One cannot go forward without looking back at the past, as many would say, may these be happy ones or sad ones. Pasts are always parts of the continuum of what we call life cycles, er, lifelines.
Life is circular because we have the abilities, tendencies to go back where we were, at least in our memories, tracing back the lines like counting past years in our faces, as we look ourselves staring at us in the mirror. It is like picking up the truths, meanings, of our once texted life experiences. But, the hardest of it all, in going back at life lanes, is the prejudice of separating the good ones from the best ones.
Life is also linear. No one could ever turn the time around. We will always end up counting the days, weeks, months and years–forget the hour–of our past lives, at least for now. At least for now, waiting the science fiction of time machine becomes a reality. Not in my lifetime, though, I am sure. All we could do is to trace the events and owned it as now–as lines tangled in a web of events, as pastels if we put pictures on it and as coded dots and numbers if we put these events entrenched at the virtual memories.
It never dawned on me that a nostalgic piece of mine which I dug from my file — heavy files that burdened me for so long, not coded and not saved on flash drives or disks, thus, heavy literally — which I blogged, tickled someone’s memories and caused words flowing in the cyber world - - virtual as it is no bound - - greater than a river. I fondly called this someone, Maestro. These files are, indeed, heavy literally. Files of folders, books, notes that I scooped and bundled in a box when I said goodbyes to now I called walled-wanton life in the seminary. The bus conductor robbed me a person’s fare when I brought them home, which I could not afford at that time. It caused my mother’s time of budgeting their hard earned money. At least that what cost me when I could not left behind my baggage of life.
And these are metaphorically and poetically heavy, too. The heavy files that I tagged along as I drifted to the then unknown future, now the present, were parts of the best old days. And these files will be added one more piece soon or maybe discarded soon, when this piece ended. At least, this one could be saved at the virtual world and I will not carry all along with me as I continue counting lines on my face.
Going back to the intended tale that I planned to put it here. The dream, or is it the prodding?
Do I dream of putting the cloak of holiness to become holier than the other? Or, do I dreamed of putting the cloak because I was conditioned by the dream of my family to become holier than the other family?
And so let the public may know.
And so the public may not judge.
And so God may forgive.
And so the frailes may jerk.
I could remember the beginning of it all, now.
It all begun when dreaming was still free, at least for us very young then who could reenact all that mind could grasp, grappled and conceived, freely without pretensions and inhibitions.
On every Tuesday or Friday, whenever my mother had money or my father gave my mother his salary — a mere seventy pesos every 15th day and 30th day of the month, a laborer’s pay — my mother was obliged or obligated to go to market and later brought home a bag full of supplies worth five pesos, we were towed to our neighbors, when neighbors were a kilometer away from our nipa hut in the middle of banana plantations - - we called this home, because nobody would tend for us while she was away. We were happy then, together with my younger sisters and a brother, to see few children’s faces to whom we knew as our second cousins. As soon as we set foot on their backyard, we began dreaming what we would like to be. We were soldiers killing the unlucky cousins who portrait the villains, may it be a Japanese or a criminal from the stories we heard from our grandfathers who never faltered to say stories of whoever people during dusks whenever he was with us. We were, oftentimes, all get killed. Nobody won until one of my cousins brought about the idea of anting-anting, the amulet of immortality. Of course, we aired our protests but he defended his antics to – aha, this was my grandfather told me, when the Japs came along killing whoever they want to kill, he just slept wearing the anting-anting and they left him unhurt. And so be it. He was not killed during our small war games. The sticks we used as guns will no longer do us good.
Until one Tuesday, we confronted the grandfather who taught his grandchild of cheating us. He told us that an anting-anting is not effective when it is Friday and when it is not wore by the owner. He even told us that some anting-anting were the devil’s work and become useless when sprinkled with holy water. Aha! Happy of the knowledge, we devised a plan to win the war next game day.
It was Friday and we did the same routine of war games. Before we started the game, we stole the anting-anting, robbed, I should say, from the child owner during one of our ritual of gabbo, wrestling. I assumed the role of a priest who owned the holy water. I ran towards the caramba, an earthen jar full of water, and scooped a buyuboy full of what we called holy water and ran back again and drenched the anting-anting amidst the strong protestations of our cousins as if we were losing a true amulet. The anting-anting now has no power. We took our sticks and bratatatat and alas, we won today.
I learned the trick of portraying a priest from my older cousins. We stole the newly washed and hanged blanket of my auntie and I wrapped around my body like sinuman. They cut my hair and left a peso wide, the big Philippine Peso during martial law, cleaned part on top of my head. We called that ‘orden’ like ‘ordenan a lawalawa’. The power of a priest was then bestowed to me. The priest won the war.
My becoming a priest won us the war but I was not a winner for that day. I was spanked by my auntie and boxed by my cousin to whom we robbed the anting-anting and who lost the power of his kalasag. I went home with a black eye and a darkened thigh and a peso wide orden. We never did the trick again.
One of my girl cousins also portrayed as a Mother Superior, mimicking the antics of the then Franciscan Sister who taught us religion once a week at our elementary school as if religion was our salvation and belief was the memorization of prayers we repeat every now and then. We called her Mother Immaculata.
She – my cousin as Mother Superior– taught our younger girl cousins how to bake bread by using the soil as dough and our urine as water. We urinated on the soil and slowly, using our fingers, circling the dough, the hardened soil, and scooped it with our hands. We partake, in imagination, on the bread broken into pieces by the Mother Superior. Some of us become children of the family and one of us as Padre de Familia. And before, we ate the bread, I remembered that we need to pray, and I said: Alaenyo daytoy ket kanenyo a pakalaglagipanyo kaniak – take this and eat it in memory of me, complete of actions and slanged Ilokano. I remembered the words from the priest, a foreign priest with slanged Ilokano, who officiated our first communion.
And one summer had gone.
And rains come as we expected.
And suddenly, the rains never come. It stopped coming and we were happy with the long dried summer. We chanted: rain, rain go away and come again another day. The waiting become longer and rains never come another day.
Our grandfathers were worried. We were in for a drought. No one could plant rice. The bamboo flowered and my grandfather told me that gawat was coming.
And our grandmother, my mother and our aunts began to pray the rosary. We were again so happy. Praying rosary, we called that palualo, meant kankanen, linubian and pancit to us. And it meant, we could again play together during the one hour recitations of whatever petitions my grandmother were saying in between mysteries. All I could remember were the torre ni David, torre a balitok and the palpallatok ti bigbigat. Whoever this David was and wherever this torre a balitok was, I did not know. I learnt later that this palpallatok ti bigbigat was the morning star.
As soon as the praying ended with the magic word Amen and the ritual of ‘bless’, the kissing of the right hand or touching my forehead to the back of the right palm of all elders and elderly present, we satisfied ourselves with the presence of kankanen, linubian and pancit. After which, we kowtowed with the elders, in single file, praying again of many petitions in procession traversing all farm lots of the host family. Procession times, oftentimes, were during dusks. Maybe, to let the candle lights shine. All I know all along was that the candle lights showed our way because what was the use of lighted candles if it was not dark, after all. At least, that was I understood, then.
And one afternoon, when our family was the host, I was assigned to lead the procession holding in front of me the image of San Isidro de Labrador. And after the procession, I heard that someone said: Agbalin koma met a padi daytoy anakmo, Paring - - I wish that your son will become a priest, Paring. And among the men, who now begun also their ritual of giving due respect to Samiguel, I heard: Huh, kayatmo balong ket no kaponenda ti padi. Kitam ket awan asawana - - Do you like it son? Priest will be castrated. See, priest has no wife. That was they know at that time. Some priests have wives, don’t they?
And on the next day, rain came pouring in, ending the summer games and starting the season of toiling under the pounding rains.
And the dream began.
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