhibit A were my high school’s pro forma excuse letters with parent’s signature that was fake. Now we have H1N1, H7N9 and other kinds of virus which leave us all to the mercy of the High and Lofty One because there’s no safe place to live here on Earth anymore. A single virus which could fly out of China or Africa or Europe undetected even by shark-like senses of our Customs people could multiply by millions here if allowed by our Creator.

That’s why I’m thankful to my God that only Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease (HMFD) struck my two-year-old last Sunday which caused her hospitalization until yesterday. Watch out; do not believe that the disease happens only to the five-year-olds and below because it occurs even to adults like me.

In the hospital, I suffered HFMD instantly because my hands were shaking and numbed in fear while I saw her being struck by needles repeatedly, my foot was ignoring the exhaustion and tiredness by running to and from the hospital and the groceries store and pharmacy.

My mouth was stammering as I frantically explained my urgent need for cash ey-es-ey-pee to all of the possible lenders I contacted right away. Thus, before I knew it from the emergency room physician that my girl was having HFMD, all the symptoms of it were present in me.

Now I know, HFMD, in fact, is the usual disease suffered by someone when his/her loved one is to be hospitalized immediately. But like all the viruses in this world, one dose of a drug named Faith could neutralize even kill such sort of viral disease swiftly.

All because there’s our Great Physician Who’s telling us simply: “Fear thou not for I am with Thee…” (Isaiah 43:10)

CYCLE OF LIFE

[April 6, 2016 at 11:29am]

“Vanity of vanities. . . all is vanity” (Eccl. 12:8)

After a long, long while, last Saturday, April 2nd, like a victorious persistent suitor undeterred by repeated failures, i.e. dumping by the girl he would always hound, Pastor Homer finally succeeded in tugging me along in a cycling tour of Igbaras town.

For the record, the now-peaceful Igbaras is my most beloved municipality after Miagao as we’d regularly visit there every May 22nd since I was a toddler until I turned college-bound, the place being my beloved paternal grandma’s hometown.

As we wandered around the wonderful scenery, natural and man-made, along with the riverside, my mind could not help wander likewise and backtrack to my first ever bicycle ride. Then, we had to spend rent budget of One Peso and Fifty Centavos per hour per bike—mind you, that was much a long time ago— when I was in our freshman high.

That BMX bike house was memorable indeed, being one of so many spots in my childhood so dear and most beloved. That spot was located along Osmena Street, several meters away from the house/hardware of Tay Doming Abəd-abəd.

And one of those bikes nearly took my then young life when, driven by a good friend pretty boy Nomer Garzon, it descended fast from Pongkie’s old house along Orbe Street and inexplicably skidded and tumbled upon nearing the public market. Before that, I enjoyed with our speed for I was sitting on the bar at the front sideways, and after we’d been thrown off which, the right handle’s end hit the hollow part below my chest, suddenly stopping the air and I gasped for breath.

Good thing young Nomer was thinking fast and acted quickly like a well-trained medic of the town. He rose up first, unmindful of his own pain, held both my underarms and shook me up and down. When I regained my senses, the first thing I looked for was our bike. It had to be returned intact, although Nomer and I were limping alike.

That sunny Saturday, as our group was drifting on momentum or, in biking lingo, on a free-wheel, I could not avoid the thought as well that since things at times come full circle, life itself is like a cycle. When we inventory ourselves, our past, our dreams and wishes then, we recall that sometimes we were gloriously on top, at times we’re desperately down. There were times when all we would think about was a sportscar or a ‘top-down,’ however, there comes a time too when upon all those things we frown.

So many rich people had admitted that cars and limos are all in vain, when gout and arthritis pain, along with other ailments, start to creep in. Enough to convince you that in his final conclusion that “all is vanity,” King Solomon was definitely right. All pleasures and luxuries in motored wheels are all nothing when we are already reaching the twilight.

That all we need after all are still the basic things in life: God’s love, grace, and mercy. Followed by a little bike.

PORTRAIT OF LOVE

[April 4, 2016]

I was greatly surprised the other Monday the moment I reluctantly took a seat inside a slow-moving Miagao PUJ, driven by someone I know, on my way to the city. Had it not for my immediate realization that I last beheld that familiar image twenty-eight years ago from that same day, I would have looked the other way.

I could not be mistaken, it was that profile for which I sang in mumbles these lines from a famous band: “Oh yeah, I’ll tell you something, I think you’ll understand; When I say that something, I wanna hold your hand.”

So I fixed my eyes in curiosity on that young lady seated beside a slit-eyed, ivory-skinned, athletic-built young male—hubby or not, I’ve yet to know—who was directly in front of me, as hers were a feature I could not forget, no!

And how could I do, when everyday for half-semester I feasted my eyes in abandon, clandestinely though, on that oval face in Baby Tsina-hair with cutie nose and perfectly outlined glinting eyes under a natural arching brow.

Yeah, all that slender figure mostly in loose tops over jeans complimented her light weight. From June to October 1988, I had always perfected in mind such very lovely portrait.

Sometimes I would like to think that’s the reason perhaps a light bulb switches on in my head each time I see a complete resemblance of such profile. Perhaps that’s the reason that when I do I would not mind these ubiquitous creases to show all over my face just to let out my sweetest smile.

But on that Monday I made sure I hid that sort of smile of course. Lest, I would be flirting with a stranger’s irritation, or worse, curse.

How could you not beam upon recalling those times when your soul always threw at her those secret glimpses day and night, too careful her own stares would not catch in flagrante your nervous, squinting sight?

You grin upon remembering those were the times of pure admiration to an apple of the eye, for with a clean heart and guiltless mind you were simply looking at her as a person to be with, not an object of amorous desire.

Seeing at present those images from the past that make us remember every portrait of good things and glory would revitalize our energy and reaffirms our belief that life indeed is worth living. For they are there to be considered upon, or to cull lessons from, while we continue to give our best, and trying, for despite trials and troubles ahead, we know the fullness of joy is in the offing.

Just like when we see the portrait of God around us in each and every way. We remember how faithful He is through His provisions that we receive daily.

We can’t help but remember the kindness of a merciful God since Day One of our life upon gaining knowledge of such great love. In fact, it’d be more amazing to know that even when we were still clueless about that, He already cared because “He first loved us” (I John 4:19).

That even when we ignored Him then, still, we already had His look of love. For while we were still ungodly, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:6,8).

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

[April 3, 2013]

What’s in a name? A lot. Especially if you entered politics like the kids of Erap. It would still take so many years before we see all voters in this country, voting conscientiously for issues and character rather than name-recall and personality.

What’s in a name? For Shakespeare, insignificant it is, because “that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

What’s in a name?  I tell you, it’s truly both an honor and a nightmare. Once you become a “tambay” the name your peers gave you will stick forever.  When you are a street “tambay,” a different name, a street name that sounds crazy, to you would be given.  One that would hold fast to your identity from your adolescent period all the way to becoming a senior citizen.

You will pity your family name because most likely it’d be replaced by your street name.  In Kirayan, the handsome name Nelson had been popularly replaced by Tibor which he gladly took, while Rodney Faulmitan, my elementary classmate with an undying smile on his face, is now famous here as Boy Lupok.

Just like our other playmate beautifully named by his mom as Danny who loved to make the highway his king-sized bed when he grew up.  He would be unidentified in our barangay by any other name most especially when you will ask around there looking for Part Danny Lambat.

I grew up in the street for so many years too hopping from one variety store to another, surrounded by friends with amazing names like Ronie Baltik, Armin Levi’s, Damian Bax, Marsing Ko-ot, Titit Pal-ak and some others.

Who would ever think that the astounding Filipino-Italian name of Juan Robertini Fior could end up only from Zone One to Zone Three to the Land of the Yellow Army as Daday Tamulmol?

And you think I was spared? Due to comical legend of it, the why’s and wherefores of my street name can never see print. But I remember Titit Pal-ak and Alek Dolit first called me that. It was “Tatệ” at first, meaning “from the States,” but I was glad it reduced to Tatz.

Some names are given by some persons themselves for themselves perhaps to preempt the bad and to ensure the best. During his prime, when he ruled the boxing world while defying his government that loved to oppress, Muhammad Ali called himself “The Greatest.”

“A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches” (Proverbs 22:1). The elitist or members of the so-called high society often protect their names and avoid scandal like a plague so deadly. That was then because it seems that power and riches today are favored over the established name and good reputation and tradition of the family.

You may agree that the sweetest word to hear from anyone is when he or she calls you by your name even once. Some names are retained by your memory even if you did not do it unintentionally. They just stay there and refused to be evicted because your heart would keep them automatically.

One song I loved to hear during my stay in parsonage is “Jesus Is The Sweetest Name I Know.” I could still recall Pastor Aguilar’s baritone rendition of it under a full moon’s glow.

How sweet it is till now, to be sang by you and also from others to be heard, because it’s the only Name which will surely eternally live. And “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)