Casting about for something to post on our anniversary month, I reread fg’s letter of July 7, 1971, and I am reminded of this ‘trick’ of his to exchange our places with each other; i.e., to speak of me as if I were fg, and to speak of fg as if he were me. Sometimes, the result can be amusing, at least for us. It also afforded me an insight into his life before we met. Usually, I already knew, anyway, at least in the excerpt below, but it amused me to be so reminded. And he knew it amused me, and he didn’t mind being the butt of his own jokes. One of the sources of his jokes was the fact, as alluded to below, that I was still in Grade School as a 6th grader in La Consolacion College, and he was already at UP as a freshman. What closed the gap? Well, for one, I studied early, being in Grade 1 at 5 years, while he, caught by World War II, entered elementary school when he was 2 months away from his 8th birthday. I was just 2 months old then! I entered UP when he was still a teaching assistant at the English Department and, later, in charge of the Listening Center. In small ways, our lives touched briefly before we met, then finally decided to try and make a go of it. One time, we were waiting for our class under Miss Delia Hidalgo when fg came out of ‘our’ room. He had pinch-hitted for Mrs. Delia San Juan, his friend and colleague at the English Department. I was a staff member of The Philippine Collegian when fg’s best poems were published. In fact, the library was my beat then, but I missed publishing the news about him taking over the Listening Center, which was then a part of the Main Library. Then, I had Prof. Esther Samonte-Madrid for my Humanities class. Prof. Madrid asked us to listen to classical pieces at the Listening Center, which was then under fg. Long after I had passed her course with an unexpectedly high grade–all I remember is that I enjoyed the course–I recall one time fg and I boarded an almost-empty bus on campus, and the only other passenger was Mrs. Madrid. She was smiling broadly at us. I now like to believe that Mrs. Madrid was the fairy godmother, if our life were a fairytale, who brought us together. In retrospect, there was a certain inevitability to it, for those who believe in predestination.
The time was 1955-56 when I was still buying pinagtabasan* at La Consolacion College. I was then only 10 and you were 18 years old already. I was yet wearing white and blue school uniform and you were failing in ROTC and writing love letters to earn eggs and shoes. Poor kid, you are ancient history! But you are sluggish and lost-minded, so I caught up with you.
* Communion hosts were cut from a squarish piece of bread-like or pastry-like flat dough, but white and without flavoring; since the hosts are round, there are surpluses, which are sold. I once bought these ‘pinagtabasan’, but since they’re tasteless, the experience wasn’t anymore repeated.
Leave a Reply