Longings of An Adult Childhood

“Where are you going and how long will you be away?”

That’s my youngest child Abby asking. My former students at the Manila School of Evangelism would remember that little girl five years old in 1989 who kept telling them she missed her mother and that she wanted to go home, but she would not without her daddy. Her way to defy parental separation was to leave her mom for a while and live with me as I kept transferring from one job to another. Yes, she was that close to me when she was young. But the long night time in that school room that became our sleeping quarters after school hours would often pester her heart like a virus. She would cry out for Dioly’s motherly presence and her way to connect with her was to pour tears over Mr. Felipe Cariaga’s junk phone, and I would grant her that wish—in my newfound skill of mastering the art of make believe— and she would cry on that phone the whole night, stopping only when sleep invited her to rest, and then she would blurt out in her gentlest way, teary-eyed and tired, “Pauli na ta” (”Let’s go home,” meaning to Bacolod, meaning leave this job). This rite repeated itself from day to day, from night to night.

Brother Rudy Gonzales of Olongapo City would probably remember that little child who would not separate from me even in her sleep. We slept for a night in their house in Upper Kalaklan. This is so because after that stint with Manila School of Evangelism we found ourselves bound for a new job at San Narciso, in Zambales. (Thanks for the hospitality and the good memories, brother Rudy!).

Abby’s cousins in San Narciso would remember that little girl who was always trying her hand at everything, including adjusting to the new environment I had forced her to adjust in, and she did, albeit with much fear. Months later her longings found satisfaction when her mom came to take her home. Abby was the child who in her innocent way did things to keep our family intact. She was my wake-up call. From that time on, there was no more separation.

As she grows older in our home in Cebu, she has come to enjoy her freedom–lots of it, including coming home very late at night. These days her mom is not home. And when I said I am leaving for a few days, which means she would be solo, she was back to her old childhood again. “What will I eat?” She was smiling of course. She has a job.

I think of my kids as three little boats. Time to let them loose on the ocean. Will they manage?

That too is a good question for me.

There is always that little child in our adulthood that suffers the empty nest syndrome. Because this world is not meant for living alone. Because this world is not a homestead in the jungle where you could try staking out your claim with just an axe and a hoe and a box of match sticks minus a wife or another company. God knew that, so He made an Eve from an Adamic rib.

Am 62 and an orphan, and I admit the child in me longs for that fatherly hug and motherly comfort too. I had lots of it when I was young; and they were as regular as the beatings of the ipil-ipil stick as big as my ring finger, which my parents had in handy, the better to ring me in whenever I thought of rebelling. I remember my ancestors, however, not for the stick but for the love they splurged on me.

Our daughter Karla is lonely too and she’s now a mother. Part of the solution is to get son and get mom. And so: Hello world. I have just entered this new state of my life: A grandfather without a grandson. A husband without a wife. And what separates us is a plane ticket and an hour’s flight.

I can’t help longing. When an adult 2 plus 60 years old starts to long, he becomes a child between 2 to 6. It is a system coming full circle. The adult child in me wants to resurrect my parents, the grandfather child in me wants to call back my grandson to my side. What would life be without Jacob? It is no longer a question of “Will he manage?” but “Will I manage?” When we start longing, we also miss our sense of balance.

We long for someone because our lives are diminished by their absence. Will denial diminish that feeling? My grandson Jake has come to master the art of grandpa snubbing. When I called his phone a week after they were gone, I heard a childish voice answer, “Cebu Pacific, may I help you?” I said I am looking for my grandson. “This is not Jacob. This is the ticket seller.” All right, may I reserve a ticket for Manila. April 26. Want to visit my grandson. “Sorry, Sir. All flights are fully booked. Please buy your ticket next year.”

I miss playing the game of make believe with the boy on the other line.

It is not fun when the ones you miss are not beside you. Cellphones may have shortened the distance. True, with a laptop and a webcam, via Yahoo Messenger, the voice and the face behind that cellphone becomes half of the reality that you are missing. But with these gadgets, communication becomes brief; the aches, the pains, and the fears are consigned only to a few sentences, sometimes with verbs without subjects, sometimes with subjects without verbs. We violate grammar rules to make communication concise. Even the tales of the squabbles are lost.

Ah. We still miss that reality’s other half.

Earthly longings may be forever, but the Lord has put it there for a purpose. The best longings is one for the real place up there. We long for our real Father. We miss our real Home.

Sometimes I think of heaven as one reality where I can be a child again. There I know I will be safe from all harms. There, the little child in us will find the real connection that made us one great heavenly family.

Lessons From Twins

Two sets of twins, one Spanish, the other Chinese, have kind of sorted their own lives, rectified human errors that caused their separation at birth, and sued their hospitals for damages.

The Chinese twins are suing a Beijing hospital because an alleged mix-up (hospital’s fault, so they say) had led to their separation for two decades, with one of them believing he was someone else’s identical sibling.

On the other hand, the Spanish twins (no names given, but they are women) who got separated at birth by nurses’ error and reunited by chance 35 years later are also suing the state-run Canary Island hospital for damages.

In both the Spanish and the Chinese cases, the “twins” had been brought up under the wrong belief that they were twins. Both sets of twins felt affected, saying “their world has turned a bit upside down.” Both sets have grown up separately, and sought kinship connection to the twin that he or she has lost.

But take this other case of twins who grew up under one roof, who competed with each other for parental favors, with the competition getting so nasty, the rules of the game becoming so unprofessional you could imagine them going at each other’s throats!

It began when a Middle East couple pleaded for a child, just one, because even after many years of marriage they had no child. But the joy of her pregnancy became the trouble of her heart. It seemed as though children—not just one child— were fighting inside her womb! (That early, the fetuses were already at each other’s throats!) “I cannot endure it,” the wife said. “This cannot be just morning sickness!” So she came to inquire of God. And she was told this:

“There are two boys in your womb, and they are actually two rival nations. They will compete with one another, they will fight. One will be stronger than the other; and the older shall become a servant of the younger.”

And sure enough, she had twins. The first was born so covered with reddish hair that one would think he was wearing a fur coat! They called him “Red,” but oftentimes he was known by the name “Hairy.” The other twin was born with his hand on the older boy’s heel; they named him “The Grabber.” Their father was sixty years old when the twins were born.

The boys grew up outsmarting each other. The older boy became a skillful hunter; the younger stayed at home, being the quiet sort, and trained to become a good cook. Just here you could say the skill of one could be a complement to the other: “You do the hunting, I’ll do the cooking!” But it did not. The older was the father’s favorite (who would think that with venison you could find your way to your father’s heart? But he did). And the younger became the apple of his mother’s eye.

The younger boy is actually one of the most important characters. You may not be attracted to him after seeing the worst side of him. He was not just a supplanter, a grabber, he was also a deceiver, “the man who drove a hard sharp bargain at the expense of his own brother, taking advantage of the older brother’s weakness to gratify his covetousness.”

I understand that the older brother did not offer to sell his birthright; he asked of his brother a kindness, to satisfy his hunger. It was the younger brother’s chance to play the part of the sympathetic twin but he did not; instead he took the opportunity to seize what was not his. The older brother was willing to barter the most important of all to escape a temporary discomfiture. “When a man is dying of starvation,” he said, “what good is his birthright?” By his shortsightedness he allowed himself to be defrauded. In the language of one preacher, “He traded eternity for a bowl of soup.”

One despicable act led to another. And to secure the blessing of the father who was almost blind, the younger brother got the help of an equally deceitful mother. “Your hairy skin tells me you’re my favorite son, but your voice tells me you’re not,” the father commented. The physical can be deceiving. Anyway, he asked that his favorite steak be brought in. And the grabber got what he wanted.

If you read the narrative, many years later his sins came to haunt him. In the parlance of Robert Southey, the writer, “The chickens came home to roost.” He too was cheated of his wages, of his first option to marry the woman he loved, of his shares as a tenant in the ranch farm his father-in-law owned.

Well, some may discredit the younger boy for his smallness and meanness, but we must appreciate the true and the strong about him, his foresight, his appreciation of what the birthright could bring, and his fine sense of values. The Bible values these as most important.

Two brothers, two siblings. While they lived under one roof, they also grew up separately. They were just two in the family, but it looked like their home became too crowded with them. Under that circumstance, the motherly advice worked best: Separate, you guys, or I will die early. Years later the twins met in a tearful reunion, each one forgetting each other’s hurts and pains.

Either Jacob or Esau could be like some of us. Members of the one family of God, the church. Spiritual siblings who don’t like each other and seem to be always at each other’s throats. My advice to these brethren: Grow up separately. Learn to forget the past. Overlook the faults. Bloom in the place where the Lord has planted you. Someday, when circumstances are good, your paths might cross, and you might learn to like each other again. Prepare for life hereafter. As my grandson Jacob, 7 years old, when asked would often say pointing to heaven: “There are no people fighting up there.”

"Manhid"

“Manhid” is one Tagalog word I learned when I first read illustrated classics written by the likes of Mars Ravelo, Pablo S. Gomez, and Mike Relon Makiling. It is the word you would hear when someone vies for your attention but your life’s dreams and acts are focused on something else. “Manhid” means insensitive. You are “manhid” if you shut your ears to the cries of the poor and the needy, when you leave the scene of the crime, when you bump someone on the trail of life and don’t apologize.

The case is the same when the prosecutors suggest technicalities, when the judges turn a blind eye, and the guilty go scot-free. In which case criminal lawyering would be a lucrative option, since pockets are lined. The victims? They can only howl: “Mga manhid kayo! Wala kayong puso” (You are all insensitive! You are heartless!).

This better of half of mine with whom I pledged “I do” (that was thirty-seven years ago!) in that private dwelling in Pasig which the late missionary Ray Bryan called home, with “Here Comes the Bride” being played to keep us in step and Felipe Cariaga pronouncing the conditions that tied us to each other for life, does not understand why I patronize that poor vendor who comes at my door with her little urchin in tow, imploring me to buy her delicacies– “they’re no good, they’re not up to standards,” my wife would say. I’d tell her I am just sensitive to the plight of the poor vendor; the profits that she makes will probably extend her business for another day, and will mean food for the family. Having been poor, I patronize the poor. As simple as that.

One is “manhid” if he observes the literalness of the law, like when he insists the church collection is only “for the saints,” invoking 1 Corinthians 16:1. It does no good to quote Galatians 6:10, “As we have the opportunity, let us do good to all men, especially to them of the household of faith”; the hobbyists go around it, too.

“Manhid” one is not when someone points out to him why he posted the writings of an “evil man” on his blog. “Evil” is the word the commentator used to describe the man, and says that that man also has left a trail of abusive relationships in the past. Well, the blog owner happens to believe that everyone who may have a penchant to do evil also has the capacity to do good. Since the blog owner is not insensitive, he does what makes his reader happy.

Sensitive to issues. Sensitive to cries. Sensitive to the environment. The hair that lines the skin is there for a reason: It jolts you back to your senses and makes you feel the coolness, or the coldness, of the surrounding, giving you the option to put in more firewood to the stove, or die of hypothermia. Sensitive to logic. The heart that the Bible talks about is not that hollow muscular organ that receives blood from the veins and propels it through the arteries; it is the brain where thoughts are conceived and filtered and logic is molded and where action is prodded by what’s best under the circumstances.

Be sensitive to calls for action. Calls from men sermonizing on the pulpits and from the Word raging in its urgency in the privacy of your bedroom, speaking to your heart to stop sinful actions. Calls for help for needy Christians. I believe we have wasted much time arguing on the methods, we have misspent precious hours logicalizing the madness of our hermeneutics, when true hermeneutics begins when one truly listens to what God in His Scripture says.

It matters much to the Lord that we act right, and with dispatch. That is the essence of human sensitivity.

"Pasi-aw ni Pastor Ed"

To this young man named Julie, I am always “Pastor Ed,” and he would not listen to corrections. With him and his wife, I had much time to study the Word. They had scant time to sit down with me in their home but they were good listeners, observing and absorbing everything they heard from me. Both spent much time in the pechay patch that Julie had carved out of a mountainside. Sometimes he would drive a motorcycle-for-hire, taking passengers on pleasure trips to Mount Manunggal, but always you would find Julie and his wife in their garden patch. It was there too that I would conduct my Bible class.

Slender and somewhat tall, Julie’s moods and ways may swing with his environment, including its sadness and its pains, but he has always believed that laughter is the best medicine even for back-ache. And it seems both of us and those who join our circle never get older day by day.

A year ago he put an end to his life as a pechay planter. Business had not been good and the weather had been so unkind. So stop planting. Diversify. Then I saw him tending sheep and goats owned by one rich man. And so amidst the cacophony of bleating goats and blah-ing sheep, we put finishing touches to a dream by putting an end to that dream—the vegetable truck farm we had envisioned over cups of coffee during days and nights of rain that detained me in this mountain lair never saw reality. You are now a pastor of goats and sheep, I said. That’s good.

I encouraged him to get a license to drive; he did. I urged him to learn driving a jeepney and he became an expert in it.

And so the dreams of youth that I had and which I laid out before Julie’s eyes became his dreams too. His wife underwent training to become a sewer of ready-to-wear garments. Then he told me his wife had been accepted to work in a garment factory. I said good. That means she would stay in the city and you’d remain in this mountain lair of yours– far from the madding crowd, far too from the economy that moves. “She would be working seven days a week with half of a day of rest,” he said, “and that rest is not on Sunday. And she would be allowed to come home only once a month.” Wow, how can you manage that? I asked.

Listen, I told him. These are trying times. The city is full of lights but there are sons of darkness prowling in its every corner. These will try your souls; these will try your marriage too, if it is meant to survive. Both of you are still young– she’s 19 and you’re 22. And remember, you have a pretty woman for a wife. Take good care of her, and that takes care of your marriage.

Last Sunday I was back. I was told that Julie’s wife is now on her first day on the job. But Julie and his daughter too were nowhere to be seen. Where are they, I asked. “He resigned,” Edward said.

And Edward told me why: It is because of the “Pasi-aw ni Pastor Ed” (”The joke of Pastor Ed”).

What I said about his wife and his marriage set Julie into thinking. It was not meant as a joke.

The family is now in the city. He’ll drive jeepneys if not tricycles, and he would be near her– to keep their marriage intact.

"Tata"

Tata. That was how he was introduced to me. In Ilocano, he would be “Balong.” In Cebuano, he would be “Dodong.” He is an Ilonggo from South Cotabato. “Tata” literally means “little child.” When I first met him, he was 27 years old, married, and had a baby of his own named “Toto,” “little boy.” Tata and I speak the same dialect. His parents were from Negros Occidental, the province whose name to me often evokes nostalgia.

Tata’s wife is named N, and she’s from this side of the mountain where I go in and out preaching the Word. From his story I surmised that she was a woman full of ambitions.

Theirs was a whirlwind romance. He started courting her one day when their paths met. He was tired and thirsty and she guided him to that nook behind a forest where a bubbling spring could be found. They began a conversation that lasted until noon. He was struck by the beauty of this mountain lass, with her features so fine she could be mistaken for an “hija bastarda.” It never occurred to Tata that while they both shared the same attraction, they would never share the same faith, or dreams, or goals. After a week of courtship, she became his wife.

I had studied the Bible with Tata many times. He listened, understood the logic underscoring the teachings of the Scriptures, and began to see the light. After a few months, he was on his way to become a disciple like the one he reads about in the Bible. Tata lacked just one thing. But then I was ready to immerse him– if he was ready too. He said he was.

Tata’s wife got herself a job in the city, first as a lady security guard for a grocery store, then as a factory worker at MEPZA. At the time we were having studies, his wife had already been away for a month.

Tata never came to the baptismal pool as scheduled. His wife had left for a job which she thought was good as far as economics was concerned, but she also left him for another man. He was so downhearted.

I saw him again three months after. He came for advice. In the kindest way possible, I frankly told him three things that were wrong.

First, He had fallen in love with a woman who was not even in love with him. Love in a marriage is a two-way traffic. She was a Delilah in disguise. You remember that Bible story.

Second, their home started in the wrong nest. After their wedding, her parents’ home became their home. What does the Word of God say about spouses leaving parents and cleaving to each other alone?

Third, their marriage was without any moral foundation. Tata strived to listen to Jesus and obey Him; his wife never had a qualm about doing anything immoral.

It’s been three years since Tata and I last saw each other. He’s back in South Cotabato, trying to pick up the pieces of his life and restructure it. I miss that friend of mine, even as I pass by a big mansion on my way out—another imposing structure in this forest land, where Tata’s ex-wife now reigns as queen. The cost? Just three million pesos. Built for her by her new lover. She was twenty-five. He was sixty-five.

Tata, on the other hand, found the church in South Cotabato.

My Grandson

What is it about this little boy, seven years old, who keeps me wanting to have him always by my side? We never invited him to be a part of the family; we never expected him. But he came anyway.

And we love him. Oh, how we love him! Never a day would pass without us in the family expressing this heartfelt emotion toward him and embodying that emotion with acts of love. It is not just money and toys, it is money and toys wrapped in tenderness. It is not just McDonalds and Jollibees, or electric train, or the colored TV; it is these that when attached to the act show that he is the most loved persona in the household.

And so he holds that special place. He is not content of me being just his grandfather, he wants me take on the role of the man whom he saw only once or twice in his life, the father he wants to be with but never wants to see. We in the family always wish the boy well. And in our wish, we desire that he will turn into something still lovable in our eyes. For is it not, that when a man grows old, he either grows into the most hated man or the man most loved? We wish him to be the man we always desire to be, but have not been. And that desire moves us to have him turned into a man who will have a healthy respect for the father he never misses.

We will, that he too shall become a man who is never afraid of his past. For his past we have accepted, as we have accepted ours.

We will too, that in these times when some morals are bankrupt, he shall be filled with it; that he will grow up as a God-fearing man, a lover of good, a promoter of what is best, a persevering fellow who keeps toiling in silence and in the midst of difficulties when others may do it in pomp and in ease.

We will, that he shall not be a lover of money and favors, and that he shall disperse of these only to the deserving and the needy.

It is the grace of God that favors his arrival into this world; and it is that grace that has changed our perception of family. Begotten by the daughter who is the apple of our eye, his coming has changed us all. We wish that he will not change as the most lovable boy the Lord has ever gifted us.

His name is Charles Jacob, and if you ever have a chance, I want you to meet him too.

One Incident in the Past

Talk about high school. What does one remember about it? I don’t put mine in the class of the Very Significant, or the Very Memorable. Others recall theirs with sadness or with joy; mine with the lesson that it has brought me.

That noon time of my last year in high school was just like other noon times of my life. I was sitting there under a kaymito tree behind the school library. It was no ordinary tree, as far as I am concerned, for it was the biggest, the tallest, and perhaps the oldest kaymito tree in the whole village. Its crown had withstood many tropical storms of history. Nobody ever thought of cutting it down even to give way to the walls being built around the school’s property. For that tree was part of the will on the property deeded to the school. And so it stayed.

And so I also stayed. Hiding behind the lowest branch that stooped like an arch, I sat under it. I was there munching the ripe fruits that I could lay my hands on. It was the best lunch I had ever had, since nobody was watching, and nobody saw what I was doing. Or so I thought.

Except that I heard some steps. Someone grabbed me from behind, and pushed me to the ground. There he was: the teacher of my terrifying dreams. Playing the role of safe keeper of the olden kaymito.

What followed was the usual. This was not my first time to be brought to the office of the principal. I was his greatest quarry, the top guy of the graduating class, caught with his pants down.

Never mind if the principal had forgiven me. Never mind if I only got a warning. The principal understood the plight of the poor, he having been a poor scholar himself subsisting on the fruits of the tree he had never planted. He knew that the only lunch I could get in those days of poverty was kaymitos. He forgave me. But the safe keeper of the olden kaymito did not.

In the years that followed I became a searcher of truth. I searched for the meanings of want and bounty, why some people had it more while others had none. In my search for truth, I also found God. As a minister of the gospel, I also understood why people acted so and so.

I had been back to the village school one time. The safe keeper of the kaymito was at his yard, stooped by years of service. The principal was not, for I saw his tomb that day. But he made it known to all before he left, that no one should ever be denied of the fruits of any tree in the school grounds, especially if he is hungry. The safe keeper of the kaymito understood it too late. But now he was smiling at me.