Showing posts with label Davao City. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Davao City. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 14, 2023

Thank you, Lola Openg

I was trying to figure out where to get my baptismal certificate at the time when no one among the living could remember, or even had any knowledge, where I was baptised.  I cracked my mind trying to analyse the possibilities--by tracking down in my mind the movements of people I used to know. My Pa already passed away five years before, though, how I wish I could still ask him.  As soon as I asked Ma, she said, "Of course, you were baptised in Argao, where else would it be?"
Was it probable that I was baptised in the town where I grew up? Where to begin my search? Then, I remember this particular photo showing Lola Openg carrying an infant with those scandalously thick black hair.  I was quite sure that that infant was me because I had a memory of it being pointed to me by grownups. I used to be so embarrassed by the shocking black hair; though, right now that my hair is thinning, I've been wondering about that hair; how I failed to appreciate it while it was still around. I was always trying to hide it, tying it or having it straightened.  Lola Openg looked younger in the picture now, though, when I looked at it before, when I was much, much younger, Lola Openg was always old; way, way too old. 
I've always looked up to her as an extraordinary woman, not like any other woman I knew. She had strength and toughness of character. Her place in Balusong used to serve as a drop-off point of settlers arriving in Mindanao for the first time or those who had already settled here but were leaving back to their old Visayan hometowns. They always make it a point to sleep in Lola's house before they take their flights the following day; or before they go on a long bus trip to Nasipit or Cagayan de Oro where they would take the boat to Cebu. If Lola Openg had carried me that day I was baptised, then isn't that very likely that I was baptised in the city where she used to live? I still could not believe it. In my mind, I tried to scour the locations of churches closest to Lola's house and those closest to her heart. Everything pointed me to a particular cathedral. True enough, less than 15 minutes after I inquired, the venerable priest assistant handed me my records. Thank you so much, Lola Openg! 


Thursday, November 24, 2022

I'll tell you all about it

 

But not tonight. Tonight, I still have to read, I still have to write, I still have to clean my copy of verbal flabs, garbage; I still have to clean my desk, I still have to untangle the tangled threads of my earphone. Threads because I could not remember the right word for it. I'm running out of words nowadays. Maybe, one day, I'll remember. I failed to take the picture of that tall ugly woman in a brown dress and with a bun hair-do, who thought she was young and pretty and she owned the world because she was a Filipina working for the Polish Embassy.  


Sunday, June 18, 2017

Sunrise Breaking

This picture, taken when sunrise was breaking beyond the veranda of our home in B'la outlining the leaves of the Song of India, makes me think of my Pa. 
At the height of his ailment - those long uncertain months after his first hospital stay when we deemed it good to let him stay in the city - I used to leave Davao City at dawn to go to Bansalan to oversee the weighing of copra.  I was so insecure about the whole proceeding because: first, I didn't even know how to read the weighing scales used by the Chinese merchants to weigh sacks and sacks of our produce, so, you can imagine how strained I was, standing there, pretending to understand, when all the while, I was feeling like an idiot (of course, this did not last long because Pamela Chua, a Tsinay from Binondo, whispered to me the secret code--okay, this part is purely isturyang hubog, see, I put it inside the parenthesis?!); second, there was no one in the family overseeing the workers in the farm, which actually meant, we are slowly, gradually but surely, losing control of things over there.  So, to calm my nerves, I used to leave Davao City too early, when everyone else was still snoring;  to see to it that I arrived at the house at dawn so that I had enough time to be at the farm at 6 am, when everybody least expected me.  This would allow some time for me to get to know the people and to observe what was going on in the farm (though, I hardly had two hours to do all these).  During those months, I had studied the proceedings of the farm and studied the people there just like the way I read my books.  [Of course, I eventually developed a grasp of the politics and economics of the place, developed a feel of whom to trust and whom to be wary, honed my skills to read people's hearts and people's intentions; but I admit that up to now, I still can't tell a coconut ready for harvest  from a buko or a banana!  Uh-okay, I can tell a banana, but to tell a mature coconut fruit ready for harvest from a buko continues to be a puzzle to my untrained eyes! To compensate for this, however, I knew someone I can trust who can tell the difference.] 
Once, I overshot my target hour of arrival in Bansalan and had left Davao City at 2 am, which was rather too early. I arrived home when it was still dark and drank the loneliness of the house. I went to the upper bedroom and saw Pa's things and shirts scattered in different places in our frantic search for things to bring that day we left for the hospital. I felt this searing pain as I saw the pillow where Pa's head used to lie, the old Bisaya magazines he used to thumb through and had left in the corner, still half-folded; the glass, still half-full of water, where he drank that night, before he was seized by the pain which made him say, "Dios ko, Dios ko, Gino-o," as he made the sign of the cross; which made me send a text message to my sisters, "It must really be painful because I've never ever heard him say, Dios ko, before;" which made my sisters, hundreds of kilometers away, race for home days after. 
Still, I can't forget the sight: his slippers which were scattered in different directions, the discarded clothes, the poor state of his old shoes, worn, weather-beaten, gathering dust in a cordizo;  and even the dusty nito basket hooked to a nail on the wall, where he kept his documents.