During my stint as a heartbreak kid back in 1997, I met a wonderful maiden from Central Luzon by the name of Madeleine. Actually, I met her words first long before I met her in the flesh. In other words, I came to know her inner beauty and the core of her being, before I first set my sight on her outer layer which was, still is, equally astounding!
It happened one night, specifically on June Fourteenth of that year, after I had no more articles to read, I tried, for the first time, to glance at Tita Dulce’s column in the Inquirer. And there I found her published letter for the issue of the day, which was full of pure melancholy and woes’ litany. I knew it from the start that Madeleine was just a pseudonym, but she committed a grave error when she wrote also her mailing address therein.
I immediately wrote her, not to console nor to encourage, but to laugh at her predicament and panic and told her too the worse: my own heartaches. I don’t know if there’s also such thing as a woman’s ego that we men sometimes touch but right in that moment, as what she further confided to me later about the deluge of letters she consequently received, mine was standing way above the rest, simply different.
And that was the start of non-stop correspondence I have had for the longest time with a strange gal, and once upon a time our generation had a specific term for this for each other: penpal. Everyday I’d always have at least three pages of arduously crafted words boldly sent through snail mail for Madeleine, which were all deliberately assiduously written in bold letters on a pure white bond sized eight by eleven.
This went on for months which turned to years of knowing each other inside out, without the benefit of knowing each other’s face as, with a prolific writer of her kind, of outward appearance who’d care about? It was a great feeling to have a co-correspondence who’s so super-mega-hyper smart and witty, and lecturing me about a woman’s sensitivity the way Joyce Kilmer talked about the tree.
When came a time we decided to trade each other’s photo tit for tat at once, in that instance too I proved beauty and brains do mix as she’s prettier in form just like her substance. We did draft as we laughed a trial contract that marrying each other after five years would be best just like in the movies, provided however, we’d still find each other’s mind still in empty space and our hearts would be both free from all liens and encumbrances.
But as “fate” and fact would have it, fantasy to reality wouldn’t fit. Just a year after that ‘signing’ of contract, very yours truly to someone else was fatally lovestruck. Nevertheless, before my official signing of the other contract, a lifetime one, which, of course, still faithfully exists today, I, accompanied by Bosneil, had managed to meet Madeleine up close and personal at the Megamall where there we both laughed at our story. Since she was preceded by her stunning reputation, in the flesh she was indeed more than just worthy of any man’s adoration.
Our first and last encounter was not full of dramatics like in our letters, but just a casual “eyeball” or boy-meets-girl, yet, that one brief shining moment was full of excitement and laughter. I was so happy because our parting was totally unlike that of Pi and Richard Parker, thus Madeleine’s and the xerox copies of my letters are still intact today in a five-inch-thick folder.
And the rest is history, as what I’m doing now to FB, I did this to Madeleine already. For a long, long time, she was safely hidden in my memory, virus-free, leak-free. Yet today, I am setting free those memories for all the world to read, that it may know when wounded birds of feather help each other, two lives would proceed.
But most of all today, our “Freedom Day,” I remember you, Madz, “dulce extranjera, mi amiga, mi alegrÃa.” On your birthday, also today, still wishing you life’s best, and as my usual closing phrase, “hasta la vista…”
(Sgd. Tatz)
No comments:
Post a Comment