It is no secret that my family and I had been victims of the terrible flood Ondoy of 2009. I dare not go back to the trauma, even through this writing, of the painful details that my family and I went through. Then again, I just feel it best to share that one crucial moment because it was the ultimate moment when the Lord taught me what letting go and letting Him really meant.

                I had been stranded in Miriam College the rainy afternoon of September 26 and I can still remember staring at the rising floodwaters of our creek. I just made what might have been the last phone call I made on our landline back in Cainta with my brother frantically shouting at me on the phone, “Andito na yung tubig!” My thoughts immediately went back to the last time I saw him and everyone I knew was left at home just a good four hours ago during breakfast. I was helplessly desperate alone in my thoughts of how everything was with no one to share such fear and desolation as I looked at flooded parts of the campus and at permanently still traffic of cars and frantic people at Katipunan Avenue. All my co-teachers and adult students had gone home to brave their own ordeals just to check and be with their own families.

                My Dad and I ride together almost every day. At that time we drove, he had left his celfone of all days. It did not occur to me to get his number before I went down the car thinking that it was not going to be a big deal. But it had been a big deal. At that time, every single bar of my battery and every single centavo of my load were worth anything at that moment. Not hearing my Dad’s voice for a good number of days coupled with not knowing if my Mom, my brothers and everyone else was really okay was an ordeal for me. If there was a moment to just simply bow down in complete surrender, this had been this time for me. Nothing ever mattered at that moment but just having my family alive and well. I was thinking about my Dad who could have been driving my car alone in deep flood waters somewhere. I thought about my little 3 year old niece, my nephews, my brothers, my Mom who did not know how to swim and my sister-in-law wondering what state they were in. I wondered about the house and everything we had owned.

I could not forget the helpless desperation I felt when I walked back to the college building when the waters had receded. I had no one to be with and to talk to and so I turned to continue my prayer to the Lord. Just minutes before that, I had turned to the Blessed Virgin for comfort through my rosary. Everything at that moment just became that moment. Yesterday was already way too far and tomorrow was definitely unsure.

I slept that night in another professor’s house at La Vista. The Lord knew how to console me from my solitary monoblock chair and single hotdog on stick I had been saving for what I thought would be my dinner for the night in that cold corridor in school. I had a good dinner, a good shower and had good company who consoled me no end. The news for the night did not console me though. I still did not hear from my Dad yet and the television had been flashing ghastly waters of the terribly swollen Marikina River which my Dad and I pass through almost every single morning.

When I woke up the very next day, I immediately looked at the window and saw a bleak cloudy day ahead. In my mind, I conversed with the Lord saying He was all I ever had and that I completely surrender everything to Him and that He take care of everyone I loved and everyone I knew. It had been painful to be very far from the people you love at such a moment. I remember well just resting on His palms that morning with that terrible uncertainty of how life would be like at that point on for me and my family. After breakfast, I heard my Mom on the phone say that there was nothing left of the house and that the waters had been way beyond human height. I was shattered in tears. Human loss was indeed painful and nothing of whatever painful in the past had been more painful than that moment for me. I needed a hug and a good word of comfort and I just kept on talking to the Lord in my mind in the middle of quiet and painful tears.

In the last NLTC, I had heard about the woman who washed the Lord’s feet with the perfume in her alabaster jar. After hearing that story, everything became so clear for me. I had offered all my alabaster jars to the Lord September of 2009 when I had just completely surrendered everything to Him and just like Peter wavering through the sea waters tried my best to rest my eyes on the good Lord and His love and His mercy on me and my family. And He did not fail me as human doubt and fear would dictate. The Lord did not fail me. I was able to see everyone home safe and sound after two long days. Yes, Dad had been safe and so was my car! He had been amazingly and miraculously trapped in the C5 flyover all along. What miracle to imagine when you hear tales of vans falling into manholes or for cars tumbling onto each other.

My mom had fallen off the raft my neighbours used to help them when they fled the house but she was able to swim back to the surface with another neighbor’s help. She claims to this day that this is already her second life. My brother tells me each time we pass by the corner of our street how the current then had been very strong and how he clung with the tips of his fingers on to the street sign. My niece Yayan who had been but three years of age had fled in a basin and my sister-in-law tells me how she felt her deceased mother’s presence as she fled with Yayan and all my nephews to safety.

The greatest feeling in the world is indeed not happiness nor ecstasy but relief. It had been my greatest relief seeing all of them for the very first time that Monday night with my rarely emotional nephew, Angki, exclaim: “Tita, namiss kita!”

When Ondoy happened, I had just switched gears in my teaching career. I just had an early retirement from another school just a year before. I had also been swimming in doubts and anxieties about my own future. I was on a crossroad that looked like an asterisk and had ruminated about so many things that just suddenly became so trivial at that time. I had forgotten about them completely and went on like Peter did to just follow the Lord mustering all that was left of my faith and of my hope. The road to a new life had not been easy but the Lord even then replaced the ghastly image of a devastated 25 year-old bungalow with something so much better. The generosity of the Lord indeed moves in miracles and ways we can never begin to imagine when we feel we have hit the rock bottom of our lives.

I definitely know for sure how letting go feels like and must have offered all my alabaster jars for Him as He also taught me how to all these years before Ondoy happened. He took care of my hazed brother when I was in high school. He saved my left eye from an accident which could have left me blind which I thought would disfigure my face forever. He sent that woman who bought that pressed powder from my mother when we didn’t have anything to eat back in the seventies. He saved my parents in a car accident in a car that He gave us miraculously in a raffle. He walked me through the anxiety of breast cancer when I had an excision biopsy for my cysts. He eased me out of harassment at work by a highly influential parent and did not make me lose my job. He took me out of my stable comfort zone and led me through the shaky start of another teaching career. During these many times when I thought I have lost everything, He would always come to remind me the opposite. He had been there for me oh so many times in my life and I would never without a doubt claim of His steadfast love and kindness and mercy. I have never been worthy of anything He did for me but He has still chosen to do so.

I am still all human and still attacked by doubts and insecurities especially of the middle age kind but I know for sure and will never forget what the Lord taught me in all my crucial letting go moments: that the Lord is the only thing we can ever rest our hopes on and that I know for sure as well that He will never let go and that He will even lead us to much better things that we can ever hope for.

Dark nights as dark nights go

With cold shoulders and distanced friends

Lying desperate on rock bottom floors

Of burst dream bubbles turned to frustrations

And sounded out in hopeless sobs of tears

Where to go? What to do?

Is this a crossroad of my own making?

A failure of my own doing?

Memories of highs become a string of lows

Yes, am lying desperate on rock bottom floors

Wondering if it will get any deeper than this...

A flash of moonlight smiles upon the heavens

Pierces through and slices my dark silence

Cuts through the anguish of my heart

There is a God and there is tomorrow

My soul cries out in prayer

My entire will summed up

In total abandonment

With arms stretched out as a child to his father

There is a God and there is tomorrow

Even as these dark nights come and go

I am indeed loved beyond my knowing

And taught to trust beyond my believing

I leave a wretched today and

Wait for the sunrise of a more beautiful tomorrow.

2009 was a very difficult year for me and my family because of the devastation that was Ondoy. Images of a house in chaotic disarray, the anguish of not knowing where my father was and the agony of being alone in a corridor watching the waters of a creek rise will forever mark all the pain that Sept. 26 brought me. 2010 then became a year to rebuild lives with a renewed faith in God and in everything worth living. In the middle of that thought last year, God gave me a miracle that I will perhaps not forget for the rest of my life.

It was the end of the second semester and I had brought home papers to check. This was that grand time between final exams and submission of grades. I was not in a hurry and was actually just biding my time. It was a dreary afternoon and I was locked up in our temporary shelter of a house together with my mom, my brother, my niece and my nephews. We had to lock up because the main house was being reconstructed and there was inevitable noise and soil and cement dust combined that can come flying through. It was a tough experience and we often wonder how we have been able to survive living in such a cramped space.

We had a simple lunch that day and I had a very ordinary need to go relieve myself in the bathroom. The need to pee was not urgent and so I was stepping in slowly back in the main house where the bathroom was careful enough not to step on any nail or exposed metal or even fall into a hole. We still used the original bathroom and at this time of my accident, I think they have brought everything down except the perimeter walls of the house and that good old bathroom.

There I was carefully stepping forward to the bathroom inching a bit to the left space because a worker was hammering something on the right. Our original floor height was moved some feet up so there was this hollow block, a piece of the new floor, blocking my step. I had to step up and down towards where the bathroom was. This tiny very ordinary step had changed a lot of things for me in a split of a second. The force of my body had me scratch onto a piece of metal that protruded on my left. I believe I checked on everything but did not see this metal because it had been terribly near my face. It had happened so fast. I thought I just got a gash and asked the first worker I saw to assure me that it was just a gash. I went on to pee and found it strange to see blood dripping on the floor that fast. It was then that I touched my face and opened the door to see more than one worker there looking at me telling me in their most assuring way that it had not been a deep one.

I remember feeling so scared and almost in the verge of tears seeing myself in the mirror scratched from the bridge of my nose to the corner of my mouth. I thought to myself, “Lord, I’ve lost a lot of things, shall I be losing my face too?” It went on to be a crazy afternoon with me going to the nearest clinic getting myself a tetanus shot. I had resigned myself to carrying an ugly facial scar all my life when things dawned to me in the evening of that day. The good Lord had saved my eye! You see, I looked at myself in the mirror and saw that the metal had missed my eye for a good centimeter. The metal bar had protruded like a finger pointing at me. The workers on my left were working on a bedroom wall and had placed this bar to put all the vertical bars shooting up from the hollow blocks from going haywire.

The good Lord had saved my eye! I had instantly forgotten about everything– blames, fear and anxiety. I would have been blind if I had moved any closer or had turned my head any further. But God did not allow that to happen and so I realized I had been given a miracle that is now a reminder of everything to hope for in a life freshly marked by loss and hopelessness.

We are always blessed more than we are thankful for. I knew this well when God had given me a facial scar to preserve my beautiful left eye. Sometimes we are given some setback so we can be given a chance for something better. And sometimes all we really need in life is to see silver linings in every cloud no matter how difficult they can be found. Let us not forget to be thankful and grateful even for the tiniest blessings among blessings because they might carry with them bigger miracles to come our way.

Most fitting song: "On Eagle's Wings" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rRea9qnjK4&feature=related

   Seated on a couch where I can view the sunset from our place here in Cainta, my mind roams to how the same sun sets somewhere in Northern Samar where I had been just a week ago. I am a Lingap Bulilit Volunteer which means I am a Miriam College teacher who volunteers to do early childhood training to daycare teachers in the country together with other volunteers. Laoang, Northern Samar was my third mission.

                Sometime in 1996, I remember meeting a very simple fisherman somewhere in Ithan, Binangonan, Rizal a few months before I was to march and receive my diploma. We had gone on a three-day full immersion in the fishing community there where I remember learning how to eat with only a spoon on hand and how to take a bath in a bathroom without a roof just right beside the cold windy Laguna Lake. A few weeks before I was to find myself employed, I had heard these profoundly simple words of advice, “If you want to really help us, you do not need to come back here anymore. Just be the best you can be in the profession you choose to take.” I remember my 20-year old self singing with the rest of my classmates the song “Pananagutan” with tears in my eyes trying to make out aspects of life’s realities which I couldn’t understand.

                 Social justice, whatever it means, had been a big word in the years I was to see myself as a teacher. The previous school where I came from had been for the elite in the society and I had rubbed elbows with sons and grandsons of tycoons and had a daunting challenge to make them see beyond the existing windows of their lives. My time with them had been most fruitful in the thought that I had given my best in touching lives of future lawmakers, economy movers and business magnates.  In the cloud of their oftentimes prejudged dispositions, it had been my hope and prayer that they remember the simple smiles of the kids in Boystown and some other places I have visited with them.

                Life has a way of taking you down paths you never thought you could possibly trudge. I had come to recommit a passion to teach in the last three years through educating teachers. This decision had come at a most fruitful time when I had been ripe for bigger challenges and opportunities that have given space for my wings to fly. Fulfilment in teaching comes at the end of tiring days or at graduation ceremonies when we celebrate victories and milestones. It is good when it comes at a time when you are recognized and praised but much more satisfying when it comes at times when you know you have made that important difference in another person’s life – a student coming out of an aha moment, a QC daycare teacher finding more passion in her work, a student teacher finally getting a perfect grade in a lesson demo and more importantly that same student teacher jumping for joy with tears in her eyes gladly telling you she had been hired.

                In Laoang, Northern Samar, I had seen how much difference this part of the world was hungry for and it had disturbed me. I have seen great classrooms and abundant resources in the past which made me conclude that there are indeed incongruent parts of what we call reality seeing classrooms with dirt floors and giving CDs to teachers who do not have CD players in the first place. I had not been naïve to these things but it is different when you actually touch base with teachers whose realities are so different from yours. Hearing their challenges inspires you to appreciate the things that do not sit well with you at the moment. Seeing them come and sacrifice a few days to still strive to be better teachers than they are now inspires you to give them whatever you can give. My hands were shook by teachers like Perlie, Espie, Marlie, Jesus and Alfredo who might not have my educational qualifications and experiences but whose heart to teach must probably be bigger than mine.

Then again, I look at the faces of the kids in Northern Samar and see a unique kind of happiness that’s all their own. Free from stresses most kids I have met have, they are so free to somersault on a beach at their whim and fancy. They stroll outside on Bermuda grasses that grow wild and free just outside their fences. They are not as literate as we hope they would be and so I wonder if they would ever get to hear of Shakespeare and read Louisa May Alcott. I can only use the little exposure I have on Binisaya but I know that their eyes hold blessings uniquely set for them.

There are incongruent realities as there are incongruent realities. I came to Samar reminded by the echo of the fisherman’s advice. I only need to teach and to teach well with a heart to see beyond everything I can see.

“Igniting Recollections” was written sometime in 2005 to 2006 when I was still a Grade 7 Guidance Counselor in Xavier School. As I was the counselor, I helped out in each and every Grade 7 Recollection of every section. This recollection was called Ignite. In one of my reflective moments, I was able to write this and share it in the school’s website at that time.

 

There is restlessness if you can sense it. All around you people are going around in circles not really knowing what they’re looking for. And in the bottom of all these is the question, “What are these all for?” Yes, I’d like to dare ask the question, “If finding the meaning of life in this meaningless world is such a futile effort, why even bother find it just the same?”

 

M. Scott Peck said it so well when he began one book of his with the line, “Life is difficult.” When I’m alone with my thoughts in a spot like a bus or a jeep with nothing much to do, I find myself echoing what this author said. Yes, life is difficult as you glance at everything – the headline of the newspaper manong is selling, the number of shanties mushrooming above that estero and even just the number of minutes you’re stuck in traffic. I wonder if I’m saying this just because I’m in the Philippines, in a country unfortunate enough to be in constant struggle against development. But no, I don’t think so. I believe someone will echo Peck’s line in whatever part of the globe. The difficulty of life, if one would look closely, really extends beyond anything material.

 

Point is that everything is pointless. There is no point in life, that is, if you do not see any point in it. If you live life as meaningless as it presents itself to be, meaning will evade you. I do not speak as if I’ve found an oasis in the middle of life’s barren desert. I’m on the constant search for meaning myself. I write this in the context of my 17^th Ignite. Recollections and retreats are indeed very important in finding where we are in the road we travel in life.

 

My personal recollections and retreats and every other experience have helped me see that life makes more sense when one has faith – a certain belief that there is a God up there who has made everything possible for you. Equating life’s meaning with everything else besides faith does not guarantee long-term satisfaction. Money dwindles. Friendships do not last. Even intimate relationships can be torn apart. I guess I don’t need to mention the other things that really do no more than sweeten life’s bitter taste but not really fill the hunger of the searching individual.

 

God makes a lot of sense. And everything in life makes a lot of sense when taken in His context. Yes, even the seemingly worst and most painful experience you’ve gone through. Finding meaning in this life is actually our journey to deepening our faith. Faith is a treasure you find at the end of a tiresome search. It is that treasure you find that will lead you to other treasures like the strength to survive life. In many a young Catholic, the search for this treasure often begins with the very first significant experience of a recollection.

 

And then of course, faith and strength are those blessings that allow us to find that particular role in life that was meant just for us – and we make meaning by living out this one. A recollection can do more than just spark some fire within us only if we nurture the flame along the way.

Take whatever God gives and give whatever God takes.

Mother Teresa

                To say that God is good will always be an understatement because He will always be more than that. He knows how I terribly panic when I’m on water that is why He spared me from the great flood of Sept. 26. I was spared from the actual experience of wading in deep raging floodwaters but I was not spared from the feeling of being so all alone at such a terrible time.

                That morning started out as everyone in Metro Manila would agree as a very ordinary morning. There were heavy rains, yes, one that would instantly wet you all over when you go out in the rain even for a second. But it had been raining hard for the past few days and there had been news that Ondoy had come. But then the country had not been a stranger to typhoons so no one really knew that a terrible devastation was about to happen.

                Words are not enough to describe how terribly frightful the experience was for a lot of us. In fact, a lot of us even those whose houses had not been submerged has his or her own “Where I Was When Ondoy Happened” kind of a story. I happen to live in Cainta which now would be marked in history as a bad spot for real estate investments and a terribly wrong choice to encourage new families to settle on. In addition, at the height of all the worry came the word from the news that there was a crocodile swimming in the creek of our village. Even then, the experience of being flooded was nothing new and exceptional in our place. Ondoy’s rage seemed totally different, though, from even the worst that I could ever remember happening in more than 20 years that we have been staying here.

                That morning, my Dad brought me to Miriam College as I had Saturday classes for daycare teachers and would not want to miss out on my teacher duty to be present for them even in that terrible rain. I knew their morning commute had been more difficult than usual. Our usual Saturday morning drive of thirty minutes lasted an hour. I reached the school at 9:30 and around an hour after, the creek by the Grade School overflowed and swelled onto the first floor. Even then, we went on with our lesson demonstrations as we had all come this way for that. To cut the long story short, I ended up being stranded in Miriam College Grade School after all the daycare teachers and my fellow teachers went on to reach their homes safely. But I was the only one who lived in Cainta and knew well what would greet me if I did dare brave the long stretch of Marcos Highway crossing the Marikina River all the way to Imelda Avenue and on to the farthest part of our village where our house was. And so I stayed put in that cold corridor with dwindling celfone load and charge and one piece of hotdog which I was saving for my dinner. At least I knew I was good for the night. Miriam College was not home but it was far safer than any other place I would have been at that time.

                I remember well all the thoughts that ran through my head. I was frantically calling up the house. With landlines, payphones and celfones conking out every now and then, I was lucky enough to have one phone call that got through and it was the sound of my brother telling me in an equally frantic voice that water was already inside the house. I could not reach my Dad because he had forgotten his celfone of all days and he had not reached his office at the Fort at all. Some hours later I found out my eldest brother was safe in Mall of Asia. It had been a workday for him at the call center. And so there I was in that corridor, with a celfone that would not serve its purpose, a big umbrella that was not enough to keep me dry and my hotdog dinner and I felt so alone thinking and talking to God asking Him if this was what the end looked like and if it really had come.

                There was nothing I could do despite the situation. I could not even cross to reach the college building. There was flood inside the campus as even Katipunan itself was flooded. I had been texting people I knew who lived nearby but would not get any answer from them. And so I was left to sit in one monoblock chair and pray my rosary. Mama Mary must have been with me because earlier that morning my mom was nagging me about me not wearing my brown scapular anymore and to assure her I wore my miraculous medal necklace just before I left. It was after I finished all five mysteries that my phone rang. It was one of my brothers who called and his call had been cut off for some reason. But whatever the reason was, it must have been providential because it made me go up and check whether one of the payphones could help me reach him again. There by the payphones, a guard told me that the creek had been cleared already and that I could safely reach the college building.

                Reaching the college building made me go with my Dean who happened to live in the same village as my cousin. But even as she could not pass through a flooded creek in that village, both of us stayed for the night in another professor's house in nearby La Vista. God was not only good. He knew how to distract me from my own fears. In the middle of a frightful night (I was able to watch the news and saw all those horrible footages) and the very long morning after, I had a great dinner, a wonderful breakfast, a comfortable sleep and a good shower in between. To think I was ready with my hotdog and my monoblock chair!

I was only able to see my family back again Monday night. I was with my brother who had worked in the call center and we commuted along Imelda Avenue at around 8 in the evening. Since Cainta and Marikina still had no power, it was darker than usual and there was a terrible smell in the air. The flood had completely receded at this time but as it was night I could not see how the streets looked like with the houses bearing fresh marks of devastation. It must have been a dreadful sight very far from how this sight would have been had that fateful weekend passed us through without that tremendous rain.

                The moment when I saw my entire family all huddled up in my brother Joey’s place that night is a moment I will not forget for the rest of my life. My nephew Angkie who was not one to be emotional exclaimed, “Tita, namiss kita!” the very moment he saw me.

                The only ones left at home when the flood surged so rapidly was my Mamsi, my brother Roel, my sister-in-law and all four of my pamangkins. All seven

of them did not think soon enough to leave the house thinking again like everybody did that the flood would not swell up to the height that it did. When they left the house, the water was already chest high. They had to hold on tight to a raft made of banana trunks which kind neighbors helped them with and my little three-year old niece managed through the monstrous water on one of our big basins. They told stories about how difficult just passing through our street was not only with that high water in the street itself but also with one intersection with another street with strong currents. They reached my brother Joey’s place shivering in the cold with some of them not having any footwear anymore. Earlier on, it was my brother Joey who was able to save my Dad’s car and park it near his place.

                My Dad whom everybody was terribly worried about including my uncle and one aunt based in the United States tell about how he was stuck on top of the Ortigas flyover near Tiendesitas and later on was able to reach our house by walking through the flood. He left the car he was using, the computer box of which was untouched by Ondoy, along Marcos Highway near Dela Paz. I remember feeling greatly relieved hearing his voice for the first time since we parted that Saturday morning in Miriam College.

The events of Sept. 26 will really be very difficult to forget. Scenes that play out in victims’ minds seem to be taken straight out of Hollywood movies but they were not things sliced out of the imagination. The panic was real and so was the fear, the anxiety and perhaps more importantly the pain.

                 I remember crying when I had my mom on the phone Sunday morning and hearing her in her tired voice describing how they fled with nothing else but the clothes they wore and how the house was submerged with only my laptop and printer saved. I remember seeing our house back again Tuesday morning and felt so helpless in the middle of the wrecked house where everything was simply in complete chaotic disarray. We had honestly been hoarders of different kinds and so saw important and not-so-important items we owned dirty, ruined or beyond saving. In the long process of cleaning and clearing things up which has not ended as I speak, we have hauled up what can probably be the biggest dump in the neighborhood that it took the garbage men two visits just to clean it all up.  

Yes. God was in the big and small things combined. It is true that only God knows where life would bring all of us next but right now all I know is that I survived that great flood along with everybody else who did and would forever be grateful for each minute and each day that I live. I might have, like everybody else, lost a lot of things but I still have my life, my family and everything else that really matter in this life. In fact, everything seems new to my eyes now. When I rediscovered an entire shelf of completely dry books of mine I almost cried and vowed to really start reading, using and even rereading them again. And here at home, everything that we were saving for a better time or a good occasion is already out of the shelves and are being used.

                Ondoy did not come to me as a family woman raising small kids or as a youngster with not much faith in my God and in myself yet. Although, people close to me have commented about how positive I was during those times, I did have my down and out days. The next days and weeks found me in various errands to buy supplies for the house and I remember feeling down thinking about the much that needed to be done for the house. One time I stepped out of one shop, I saw a middle aged man sitting in one of the couches on display and noticed how he was deep in thought. He looked at the price again and stood up with both his hands in his pockets and quietly walked away. He must have been an ordinary family man who might have been thinking of retirement feeling relieved that he had already done his part after all these years except that Ondoy happened and in a matter of hours washed away everything he worked hard for.

                Ondoy came two days after my birthday (I do thank God that it did not happen on the 24^th!) and was actually thinking about having a simple gathering with everyone at home on that weekend and simply thank God for the blessings He has showered me. Ondoy might be difficult to picture as a blessing much more God’s birthday gift to me but how else can it be to someone who firmly knows that God has a reason for everything that happens? Before the flood happened, I have been asking God a lot of questions and somehow the flood has helped define to me a lot of the answers which I already knew all along.

So where do the high waters really bring you? They bring you nearer to who you really are, to everything that is really important to you and to what you are really here for. It is useless to wish the flood never happened because it did on that fateful Saturday morning and nothing can ever change that. Focusing on what we have lost is not the way to overcome this trial because in this way we will even lose the things we can never lose if we don’t let go of them – our love for our family, wisdom, passion for living, faith in others, ourselves and in God, also our hope and purpose in life. Everything material can be replaced but things like these are things no relief good can ever relieve the loss of. Accepting the loss and letting go of its pain is a way to accept bigger blessings to come because we have never really lost everything. In fact, we have gained more than we thought we could.

Note:

Pictures attached in all five parts of this blog entry have been sourced from the Internet. Picture number 2 in part 1 shows the all too familiar intersection where I pass by everyday with the well known landmark, Sta. Lucia East Grand Mall.  

Lunch with a Good Friend (Part 3)

 “You have found your core.”

It is a harried world we live in. Life these days is not just fast. It is very fast. The very speed and the urgency of every concern that we wake up to each morning make us easily forget the reason why we do all the things we do. It is only when we snap out of the mundane that we realize that a journey was not meant to be spent looking on the very road we are stepping on. We are not supposed to lose sight of where we are going.

Sometimes life has its way of making us come to that “snapping out” moment. When that happens, we are stripped to our core, to the very basic things we find essential in life. Life has more meaning when the horizon is clear. And any tiring journey can be endured because there is a purpose that needs to be realized.

What is in my core? When all the feathers in the cap have fallen including all the endless complaints about the figurative thorns on my sides, I only have my faith and my God. My daily struggle is to remind myself to have everything I have in my life point towards that direction. And yes, that can be a very difficult struggle and I do need a lot of reminders from time to time just like the rest of us.

 

Listen to this beautiful song, "Something More" written by Fr. Johnny Go, SJ.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dPpu0qTvu4&feature=PlayList&p=6CE0A56018F5297A&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=12

A Counselor’s Counsel (Part 2)

“It is scary this thing you are doing. You are taking a risk. No matter what happens, just keep moving forward and have faith in Him.”

The religious song, “He,” has this line, “He alone can see what lies beyond the bend.” Some time in our youth Papa bought us a Casiotone, that wonderful keyboard that can play selected musical instruments at the press of a button. I have been attracted to music even as a child and thanks to my Grade School Music teacher, I knew how to read notes. I do remember learning how to play this song and when I did, played it over and over again. (I can only do right hand though.) This song and this line would repeat itself in my head minus the Casiotone, and the song and all its other lines would eventually become a prayer for me.

Risks are part of life and no matter how obsessive compulsive we get in trying to control the uncontrollable variables we can never really see what lies beyond the bend. There may be times when we know what might likely appear around the corner but sometimes life itself surprises us with the unexpected.

I had this kayaking experience once in Batangas. I was out with friends and out of whim just thought of trying it out for the very first time. I have something about water. It’s not really a phobia or anything that comes close to that. Perhaps it just all boils down to a fear of not being in control. Oh, I forgot to mention – I do not know how to swim. But I was not kayaking alone and I had a lot of friends around me and best of all, the water we were on was only three feet deep! But you can guess what happened to me. I panicked and paddled like crazy! My friends and I had a good laugh over that experience describing it as “Therese Teaches You How to Kayak Sideways.” When all our laughs died down including mine, I told them I had real fear over there making me embarrassingly shout for my mother. At a certain point though I stopped and calmed myself down and listened to what everyone was shouting, “Right! Right! Right!” referring to the direction I was to paddle. When we finally reached the shore I simply had to stand up at once unless I have the water suck our kayak back again.

Life is also like that. We cannot but surrender to a Higher Power. We cannot but surrender to God.

Follow this link to listen to the beautiful song. The lyrics are also posted here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIxV4u4rwDU

Each of us is a pilgrim in this life traveling on a road that is uniquely ours. We are a part of a family or belong to a set of friends but we are all still traveling on roads different from them. When you read this, you might think I have all the answers about life and living. I don’t and anyone who knows me well knows that for sure. I am very much a student of life as much as everyone else is and I try my best to end each day by thinking of what good I have done or what good I have learned. It just so happens that for one reason or another I have been very passionate about matters that refer to these things lately. There must be some good that can come out of a very reflective mood that has been triggered by a combination of so many things in my life – at least I get to write what might someday be a book (hopefully!). (A good friend asked me jokingly if I was already having a midlife crisis. I told her that having it as early as 33 is not a bad idea. In which case, the earlier I am done with it the better.) 

In my silent space, I remember tidbits of wisdom I get from conversations and experiences that seem to fall into a mosaic of wise things that guide me along this journey called my life. They are lessons I get from people, the roads they travel on and the many different ways they tried to conquer life and everything about it.

I do not know exactly what I have that makes people come and share things with me. I must be a very good listener. (I must have that look or it must probably be my one of a kind speaking voice!) I had five years of counseling experience in an academic setting, but even way before and sometime after those five years, I have already been some kind of a people magnet. For some strange reason, people come and do confide or simply unload. Some of the time, I don’t even know what to say and most of the time people thank me for just being present for them. All the words we say, the gestures we do and the time we extend probably all meld into our very presence to someone making him feel he is important and loved at a moment of loss or misery.

It is the presence of different faces from different places that I am very thankful of in my life. Young as I am, I know there are people whom I am still bound to meet and lessons to teach and learn all at the same time. There are times when I surprise myself by saying things to people that actually apply to my own concerns or times when someone would remind me about something I said that I myself needed to be reminded of. What gift of words indeed! The gift you give out to the world is brought again before you.

What have I exactly learned?

From the Wise Fisherman (Part 1)

“If you want to really help us, you do not need to come back here anymore. Just be the best you can be in the profession you choose to take.”

I was in Ithan, Binangonan, Rizal in 1996 in an immersion set some months before college graduation. These words were by a gentle and wise fisherman who, to me, saw poverty, power and riches in their proper places in the bigger picture of life. I believe he was not soliciting pity or instilling angry activism in our young souls. There was no mention of how dirty politics were or how corruption has been depriving them of the good life. He was not asking us to abandon our dreams and stay with them there and fit into the role of would-be heroes in their midst. In fact, his words echo back to me whenever I look at the social dimension of my work. And I believe that it is true that if we just all do our part whatever part it is that we do in this world, then perhaps we would like our mornings more and retire to more peaceful sleep at night.

I also remember this humble fisherman every time there is talk about poverty and the poor of this country. I tell my students that it is so wrong to judge them for what they do not have or what they have not achieved. There is wisdom in this man reminding us that wisdom indeed is not gained in bank accounts or college degrees.

I found myself doing something I have never done in a long time – read. Ah yes, this former Reading teacher has not had much time to read lately. (Tsk! Tsk! Don’t ask me about “Twilight,” okay?) Anyway, what made me do it so suddenly today at least aside from finally having time?

 

There was this odd bit of headline over Yahoo News in my email this morning saying a dog movie beat up Brad Pitt in the box office this Christmas. As it turns out, the young children’s novel I bought my nephew Miggy for Christmas has been turned to a movie. I called out for him but as he was wrapped up in his video game as usual, this Aunt was the one who got more excited than the little kid.

 

Two weeks ago I found myself in that great book sale where brand new books were flying off shelves. Among that great big pile, I found this book entitled, “Marley: A Dog Like No Other” by John Grogan. It had a very cute dog on the cover and I simply had this soft spot for cute beings especially a little dog. I thought Miggy would like it and he did. He flashed his nice smile when he opened this gift on Christmas Eve. When I got it at that time, I did not know my luck for finding the great books in bookstores and book sales was at work for the nth time. (Last time I realized my luck was when I found myself used copies of the two textbooks on Child and Adolescent Development that I needed for my CD 101 class. Exact titles! Exact authors! Not of course the latest edition though.)

 

And so this morning, I was simply surprised to find out it had been turned into a movie starring Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston (Now that should be interesting – Jen beating up Brad!). And yup, I did check out the official website of the movie which made me more curious about the book. And that particular curiosity led me to reading it from cover to cover. I couldn’t believe I finished it and with tears in my eyes at that. Made me remember all the dogs my brothers and I had when we were kids.

 

What made this story different was that the dog’s owners were adults. John Grogan was actually writing from experience and Marley had been his dog. This detail must have made this book a hit so much so that Hollywood got interested in it. But Marley was not anyone’s cute dog. This Labrador Retriever might have appeared so nice and cuddly on the cover but if you read through John and his wife Jenny’s experiences with him, you’d be amazed at how loyal this couple had been to him as much as Marley had been to them. Marley is one hyperactive dog and using that word is even an understatement to the million things this family pet can do both to your amazement and to your dismay.

 

I enjoyed reading the book the whole afternoon. Miggy couldn’t believe I was done with it that fast. He was still on Chapter 2 and I believe is still is on Chapter 2 as I speak (as I write? as I blog? Oh whatever!). Anyway, am sure the two of us would not miss this on the big screen and see Marley’s adventures and misadventures ourselves. Hopefully, it gets to be shown here soon… in the New Year!

 

Happy New Year to everyone!

 

Note:

“Marley: A Dog Like No Other” is the children’s version of “Marley and Me” both by John Grogan.

Christmas is one happy time. For me it has always been associated with the word reunion. Our family never fails to have that every December 25 of every year. We literally get together and exchange hugs and kisses over a hearty meal with fun games and other such things. I guess we’ve been having these reunions since 1976. These reunions commenced around the time when majority of my father’s siblings have settled in Manila during the seventies. Our reunions, of course, have changed through the years with the important change of people passing on and with babies being born.

 

In this Christmas blog, I would like then to greet my family and also my friends. Greeting them is my expression of gratitude for the love, care and friendship they have shared with me. More importantly, I would like to remember my loved ones who have passed away most especially my dear Lola Aning. In her last years, I would always fetch her a case of coke-in-cans (coke light) because she was diabetic. She would always delight in seeing them. The last year she was around for Christmas, I gave her adult diapers and she didn’t mind. She passed away February of 2007. Her life reminds me that we make a difference with the life we live. We were not particularly close but I have always felt her fondness of me even as a child. She has collected all my graduation pictures from Grade School to College. She didn’t have any grad pic from grad school though because I didn’t have one to give away.

 

This Christmas of 2008 is the 32^nd family reunion of the Pelias family and so many memories come to mind again. I remember when Auntie Becky played Santa one time with a bag as big as a sack which she filled with gifts. I cannot remember what she gave me then but I still remember seeing that sack and having my jaw drop in all my childish awe. Oh yes, there was this Christmas where we all gathered for a grand family picture by the stairs of Auntie Becky’s house. Lola Aning was still beside her dear Lola Pedong at that time but he was already on a wheelchair. Tita Mely was still there too but already had a bandana on her head.

 

The recent Christmases have been punctuated with videoke sessions where we would all have fun hearing the variety of our voices and the creative ways we would interpret the songs. Uncle Boy’s favorite is “Impossible Dream.” All the other big boys have their own favorites too even my own father who would always request for Visayan songs. The last Christmas my Uncle Rene was around, I remember him seated with his foldable metal cane smiling to his heart’s delight upon hearing us especially his brothers who dedicated their songs to him. He was already blind at that time.

 

The little boys and girls have their own places in my Christmas memory bank. When we were little, we started this tradition of “pila-pila” where we would line up in front of a certain Aunt or Uncle to be given Christmas cash gifts. And no matter how small or big, how behaved or not, a tiny little baby would be seen in that “pila” and everyone of us would just simply laugh at the sight of a mother more excited than anyone else.

 

Yes, Christmas is reunion time. It is a time to see our friends and loved ones again. Beneath and perhaps beyond all that, it is an important time to reunite our hearts with the heart of the child Jesus whose life was all about love. Lola Aning might be gone together with Uncle Rene and Tita Mely and others who have passed on but there’s a growing number of nephews and nieces not to mention brothers, sisters-in-law, a mother and father plus all cousins and aunts and uncles to make Christmas day one joyful day.

 

From the hearts of Jesus, Mary and Joseph and from the heart of our family to yours… Have a happy Christmas and a New Year full of blessings!

 

Let me share with you my favorite Christmas carol of all time beautifully sang by Nat King Cole. See also my other favorite songs of the season as well.

 

Playlist:

Oh Holy Night

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Grown-Up Christmas List

Christmas in Our Hearts

What Child is This

 

That was one unusual night

My past, my present and my future collided

There in Tita Lourdes’ wooden porch

In the company of the stars

Wind and time swayed those leaves

Where the moonlight constantly left its imprints

White light dangled in the landscape

The cool Davao wind seeped in

That old black tattered cardigan

Quiet noise littered among the green

One bird or two sensed my solitude

Twittered amusing tones

I somehow have never heard of before

One tall majestic tree among all the others

Punctuated the beauty of the scene

Bright little twinkling lights

Wrapped me in awe and full attention

And oh, they were fireflies

Creatures from that place I will not see again

Unless I see Davao’s Kapatagan again

 

Calm memories come into mind now

Unusual night among those unusual stars

With closed eyes I see those fireflies

Years after, I find I have gathered me.

 

Note:

 

Painting above is "Starry, Starry Night" by Vincent Van Gogh and song here carries same title beautifully sang by Josh Groban.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWU40czylnY

This one is for Ms. Annie Chu and Ms. Gloria Jean Chaves, two teachers I met in St. Bridget School, Quezon City,  who believed in me. Thank God they did!

 

In the same manner I write this article too for all the would-be writers who have passed through me in all my years as a school paper moderator and Reading and Language teacher in Xavier Grade School. Some of them have showed much more enthusiasm and potential than I did when I was their age. I hope to find their names in columns, books and magazines someday. I think I have found one or two already. J

---------------------------------                      

I was scribbling something else actually when I came upon the title of this article among my drafts which upon afterthought I realize speaks a lot of things regarding what I feel when I write. My penmanship cannot adequately compete with the race of thoughts going through my head when it’s bubbling with ideas. I even find times when I feel frustrated not to have written down what I thought would have made a good phrase or sentence to include in a paragraph or so. I guess any writer out there can sympathize with me. There are two things that writers dread – when one’s creative juices are overflowing or when there’s not a drop to spill out.

 

I don’t exactly know which one is happening to me at the moment because I’m not really certain at how this piece will turn out. How it would leave an impression once I’ve reached my last punctuation mark, I wonder. Just the same I’m letting the river of my hasty penmanship just flow through me and feel its energy in the tips of my fingers as I hammer on this keyboard.

 

Just exactly how I indeed ended up as a self-proclaimed writer with no professional training sandwiched in any of the years in my stay in the classroom is a wonder. I remember very well how easily I absorbed my mother’s love for National Bookstore as a child. I wanted then with much intensity as I might want the meaning of my life at the moment a measly, tiny, seemingly insignificant ballpen. All I wanted was to write and the urge all the more increases whenever I see a nice and thick notepad. Oh yes, while other girls were fancying Sanrio bags and wallets, I was pining for those nice paper!

 

It must be natural for kids born as the youngest and the only girl in the family to be very close to one’s mother. Anyone who knows me knows that very well. Even the way my penmanship turned out must have been an unconscious osmosis of sorts. But then, she is perhaps my penmanship’s worst critic. Even amongst the praise of many, she’d be blunt to say she couldn’t understand my handwriting. For how can you compete with her penmanship that has stayed the same even after so many years? Bank tellers tell her that. Anyway, it was in imitating her script that started it all.

 

When I went to school, I had just about the ugliest penmanship among my classmates. I never followed the lines. What was supposed to be curved was sharp and pointed. My teacher perhaps saw in her compassionate heart to just bear with everything I scribbled. I was very young then and she perhaps knew I could still change. Luckily, there was a teacher in my life who did that – changed me. I’ll never forget her in the same way anyone who reads this might be reminded of that one person who left an indelible mark. She will go down in the credits of my life as that one person who started my romance with words. This was Ms. Annie Chu.

 

I write this down to salute her and also to inspire other aspiring writers out there who might have been like me – a timid girl with nothing but a small vocabulary, a horrible penmanship and an attachment to school supplies. Ms. Chu was my Grade 5 and 6 Language teacher. From her, I learned how to fix my words so that they’d be both legible and comprehensible. My idea of organization started with her lesson on sentences. I lapped up comment after comment regarding my progress from sentences to the narrative and descriptive paragraphs I wrote.

 

It was during our grade school graduation practice then that I heard from her what perhaps would be echoed to me and through me in the next years. “You know what? You’re already good. If you could only practice some more, you’d be a whole lot better.” I valued those words because they came from a teacher I admired and spoke about something that made me feel good about myself.  

 

There was another English teacher who further polished my writing skills when I reached high school. She was Ms. Gloria Jean Chaves. I, in fact, am so happy because I met her again after all these years in one book sale. I was able to thank her personally for having given me an abundant appreciation of life and of God and of everything else. If Ms. Chu taught me how to express myself, it was Ms. Chaves who showed me what I should say. She opened up in me the essence of creativity. She was a most unique teacher who encouraged us in our creative expressions of ourselves. Books like “The Little Prince,” “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” and “Hope for the Flowers” made me think beyond words and reflect more about what life was all about.

 

I never took formal classes in writing. I used to consider journalism as a course for college when I was in high school but the thought of writing as the only thing I’d be doing scared me because I didn’t want writing to be my chore. As it happened, it was something I did on the side through my extracurricular involvements in various student publications from grade school to college. The writer in me never attended formal school then. I grabbed something here and something there and mixed everything up to everything I now know about writing.

 

Just like the way I stumbled upon my ability to write, I found out too that I could teach.

In the seven school years I was in the grade school classroom, I established myself as a teacher who happened to write and at the same time a writer who happened to teach. (And then of course, I also happened to be a Guidance Counselor who happened to teach and write some five years apart from that experience.)

 

Writing is something that I will continue to do as long as I’m able to ride through my hasty penmanship or race with my impatient fingertips. It has come to mean to me a beautiful way by which I have learned to express myself. I will always look at it as an opportunity to show others how good they can become. And writing too is one of those ways I am able to show how thankful I am to God – the wonderful source of all my beautiful words.

 

I do hope that I have captured just about the right words among all the ideas floating through the river inside my head with this article. I’m about to hit my last punctuation mark any time now as I seriously contemplate further about what I can still learn about this whole business of writing. Let these ideas take flight and inspire.

            Several years after writing about one jeepney ride, I come to write again about yet another jeepney ride. I smiled at the thought this morning when I realized I had something to blog about. When I was in college, I remember having this long jeepney ride to Manila where this good looking man happened to have made “sabit.” I guess that was very trivial, you might say and I will agree, but I’m the type to think a lot in the silence of short travels and so have been able to build one “maikling kwento” on that on the theme of women being given figurative rides by handsome men.

            And so this morning, I met another man in one such ride all over again but it was not any of his features that caught my attention. He went in the jeep right after I did and saw that he had a very troublesome time coming up because he had this huge rolling suitcase with him. Imagine someone who seems to be off to an airplane riding a jeepney! And like all jeepney rides go, he had to elbow his way in. It was not everyday that I saw such a passenger. I’m sure you haven’t seen one like him too in your recent rides. These types of people go for cabs. The things that usually obstruct your way in and out of a cramped jeepney would either be grocery bags or giant bags which look like they came from Divisoria. I guess my out-of-the-ordinary days have really started because the other day there was a bundle of wood. Today, there was that suitcase.

            Anyway, after him, there was a woman and a little girl. I immediately noticed the little girl was cross-eyed. She was carrying a conversation with her mother in between standing up and sitting down when the suitcase guy beside me started to talk to her mother. The girl was not only cross-eyed. She was blind! Mr. Suitcase, of course, was first to notice and this odd conversation started on. He happened to be a doctor who was giving some volunteer work for some institution and was just taken by the fact that this little girl could not see a thing. He asked questions as most doctors do and the little audience in this jeepney ride found out that this girl was not only blind but she also had asthma. The troubled mother happened to lack the resources. Wasn’t it a beautiful morning for this little girl then that she had this jeepney ride with this kind doctor who gave his business card to her mother? Who knows she might really be on to seeing sunlight for the first time and might be able to see how her mother’s smile looks like?

            That was a touching scene. I was smiling as the jeep sped away. Who among us would take compassion out of our pockets and extend help like that? We usually pray for miracles. Sometimes we are the instruments of the miracles others are praying for.  

            These jeepney rides are really getting to be interesting.