Leaves Over Water

Thoughts these days inevitably turn to time, ageing, comings and goings, and unfulfilled goals. The other day I had lunch with a long-time friend from my previous ad agency. Since we hadn’t seen each other for more than a year, we fell into a reflective mood of sorts, talking about our lives, our age (he just turned 35 – and I’m following hard on his heels), our families (well, at least mine, because he’s still single but planning to get married next year). We shared some info about our respective life insurance-slash-retirement policies. He just got one from Manulife while I told him about how I finally finished paying off my Philam retirement plan, which took five years to accomplish.

Supposedly, according to my aunt who made me take up that policy in the first place, I’d get a million pesos …

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Since late last year, Lola Mommy, Pam’s grandmother, had been bedridden as her 83-year-old body yielded to age. Previous to this, I recall how she was still alert enough to banter with us during gatherings, and even strong enough to open the door ahead of the maid when I would visit. Late last year, my father-in-law confided to me that he couldn’t see her surviving past Christmas, so we should be prepared for a heavy-hearted holiday. He was wrong though, as Lola Mommy proved strong enough to survive for another 7 months.

Just this morning, around six, she finally passed away...

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Someone once said that as you grow older, your friends grow fewer. Looking back, it does seem true, along with the fact that you also grow more serious and settled. I wonder how accurate these observations are, and I start to scroll in my mind through the many instances that validate them. There were Pam’s separate high school and college barkadas, as examples. She used to meet with them almost every other week two or three years back, until pregnancy came and made her focus on the family again. There were drinking sprees, late nights out, badminton, and general wholesome fun. Now she hardly gets to see them at all.

In my case, I remember my huge bunch of college tropa, distinct from other literati friends who have already published their own books and won awards. Nowadays, I haven’t drunk in ages, haven’t gone to Greenbelt or Glorietta in months, and the few old friends that I see or talk to briefly discuss….                      

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It seems like yesterday (ok, it was three weeks ago), when we welcomed a new housemaid, Tata, the one I fetched and waited for an ungodly stretch of time in the terminal in Cubao along with Pam’s auntie. This morning we had to see that young girl off, and good riddance, I must add. We’ve had our share of “monster” maids, and though Tata was still far from being termed so, she was nonetheless the most hardheaded one.

Imagine giving her a list of things to do, and seeing none of it performed. Imagine my mom-in-law dropping by the house one day and asking her to quit watching the TV to do something – and Tata just continued to watch. Imaging me asking for an explanation on why she wasn’t obeying my orders and getting no reply whatsoever. Off with her head! (At one point, when she still kept her silence, I nearly wished it were possible…. 

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Two Sundays ago we all participated in one of the most thoughtful and memorable celebrations of Father’s Day, but with a twist. It was my parents-in-laws’ 40th wedding anniversary, and it was amazing how my wife, together with her brother and sisters, managed to organize the occasion with all its trimmings without rousing their parents’ suspicions in one bit….

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Last Friday will go down in my history as the one in which I spent the most ungodly period of waiting. With a relative I hardly knew, for someone I had never met, at a place I had never been to before.

When Pam and I went home Thursday, we found one of her aunts, Ate Lina, waiting in the living room. I spoke with her through her cellphone earlier that day because she wanted to refer to us the maid of her sister who lives in Bicol. I thought the meeting would be set by next week, but apparently plans suddently changed ….

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Sometimes, I believe that expecting the worst can spoil just such an outcome, or lessen its enormity at least so that it wouldn’t seem as bad as you’d expect. But this morning, one of the worst things that could happen to a baby left alone at home with only a nanny happened in all its poignant, painful detail.

It was just the third day since our last house helper left, and the first day that Pam and I were forced to leave baby Caehl and his nanny alone and go to work together. Naturally we were apprehensive, and I explicitly told the nanny to keep her charge a top priority. We locked the gate and drove off with somewhat a heavy heart. I dropped Pam off to her day-long seminar, and I went to my office. I put in an hour’s worth of work then decided to take a break by calling home. Ring, ring, ring. No answer. Then I called up my in-law’s place (just a walking distance from ours). True enough, the nanny and Caehl were there, according to Pam’s sister who answered me. But the big BUT was when she said that the nanny had something to tell me.

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The whole of May will certainly go down as one solid workaholic steam engine block for me, as papers and projects got stacked one by one atop my head. In an earlier blog, I had an inkling this would happen as everything started coming in within the last week of April. Now, thankfully, the heat is settling down and though there are still a lot of loose ends to tie up, I was gifted with this little breather. A little while ago I emailed the last of my pending articles to client and, even better, I finally managed to sort through the three-months’ clutter of scratch papers and folders that accumulated on my desk…                                                                                                         

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Happy birthday to my tita who just turned 73 years old. I’m glad she’s staying with us so we were able to give her a proper treat. Actually, if not for Pam, I wouldn’t have remembered the date. She woke me up early to accompany her to the grocery store and once there I asked her why she was buying pasta and sauces. I was surprised and yes, a bit ashamed at my so-called “manly” kind of memory that’s not properly attuned to memorize dates like these.

So we bought cake, a small tube of Selecta, and lots of sweet corn that we all had for merienda, after that heavy pasta lunch. Too bad the digital camera’s memory was full already, otherwise I could have taken shots of my tita blowing the candle on her cake – truly a rarity.

She’s the last of three Marias that included my mom……

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We bake under the scorching summer sun, we take baths twice or even thrice a day, wake up all sweaty and with parched throats, and squint hard at the glare of white concrete and skyscraper glass and windshield on the highway. Yet when today’s issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer carried an announcement by the weather bureau that the dry season would be over soon, I can’t help but feel a twinge of regret….

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