The Book of Salamat

Cogtonganons - The meeting place for all Cogtonganons by heart and by blood, here and abroad. Because it feels good to come 'home'.

2010-04-16T08:35:00.001+08:00

Cogtonganons - The meeting place for all Cogtonganons by heart and by blood, here and abroad. Because it feels good to come 'home'.

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TUESDAY: NOVEL-MAKING DRIVE

2009-05-19T14:17:00.002+08:00

What's In Here?

Inside this room, you will be encouraged to share your thoughts and imagination and help finish a book by submitting your version of a certain chapter or chapters.

What's The Goal?

To make and publish a novel based entirely on the contributions submitted by readers from around the world.

What's The Drive?

The blogger has already posted the PROLOGUE. It was written in first person so that it will be much easier to connect to the story and develop a more emotional connection to it. This way, it will also somehow help draw involvement from the writer (you!). It doesn't matter if you are a man or a woman, though the PROLOGUE introduces a single mother, anybody can wear her shoes and write her stories.

What To Do First?

You need to read the PROLOGUE first. Get to know who and what's in there, and what kind of story was lurking somewhere in there that you feel the urge to write and tell. Read the PROLOGUE and then determine where and how to start from there, and where to take the story from there.

What Needs To Be Done?

Apparently, Chapter 1 does not exist yet. It's not there yet. And nobody knows what happens next after the event narrated in the PROLOGUE, or how the whole story really starts.

Now, what you are going to do is write for the Chapter 1. It's up to you what approach or angle you are going to use. Write it backwards? Should you continue telling the story from the PROLOGUE? Or start it from the very beginning and make the PROLOGUE a part of the ending? It's really up to your creativity. And depending on the writer's imagination, the main character might not be the mother. It might be someone else. Who knows? It's really up to the writer!

Remember: if the succeeding chapter is not yet selected and posted, it is open to submissions.

How To Do It?

At the start, read the PROLOGUE. Then write the story for Chapter 1. When Chapter 1 has been selected from the submissions and has already been posted next to the PROLOGUE, and you want to submit your version again for the next chapter, you need to read the existing chapters, and then write for the next chapter.

In case you like to participate in this drive and it's your first time to come here, and let's assume Chapters 1 to 5 were already chosen and posted by the time you come here, you need to read from the very beginning until the latest chapter to have a full grasp of the story and for you to determine where you should take the story next. And then write your version for the next chapter. It's how this works!

Tell Me More:

Submissions will be subject to review and deliberation by either the blog readers and followers or by people in the physical world. The version that established a strong connection to the PROLOGUE and is more persuading and realistic will more likely to be chosen. If an entry is picked, the winning author will be informed. Once selection is made, the next chapter will then be open to submissions. When it is finished, the winning entries will be compiled and sent to credible English Professors or critiques for review and editing. And, hopefully, finds its way to publication with the winning writers as its authors.

For the next chapter to be perceived and created more clearly by the contributors, it is advised that each chapter should be written with an established thought or situation before the chapter ends, creating a link and connection that requires attention and opens door for the continuation of the story in the next chapter.

How Can I Submit My Version?

To submit your version, please click on the POSTED COMMENTS directly below each post. Once your version is selected for that particular chapter, it will be copied from your comment and will used as a new post.

How To Get The Book Title?

Obviously, it will be a hard and clumsy move to assume the appropriate title when it's not yet finished. Once the story-writing is done, the readers and contributors alike will be encouraged to suggest a title they feel best fits or defines the whole story. Then such suggestions will be subject to votation.

What are the rules?

To avoid confusion, please uphold the established characteristics and the physical and behavioral description of the characters, unless when the situation calls the need to change it, or when the story explains the character's physical or behavioral transformation.

For example, if the character is described and established in the previous chapter as a reserved but composed person, you cannot have him appear in your version for the next chapter as a brisk, noisy guy unless you specify that the character has undergone transition..

There's no limitation on how many times you come back and write with respect to the number of chapters. But with respect to submissions per chapter, you are limited to only 1 entry.

For example, in Chapter 1, you are allowed to submit only one version. Then you can submit another one again for Chapter 2.

To go there now, CLICK HERE.

MONDAY: THANK YOU ROOM

2009-05-18T16:43:00.002+08:00

The week after my operation, I received a number of text (sms) messages from friends and relatives wishing me to recuperate soon.

Last Tuesday, I said my Thank You to my uncle after receiving a message wishing me good health and a fast recovery.

A day after that, on Wednesday, my two friends and ex-colleagues in Taiwan, who live in the neighboring town and city, came to visit me at home. One of them had just recently arrived from an island province west of Cebu in central Philippines, and had heard from the other one the news about my appendicitis. I expressed my Thanks to them, treasuring their thoughtfulness. I also thanked them for a kilogram of ripe, sweet mangoes they gave me that night.

Last Thursday was my schedule to visit my doctor in which he had remove the stitches, checked the wound, and prescribed me a gel to prevent the onset of keloids and minimize the visibility of the scar. I thanked my doctor so much for the free-of-charge appointment, which would have cost me 500 pesos or around $10.50. His professional fee for the surgery, I later found out from my parents, was even discounted by around $104.00. These figures already saved me a considerable amount of money. And I felt so much gratitude to my doctor for his finesse, service and generosity. I promise to give something in return one day as a token of my gratitude. He likes marine foods, and so I’m planning to send him prawns or crabs.

I also thanked the taxi driver that same day for being considerate and thoughtful. Upon knowing that I’ve just had an operation, he made it sure we wouldn’t be going through a bumpy or rough part of the road. He knew it could be painful for me even with just a jitter of the cab. We also took a byway with less traffic, a quality of kindness that has become rare among cab drivers.

I have also checked my latest posts on both my blogs last week, here and at LITERARY WORKS, and I’ve read the well-wishes and prayers from people across the world that I’ve only met here at blogger. There aren’t words that can express my thankfulness to all those who pray for my fast recovery and for my good health. From the deepest chamber of my heart, I thank you all!

Photograph by Consumedbycake. Please CLICK HERE to visit the owner's Flickr page. Thanks!

SUNDAY SITUATIONAL: If You Buy This Record ...

2009-05-17T15:22:00.003+08:00

I've turned on my computer today, browsed the net, landed on Youtube, search for random videos until a dance beat song of Tampera caught my eyes and ears. The video appeared to me like cheaply budgeted and not so artistically visualized. At some points I have even caught myself frowning and grinning at some scenes, and have no idea what was the message that the acts were trying to imply. But in fairness, the music was somehow contagious to the point that it made me sing along and raised my hands up in the air. Yeah. The party-animal side of me. (GRIN!)

If you buy this record your life will be better, your life will be better ----

I wasn't paying attention to the lyrics throughout the whole run, though. It was the beat that carried me away and loosen my jaded limbs and back. Then I carried on looking for yet another videos. Until late this evening, as I called it a day and lied on my bed staring at the white wall, it was when the lyrics sank in.

And it made me realize, hey, there's some truth to that line. It really is true. Music helps us in many ways. It helps us remember clearly that romantic or funny or embarrassing moments we have had, the break-ups (ouch!), our ex's, our parents, deceased loved ones...even mem'ries from grade or high-schools!

And then a thought brushed through me:

Supposing I’m cooking for a special night, preparing the table to its perfect presentation, dimming the dining room lights, and oh, that romantic candles would surely melt my wife's heart! Perfume is in the air, her favorite Victoria's Secret, candles lined the hallway on the floor from the front door to the dining room, the floor carpeted with petals of red and white. All that to surprise her for our first year anniversary.

Then I hear the rolling of her car outside. But then suddenly, I pause, something's missing! Something's lacking! C'mon, think, THINK! What is it? Oh yeah, music! A romantic song that will set the night and the mood just perfect! Groping in the dim room, searching for the perfect record to play but, wait, WAIT! I remember, the heck, these are all rock and alternatives! Uhm, wait, here --- PUSSYCAT DOLLS? No, wait--- BLACK EYED PEAS? No....NO! I can't call it disaster!

And then the front door clicks.

QUESTION:

Do you and your hubby have a theme song? Supposing you are having a date or celebrating your anniversary, would you prefer to play a song, be it a record or a live performance by an artist in a restaurant? What song would you like to be played that you feel would complement the mood of the night? Tell us why you or your hubby choose that song.

Photograph by Indiana Shutterbug . Please CLICK HERE to visit the owner's Flickr page. Thanks!

Adapting a New, Interactive Format

2009-05-13T21:57:00.006+08:00

Everyday for the entire week I will be presenting different activities and interactions, each unique from one another. This drive is aiming to listen and understand what your minds are thinking or shouting behind your head that would otherwise become stale or even forever unheard.

I will do my best to make them as fresh and current and interesting as they could be to trigger you to participate, get involved and react. I will do my best to gather and post information or cause interaction that are of human interest.

This series of activities will kick off this coming Sunday.

To know what kind of activities I’m going to post per day, here is the list:

MONDAYS: THE THANK YOU ROOM

I am going to introduce this room on my blog, and I call it THE THANK YOU ROOM, where the issues for this room will be released every Monday.

In here I will be enumerating down the times I say Thank You to someone, either people close to me or total strangers, be it in person, in letters or online. How many times I said it in a week will be exactly the same number I will post the following Monday.

No, what you're thinking is wrong. I am not going to say those two words for the sake of posting it in my blog. That's completely out of my intention. I will only post those times I said them sincerely, and will not post those that I didn't mean. That means there may be an empty week and an empty Monday post.

And this Room is primarily meant as my online diary of those instances. I don't know what it would exactly do to me in the future, but it doesn't matter. What matters most is that in the end, there will be something I will look back to and remember how those faces changed the time I said Thank You to them.

TUESDAYS: NOVEL-MAKING DRIVE

Every Tuesday, I will be posting a link to my other blog, which is The Ink Jacuzzi , a blog specially created and designed to encourage readers to participate and contribute their versions for a certain chapter for the completion of a book in this novel-making drive.

The rules and mechanics will be displayed every Tuesdays, too, along with the link. Such mechanics and rules can also be read in the above mentioned link. You can go anytime there, and if you have already penned your idea, you can submit it the next Tuesday, or you can visit anytime this URL: http://inkjacuzzi.blogspot.com

Hope to see you next Tuesday, guys!

WEDNESDAYS: STORY TELLING (FICTION)

Wednesdays will be allocated for short fictions. All the previous posts on short stories will remain as is, but from now on I will only post fiction entries every Wednesday, so that I can effectively budget my time and organize my blog better.

THURSDAYS: ISSUES, HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE

Every Thursday I will be posting a recent or current global economic, political or any other human-interest issues that affect human lives all over the world.

The topic is not limited, and so as your opinions or insights. And it aims to extract your beliefs and principles on these issues. But I am hoping that, though this blog offers a freedom wall for all our thoughts, participants should not attack each other’s stands, question one’s views, or fight over their principles.

It is my purpose to know what you believe in and what your views are, and hopefully learn values and lessons from those.

FRIDAYS: MIXED NUTS

Inside this room I will be posting random, assorted topics. It could be that I will write an interactive scene (script) where the readers can actually interact with the story’s characters, virtually, of course. It can be done by creating an open ending where readers can enter as a new character and create conversations with the presented fictional characters by establishing lines (added to the script).

Scenes may be described as inside a bar, in a mall, in a restaurant, or in a public park. The list of possible settings is actually infinite.

Still wondering how it really works? Watch out this coming Friday!

OR, it could be….

By means of a prompt (I know this is not original, but I admit it’s addicting and fun!). I might post an image and ask for you to write something creatively, literarily or plainly about what you see and how you interpret the message of the picture.

Or…

I might throw questions about your hobbies, interests, passions, fears, happiness…anything.

SATURDAYS: YouTube REACTS

Every Saturday, I will be posting a Youtube video of random topics into my blog, videos that have potentials to spark comments, discussions or debate. It is my intention to gather readers’ reactions, views and insights regarding the message of the video or the video itself, positive or otherwise.

It is my very hope that you find this drive interesting and interactive enough to share what you think or what your stand is.

Cya on my first post this coming Saturday!

SUNDAYS: SITUATIONAL

I am creating a new room or section on my blog, which will be dubbed SUNDAY SITUATIONAL. This, as the name suggests, will be a about giving a particular situation where a question or series of questions will be based. Starting this Sunday (Philippine time), this distinctively different posting will be ran, hopefully, for a long time as long as this blog is alive and kicking. Of course, it all depends on the feedbacks and responses to the inquiries from the readers (you!). So I need your cooperation, and I hope you will find the Q's triggering and exciting enough to start striking your keys.

This is my way of turning this blog into a more interactive space between you and me. There's nothing more rewarding and fun than acting and reacting over the same topic and know that all of us are enjoying it.

So, guys, read on, get involved, participate, and let us hear your thoughts!

Photograph by Native's. Please CLICK HERE to view the owner's Flickr page. Thanks!

My World Is Shaken (Non-Fiction): The Surgery

2009-05-13T14:05:00.005+08:00

With a solemn prayer

I whisper

“God, please let me wake up

to this same room.”

I was putting my bag filled with shirts and shorts into the closet of my hospital room around 7:00 o'clock in the evening of May 6, 2009, when the door opened and a nurse with her brown wooden clipboard emerged from the hall.

"Good evening," she smiled as she greeted me. She looked around and saw no one else. My parents, my father’s colleague and his wife who was a former practicing nurse on that same hospital and the same person who referred me to the surgeon, who all went to the hospital with me, were having early dinner that time when the nurse came in. Her eyes went back to me and said, "Are you the patient?"

After I got the results of the preliminary tests on my blood, chest, and heart (must be that my surgeon needed to confirm that the rupture had not caused complications to my blood and other vital organs), I decided to have myself admitted that same day to the hospital, under my specialist surgeon’s advice that it would be much better to undergo operation the soonest time. He told me a day before not to worry about the wound, he assured me that it wouldn't be necessary to incise a bigger entry point on my navel based on his findings during the physical examination, and on the test results from the first hospital I had visited. I endured the not-so-intense-anymore pain and was able to walk without wincing, probably because of the antibiotics I've orally taken prior to seeing him and, as what he had explained, my immune system was strong enough to counter the infection and the rupture was also contained by the epithelia. That, I’ve reckoned, made me so lucky.

“Yes,” I nodded as I replied.

She glanced over me before saying, “You are scheduled for an operation tonight at nine, but you will be taken to the operation room by eight. Your surgeon will be attending you right after he finishes operating on another patient.”

I said, “OK”.

Then she told me that the doctor ordered an NPO (Nihil Per Orem), which meant I must not eat or swallow anything including liquids from that point on until further advice. I’ve never eaten a thing since lunchtime.

I was tempted to ask the nurse how many patients were being operated on by the surgeon for the day. I have this fear that I found hard to suppress, such fear that although the surgery would be minor, unperceived or unexpected factors resulting to malpractice or failure are just lurking around even for the most experienced doctor. And I was thinking, what if the doctor was too worn out for the night’s schedule? What if the anesthesiologist would miscalculate the dosage? Questions that might sound silly to a certain degree or situation but still rational and valid. What if? Despite writing a poem filled with optimism, I found it hard to dodge from my pessimistic fear now that I was facing it.

To tell you honestly, from the time I knew I needed operation up to the very moment I waited for it in my hospital room, I was diverting myself and my mind to something else so I wouldn’t worry about the surgery. Things like reading a novel I’ve already read, tuning on the TV, browsing the internet, and sending sms to friends. And most of the time I succeeded. Now, lying on the bed with printed bed sheets as I watched Discovery Channel, my mind came back to reality. It all went back to me. The anxiety, the worry, the fear. The silly thoughts.

Thirty minutes to eight, the same nurse appeared carrying a plastic filled with tubes and IV bags.

“Sir, I will be administering this now to you. In a while we will be giving you your first shot of antibiotics, but first we need to perform a skin test. You are not still allowed to eat or drink anything.”

Her second line boggled me. “Skin test?” I frowned.

“It’s a standard procedure to find out whether or not you will develop any allergic reactions to the medicine,” she explained clearly. The antibiotic she was referring to would later be injected to me through the IV tube once a day. And it cost around $50 per vial (injected once).

Fifteen minutes after the nurse disappeared behind the door, a team of nursing students with their instructor marched into my room followed by the entourage of my parents and their couple friend, which made me a bit confused and nervous. I don’t really feel comfortable being surrounded by interns on their practicum, performing procedures that made me felt like a guinea pig in the laboratory. The male student conducted the skin test on me, and I winced to the terrible pain. The female student handed me the surgery gown and told me to take off all of my clothes. I waited for them to all go out before stripping off.

A few minutes after eight, a stretcher was wheeled into my room by two male nurses accompanied by the same nurse who came first to see me. She instructed me to lie on the stretcher while she transferred the IV bag from above my bed unto the hook rod protruding from the stretcher. Just when I was wheeled out of the room into the hallway, my father tapped his right hand on my shoulder to loosen and comfort me and told me it’s just a minor and everything would be just fine. I didn’t see my mother’s face, perhaps because I was so distracted by my own thoughts and fears and worries.

As they rolled me down the hallway, my eyes were blankly transfixed at the white ceiling, mumbling silent prayers, hoping that what the surgeon had told me was right, that my phlegmonous appendicitis had not spread into my other organs and that the operation would not be complicated and would only need small incision. I prayed as they stopped pushing and pulling the mobile bed I was lying on, and I prayed as the nurse injected the first shot of antibiotic through the IV tube. The nurse asked me if I felt scared, which I found myself unable to answer. I just smiled at her and listened as she told me that my hand was cold. I didn’t noticed how cold my hands were the same way I didn’t feel if my heart was throbbing fast. I was still staring at the ceiling, familiarizing myself to the hospital hallway.

When we arrived to a hallway right before the sterile room, they transferred me to yet another stretcher, made me wait for I didn’t know how many minutes, giving me yet another time to stare and remember the pinhole design of the white ceiling. A young man in blue, collared shirt and white pants, whom I presumed was another intern, even passed by me and said good luck. I didn't know exactly what to say in that moment, so I just gave him a faint smile.

The nurse relayed to another nurse in green surgery uniform the details pertaining to my records and medical specifics, before I was wheeled into the sterile room, past a huge, bright room and into Room 8, where the huge octopus surgery lamp attached to the ceiling and wires and a narrow bed with straps waited for my arrival. As we passed by the big room, I saw a sole patient there sleeping soundlessly the pain away.

Noticing my head turned to my right to see the sleeping patient, the woman in mask and green who wheeled me in quietly said, “That’s the Recovery Room. That’s where you will stay for another 2 to 3 hours after the surgery.”

I looked away.

Inside Room 8, monitors were turned on and wires were attached somewhere in my chest, one clipped to my left thumb, and an automatic sphygmomanometer strapped around my right upper arm that monitored my blood pressure every 15 minutes, according to the surgery nurse in green. She told me that my surgeon and his team will attend to me right after they were done operating another patient. Seconds ticked into minutes, which later became an hour and a few minutes. The room was very quiet except for the beeping of the machine that monitored my heartbeat. I felt tired and sleepy. And at times my eyes were tempted to sleep, but I refused to. I didn’t want to. I should wait first for my doctor to come in.

I stared at the huge surgery lamp overhead that vaguely resembled a star, which was subdivided into five hexagonal groups each containing several white-light bulbs. I stared from time to time at the electrical outlet beside its base, with reasons I didn’t know. I looked around, turned my head from left to right, from the two chatting nurses in green by the table to the big door beside them. The monitor beeped, the A/C hummed, the silence of the room echoed inside my head.

Then my friendly, approachable, composed surgeon came in, smiling as he walked toward me. “How are you feeling?” He asked me, his smile relaxing and assuring. And I found my negative thoughts actually lessened by something in his aura that made me trust his competence and expertise.

“I’m OK, thanks.”

He asked me to pardon him for the delay, and then explained. I told him it’s OK.

The anesthesiologist emerged from behind him and explained what he was going to do to me. When he said he’d give me a dosage that would numb my whole abdomen down my legs and give me something to make me sleep, I felt very, very relieved to perceive that such method would be much more safer than letting anesthesia alone send me to sleep. I’m not really certain though and this is just a hunch, but I have the feeling the latter tend to pose more risk for malpractice. And besides, I’ve watched that recent movie entitled AWAKE, which I wondered if it would ever occur in my case. That, too, I prayed not to happen. Perhaps I’m beginning to develop paranoia by watching too much movies and TV. But gladly, at this point, I was able to dismiss that fear and worry.

He instructed me to curl up, and then injected the dose into my lower spine. Later he pressed a needle’s tip against my belly and asked me if it still hurts. When the drug was in full force, he then put me to sleep with another drug. A minute or two later, I fell asleep.

I woke up to hushed voices or conversations and light clacking of metals. The sight of my chest and all of my lower body was concealed by a cloth hanged on a metal rod shaped similar to a miniature soccer goal. I knew right away where I was, and I knew the surgery was still ongoing. A man in mask glanced at me, disappeared and, moments later, I went back to sleep (or sent back to sleep, I wasn’t sure though).

When i woke up the second time that night, I woke up to a different but familiar room. With still blurry eyes I looked around to see other two awake female patients on transportable beds in my far right. One of them was talking to a nurse, the other one next to her was watching them. At first I didn’t feel anything, but then as things sunk in, I began to feel surging pain down my navel. And it hurt so bad that I called the other attending nurse and asked for a pain reliever. After administering a shot, they told me they were to move me back to my room. I begged them to make me stay for another hour, after the pain became bearable enough for me to leave from their care.

I was brought back to my room at around 2 in the morning, where my parents, my sister and my uncle from a town several kilometers north of the city were waiting. My father’s colleague and his wife weren’t there. Probably had gone home. I slept for another four hours and woke up to the heaving of my wound.

By seven or eight o’clock that morning, I tried and managed myself to roll to my left side as advised by the resident doctor under my surgeon’s team, because the intestines tend to stick to each other if there was less movement of the body. And it would not be a good thing to happen, he informed me. And so I tried, then rolled to another side. And early that afternoon I asked my father to help me get up. Later that afternoon, I was already walking around my bed, holding to its metal rails as I slowly took one pace at a time.

I was admitted to the hospital last Wednesday, May 06. My father’s birthday. And we were supposed to be celebrating as what we had planned weeks ago. Go out to a KTV bar or a beach. But that didn’t happen. Three days later I was discharged under my doctor’s advised and permission. This coming Thursday, hopefully, I will be going back to my doctor’s clinic to have the stitches removed.

NOTE: You might be wondering why the sudden change of plan for the operation. Well, the thing is, we seek for another doctor's expert opinion, which this time came from a gastrointestinal specialist who I found to be more credible and competent; whereas, the first surgeon who advised me to undergo operation four weeks from the day he read the ultrasound result, was a general surgeon. Besides, the first hospital estimated P80,000 of total expenses, and there's a tendency that the incision would be much longer. Whereas, according to the second doctor, the specialist, he estimated around P50,000 and assured me the incision would only be a few inches long, and said it would be best to undergo surgery the soonest time. We visited the specialist the day after we visited the first hospital. And by Wednesday I was scheduled for the operation.

Photograph by Du Truex. Please CLICK HERE to visit the owner's Flickr page. Thanks!

My World Is Shaken (Non-Fiction)

2009-05-04T22:17:00.000+08:00

Today I've heard from my doctor a news that was hard for me to absorb. A news that was not even near my list of expectations to hear.

Last Friday I felt a mild pain at the middle of my abdomen, right deep under my belly. I thought it was just some sort of muscle pain or an ordinary stomachache, so I wasn't at all disturbed and spent the rest of the day typically. The following day, the pain began to increase its intensity but still mostly felt where it was. Only this time, the pain seemed to intensify at indefinite intervals and radiated from the middle towards the surrounding areas but a little noticeable to the right.

It became more painful in the afternoon, and the sharp spasms became more frequent during the night. Some time in the afternoon I informed my mother about it, telling her something's not right.

She asked me a series of common questions. I told her I didn't have a diarrhea, or constipation; my bowel movement was normal. I didn't have a fever, and I did not feel weak. Just the painful stomachache, nothing else. She opted to treat me with herbals as first aid, and during the wee hours of the evening, when the pain made it difficult to put myself to sleep, she decided to bring me to a hospital.

On the third day the pain remained sharper and the spasms remained frequent and painful, still in the middle and would scatter toward the whole abdomen when spasms occur. I told the doctor I did not lose my appetite and did not vomit. They asked me more questions, told me to take some blood and urine tests, and then later instructed me to take the ultrasound test first thing the following morning after they had found out that the white blood cells were high.

This morning, the ultrasound result reported that my appendix is infected and has already erupted, but the infection has not spread because, as what the surgeon later said, it was caught and trapped by an internal body part having that function (I could not remember the medical name, and have no idea what's the layman's term).

When the physician said they could call a surgeon to operate me that same day, fear and worries rushed in even more as they already have. I have never been to any operations before, and the idea of having an operation imperils my dream of working abroad. I am scared of undergoing an operation as most people do, I believe. Also, it will cost us big amount of money, which we don't have. The savings I've had from working in Taiwan for 5 years mostly went to the house my parents helped me bought, redesigned and enhanced. The rest were all spent financing my application for a job in New Zealand, which until now is vague. My previous experience was in a manufacturing industry, and the next one is technically the same. Physical strength is totally required, and the applicant must have no history of operations.

The surgeon came and physically examined me and asked questions. This time, I told him the pain has somewhat shifted to the right since I woke up this morning. After informing me of the ultrasound results and what it meant, he prescribed antibiotics to be taken for six weeks and scheduled me for an operation four weeks from today. He said that it was the best time to remove the appendix, except of course if the pain becomes too intense, which needed immediate operation. I looked at my mother; I could feel and see that she's worried. But my father was brave as he always is. I pray to God that everything will be alright.

After going home I could not think of something else except this. I even doubt if I could write a poem tonight. But here's what I've decided, I will definitely undergo the operation, bravely. There are ways to get the money, and I don't worry much of that now. And I don't want to worry about it in the days to go.

Money is just money, life is something much more.

In The Eyes Of A Child

2009-05-01T23:14:00.009+08:00

The crawling traffic going toward Pasay City* exhausted her excitement and energy, and the 38 degrees hotness stilled the dry air outside and forebade circulation inside the bus. The alternating, impatient honking of cars and jeepneys* caused her head to ache, worsen by the persistent bawl of the vendor who climbed inside the bus.

She turned her head away from the square glassless window to her mother on her other side, and grumbled about the heat. Her mother swung to and fro more briskly the plastic, heart-shaped fan she was holding, and complained to no one in particular about the traffic and the searing summer heat.

She had two other sisters and one brother. Her older sister, Priscella, was having an excursion in the north, while her older brother Roy was taking an entrance exam in a university. The eldest, Maureen, had not been living with them for three months now. She could have stayed with her aunt eleven doors away from their cheap apartment, but there were too many children there and she didn't want to compete with them to get her share of toy or food. Besides, she had never been to Mall of Asia* before, and she had heard from her classmates in the eight grade class that it was the largest and most beautiful mall in the whole of Manila. When her mother told her yesterday that they would be going there today, her excitement was pouring out of the glass. She even woke up early today, the way she always would when tomorrow promised something for her. Despite what they were experiencing now, she still did not regret her going with her mother.

When she turned her head back to look outside, what greeted her was a hill of stinky and decaying garbage in the distance right along the sidewalk, beside a row of vendors selling ice-cold juice, rice cakes, sugar-coated peanuts and banana cues. She grunted as she covered her nose with both her hands.

Her mother turned to look at her, and remarked, "That's what happens to our surrounding when people lacks discipline."

"Can't they smell it?" she asked.

"They can. But they're too lazy to clean it up," said her mother as her eyes fixed on hers. "What did I always tell you 'bout it?"

She halfway pulled back her hands as she answered, "Don't throw my trash just anywhere. After eating candies I put the wrapper in my pocket and look for a trash bin."

"That's what old people should also do. Do not follow what they did with that garbage because it's wrong. OK?"

She briskly nodded her head and said, "And, and not follow what they say if it is wrong."

Her mother smiled at her and said, "Good girl."

Her mother brushed her hair with her right hand, adoring her. And then flashed that smile again. But she could see the lack of sparkles in her mother's eyes. She'd noticed it yesterday, but she'd just ignored it. This morning she noticed it again, and she knew this time something wasn't right. Her mother lost her ardor today, too, and that smile she gave her lacked width and depth. She knew something was troubling her mother; she just hoped she was old enough to find out and help her.

Maureen sat impatiently next to the huge sheer glass window at the second floor of Jollibee*, situated in the most crowded part of the mall complex. She'd been glancing at her wristwatch for several times in an hour of waiting. She had already consumed the large cup of Coke and half of the french fries, but still no sign of her mother.

She intended to meet her mother in a public place, sensing and suspecting that her mother would jump all over her. And she's tired of that, she didn't want any of that anymore. As much as possible she wanted to avoid outbursts and physical contacts. And here was where she felt was safe enough.

One more minute and she would leave. Perhaps, she thought, her mother had realized she's losing the battle and gave in. As she was about to push herself from the table to get up, she noticed her youngest sister Simonette running happily toward her through the crisscrossing diners, her small arms spreading widely beside her, and her smile the widest one she'd ever seen.

Her sister Maureen brightened when she saw her running toward her through the aisle between two rows of occupied tables. She missed Maureen so much; she missed those times they had made cookies together or colored Tweety Bird in her coloring book together. She missed her sister's singing in the morning and in the bedroom, and she missed her giving her beautiful hairdos. And so she hugged Maureen tightly as she could, and her eldest sister hugged her back, too.

But Maureen's delight dimmed and flickered out after seeing their mother came. Her sister shoved her gently aside as she got up to face their mother. She could feel awkwardness between her sister and her mother, but she didn't know why, and didn't want to find out. Instead she slid herself into the long cushioned seat and asked Maureen if she could eat the french fries.

There was no hugging, too, which was odd. And no smiles. Her mother's face was empty of expression, while that of her sister's was careful and cautious. As she nibbled and licked the salts from the strips, her mother began talking of something about going back home.

After some exchange of words, of persuasion and reasoning, her sister's face became clouded and grim when she spoke again, "Why are you complaining at something you've done to me?"

Off-guarded and insulted by such disrespect, their mother's voice raised, "How dare you talk to me like that. This isn't now how I brought up."

Her sister's voice was heavy but controlled when she replied. "But this is how you're trying to control my own life! Why are you pushing me to do something I don't want?"

"This is what's good for you. I only wanted to make sure you are living a good life."

"I'm old enough to know what is good for me, Ma, please. I don't love him!" she paused to re-calculate what she was about to say. "It is you who like him, Ma, not me. Go and marry him," she continued. But her voice was so wounding that her mother erupted.

SLAP!

Silence.

Maureen froze, her teary eyes questioning and condemning their mother with hurt and hatred. Their mother retreated, trembling with guilt and sudden realization at what she had just wreaked.

She just sat there in stiff silence, staring at her mother then to her sister and back, sensing the dense, tensed air among them, observing the two wounded members of their family, and waiting what would happen next. Her mother for a moment ignored her presence, probably thinking that she was too young to understand, and too small to absorb and register everything into her young mind. Or, perhaps, she was just simply drowned by her own pain and fight for redemption that she failed to remember she was there, watching.

What her mother and sister didn't know was that she's already old enough to comprehend what's going on. And it wasn't pleasant. It wasn't good. Even the people from the surrounding tables seemed not to enjoy what they had seen. Silence fell like drapes, wrapping them from the world.

She didn't want to stay with them. She just wanted to enjoy being in the mall; after all, that was why she came here. She got out of her chair and ran toward the net-secured playground nearby to join the playing, happy children.

Along the way, she noticed a woman from one of the tables near the playground dropped a large piece of a chicken wing. But instead of picking it up, she kicked it inconspicuously into the inflatable fence of the playground and continued eating.

When she came she stood beside the woman and commented, "That is not right."

Confused and unsure if the girl beside her was talking to her, the woman looked around, raised her eyebrows and asked, "What?"

"My mama says you have to pick up everything that you've dropped and find a bin."

The woman's company giggled at such confrontation, which made the woman obviously embarrassed but defended herself by shrugging it off, "You're a good girl, honey. And you're right."

"But you're not doing it."

The other people in the table giggled even more.

It was during this time that she heard something in the distance that she suspected was coming from their table. She turned around to see her sister walked away.

"This ain't going anywhere," Maureen declared.

"Come back home," their mother begged.

"I'm not going back home," she said with finality, and concluded the heated conversation by getting up and walking away.

Her mother called after her sister. And it was this call that made her turned around to see her sister left. And soon after she went to play, the woman stooped to pick up her litter.

As they left for home, she recounted excitedly to her mother every details of her romping around the playground. But her mother wasn't responding. She was so distant. And so she ceased from talking. Sometimes, she couldn't understand how adults behave in their world.

--- END ---

Note:

Pasay City - A city at the base of EDSA, one of the cities that comprise Metro Manila.

Jeepney - are the most popular means of public transportation in the Philippines.[1] They were originally made from US military jeeps left over from World War II[2] and are well known for their flamboyant decoration and crowded seating. They have also become a symbol of Philippine culture. ~ According to Wikipedia

Mall of Asia - A new mall complex located in Pasay City, fronting the Manila Bay.

Jollibee - an international fast food chain similar to McDonald's, which originated and widely popular in the Philippines.

Photograph by Robin Thom. Please CLICK HERE to visit the owner's Flicker page. Thanks!

Twenty Pesos

2009-04-24T16:13:00.015+08:00

A rattling sound of a small bell welcomed their arrival to a public market. After they had stepped out of the bus, the first thing she did was scan the alley between the market and the shoulder of the highway. That high pitch bell announced of something so familiar to her, and her eyes was looking for it in which her mind already knew.

There it was, she found it, right next to the public kiosk, right before the surrounding gleeful children. She turned to check if her mother was looking at it, too, so it would be easier for her to make her buy one cone. But her mother was looking straight ahead, oblivious to the alluring chanting of the tiny bell, or at least she appeared to be. She wanted to pull her mother's hand towards the inviting ice cream cart, but her mother overwhelmed her and pulled her instead towards the unkempt, overcrowded interior of the public market.

They walked inside towards the meat section, a basket made of rattan swayed beside her as they waded through the crowd. Her mother released her other hand when they stopped near the end of a long row of tiled unbroken tables. Beef and dressed chickens scattered all over the tables, and parts of pigs hanged still from the long iron bar that ran parallel above the tables. Smell of blood and stale flesh and foul liquids hovered in the air, almost made her puke.

The fat woman with a dull blue apron wrapped around her, which she guessed was one of the vendors behind the long tables, flashed a grin when she saw them. Her mother smiled, too, and greeted each other while she just stood there observing the crowd, the place, the shouting, and the offering and bargaining that polluted the already foul air.

"Is that your youngest, Irene?" the fat woman asked her mother with a voice a little louder than the surrounding noise.

"Yes," her mother replied. "She won't stop asking until I bring her along with me."

"Look at her, she's taller than the last time I saw here. How old is she now?"

"She's eight."

The woman looked down at her and smiled exorbitantly. "Hello, sweetie. What a beautiful girl you've become, honey. You still remember me?"

She responded with a coyly smile and a shaking head. Her mother told her nothing about this woman.

The woman went back to her mother and, in the middle of buying and selling, they were both engrossed by their adult chitchat.

The fat woman handed her mother a plastic filled with chicken wings and pork meat, and followed with yet another exchange of gossip.

When she heard something she didn't understand from their conversation, she lightly pulled twice her mother's long skirt.

Her mother turned her head and looked down. "What is it?"

Casually, she asked, "What is a third party?"

Her mother glanced at the vendor, who giggled and shook her head, and then looked back at her and said, "It's nothing, honey. It's a word that only grown up people talk about."

Her mother and her friend continued talking, but this time their voices were slightly hushed. As her mother handed a hundred peso bill to the woman, she heard yet another new word from the latter. She pulled her mother's skirt again.

"What is it?"

"What's a hoar?"

"What?"

"She said, 'she's a big hoar'. What does it mean?"

Her mother's friend chuckled at her innocence. And she didn't like it. She didn't like the way she laughed. She didn't like her laughing at her. She didn't like her mother's friend. Cautious yet uncertain, she tucked herself closed to her mother's right side, and instinctively gripped her mother's hand. And she stood there staring questioningly at the flabby woman.

Her mother, who grinned along, said to her, "Honey, this is a conversation between two adults, OK? And ---wait, here ---" She fished something from her skirt's left pocket.

She heard the rattling of nickels in her mother's shallow skirt pocket, and turned her head slightly toward where she heard it. The pinched fingers of her mother flew from the pocket to the smirking space before her, and then her mother freed the three 1 peso coins, which landed splendidly to her wide opened right palm.

Her excitement leapt. Her shy face revealed her smile and, in her mind, the floating image of the grainy ice cream enticed her once again. She gave to her mother the rattan basket and, with her fist shut tightly the three coins inside, she ran as fast as she could towards the portable ice cream cart outside.

She waited in line, but when it was about her turn she remembered something. As the boy before her paid his scoop of ice cream, she was just standing there fighting over a decision.

She had made a promise to herself. And she didn't want to break it. She told herself to buy something only if she asked money from her parents. But today she was not asking for it. Her mother gave it to her, just like those many times in the past. And she shouldn't spend them; she had to place them somewhere where she had put those other coins.

The face of the vendor beamed as she looked at him. She peered over the opened aluminum lid, and saw three beckoning colors of inviting ice cream that smelled of mango and chocolate and vanilla. Her eyes glowed and her mouth watered as the cold vapor met her face. And as she was about to give the man her coins, the other barefoot kids rushed toward the ice cream cart from nowhere, their arms heaved their money in the space before the man, and vied for his attention. The man instead entertained the more eager children. She freed herself from the tempting call. She stepped back, turned around, and thrust herself out the small throng of frenzied young crowd.

Along the way back to their house, her mother asked what she had done with the money. She told her she wasn't hungry, and that she was keeping them. And as soon as they arrived home, she dashed inside, up a flight of stairs, and into her room.

She was excited and happy that her savings were increasing. Last week, her mother gave her five-peso coin, and two weeks before that she had dropped two peso coins and two twenty-five cents. Last month she had saved nine pesos and fifty cents. She lied on her bed facing the ceiling above, her mind a dream of beautiful dress and pints of ice cream. But what her young mind didn't see was that her every attempt to free her mind and speak of those words she'd been keeping inside were muffled by the worldly value of her mother's coins.

After some time she stood and grabbed her peggy bank. And through the thin slit along the center top of it, she peeked to estimate her rather accumulated price.

--- END ---

Photograph from http://www.conelrad.com. Please CLICK HERE to visit the source website. Thanks!

Eden of Angels (PART 1 of 3)

2009-04-22T21:35:00.014+08:00

(NOTE: The title is the name of the Shelter described in the story. The story is divided into 3 parts to avoid eye sore that would have been caused by unnecessarily long page. To understand the purpose of the insertion of different paragraphs, please read the whole 3 parts. The last part gives a clearer point for it...)

All the ten children in the isolated room called Cherubim were quiet and slack most of the time that morning, and all the three hours that afternoon. So far. Days like this were rare but relieving, and every time they came, they came falling softly like rainshower, their water poured into her such blissful, momentary ecstasy. She dreamed of days like this, but she knew they seldom fall.

She looked at her wristwatch. 3:06 P.M., it said. She darted her eyes from the shiny silver frame of her Timex to the other social worker at the other end of the rectangular room, sitting at the edge of Theresa's bed, the troubled, mentally and physically imperfect 17 year-old girl with extreme history of physical abuse from her biological parents. Ricarda, her only partner in the quarter, was gently brushing Theresa's hair. She was softly talking to Theresa, and the girl giggled from time to time, her voice sounded stifled but her laughter was pure and contagious.

The stream of light from the sun outside flowed through the big, grilled window into Theresa's feet, spotlighting their happy swinging in the space below her bed. When Theresa's eyes met hers, the girl gave a grin from where her delight radiated into the room, calming the curtain of dusts that streamed along the rays of the sun.

She held the girl's gaze for some time, and then looked around once more. After making sure everybody's behaving good, she spoke to Ricarda. "I'm starving. I need to go to the kitchen. Be back in ten."

Her partner nodded, not wanting to spoil the girl's frolicking in her own shangri-la. The rubber hairbrush slipped from the girl's darting hands, and she wailed. Ricarda hurriedly stooped to pick it and gave it back to her.

She stood there by the doorway, feeling the possible influx of emotional torrent. When she felt certain none would come, she turned around and headed for the kitchen.

Jemma closed her umbrella, which she used to shield herself from the scorching, inconsiderate sun. She removed her fake Gucci sunglasses and put it inside her shoulder bag, and then rapped at the door. About two meters directly above her, a huge sign painted in white hang monotonously, its bored frame hunger for attention. On it were fading letters in blue that declared boldly the name of the Shelter. With the sun glaring high above, she dared not look up to read the words painted across the tin sheet.

The house had no upper floors, but it was cascading sideways to both sides. The beige paint on the wall was peeling off, and all the windows were barred with window grills. The window panes made of flat, white shells which appeared like frozen prisoners awaiting deliverance. Weeds grew high near the perimeter fence, and dried leaves cluttered across the front lawn, some of them crushed below her weight, their light crushing sound screamed of anguish. There were no stairs that led to the main door, and she suspected there would be none in the entire building. The alley that led to the main street were badly cemented, and there were not much public transport passing by outside. She had the feeling it would be like this all the time.

The neighborhood was still. She could hear no voices from the vicinity and from the inside of the building before her. The Shelter stood amid a badly manicured vast lawn, among residences that were ignoring its presence.

The door opened. A slender, expressionless woman in her mid-thirties emerged.

She sat by the table, on a chair closest to the kitchen door. The still air in the kitchen carried nostalgic quietude, which was briefly disturbed by the faint ceramic clicking of the stainless steel spoon against the inner wall of the cup. Andrea, another social worker and one of the six women that took care of the thirty-three children in the Seraphim Room, was preparing herself a coffee.

"Looks like unusually quiet today, huh," Andrea broke the silence.

She straightened up and grabbed her cup of hot tea. "Yeah. I noticed, too," she remarked, and took a sip.

Andrea, a 38 year-old single woman from the nearby town, walked toward the table, grabbed a chair next to hers, and sat.

"But it's kinda not the type of day we need," Andrea continued as she placed the cup on the table. Without looking at her, Andrea spoke in a voice full of broken drama, "Feel your fear when calm days come, for in their quietude their eyes glare and snarl a sinister foreboding."

The quip on her forehead announced her confusion. "Meaning?"

Andrea took a bite from her sandwich, and then glanced at her with raised eyebrows.

Reading her colleague's expression, she opted herself to interject. "I'm not good at interpretations."

"You haven't heard?"

The steam rose like gods from the teacup and delivered into her nostril the aroma of relaxing jasmine. The quip in her forehead wrinkled. "Heard what?"

Andrea's eyes narrowed as she expressed knowingly, "Oh, I can see how you've become involved with these children. You've gone way far from the first day you came here. This place is already flowing in your veins, yes, that you lost contact to people around you."

Andrea was two years ahead of her in the Shelter. She could still clearly remember how Andrea would laugh at her adjustments and frown at her mistakes. But things gradually changed, or she had gradually become used to it.

"You still aren't telling me."

Andrea was ignoring her; instead, she went on, "But then again, we all are. It's just a matter of time before it slowly dry into flakes and fall off our hair."

"I'm not keeping any promises. That can happen anytime, if I want to. If I have to."

Andrea watched her eat the Skyflakes cracker. After a while, Andrea said, "Estella is resigning."

The weight of such word caused the sinking of the news overtly thudding.

She went silent, and pondered. After a while, she remarked, "She's breaking it. She can't take hold of everything anymore, but I can't blame her. The pressure is too heavy for her, you know, the lurking annulment."

"I feel sorry for her. We know how much she loves it here."

"But she choose to save her marriage, and her family. There's nothing greater than that."

"God bless her."

"Hi," she flashed a smile as she extended her right hand to the woman who opened the door. "I'm Jemma Bermoy. I'm here for the ten o'clock interview."

The woman scanned her from feet to head, and then nonchalantly introduced herself as Criselda Aratan. She gestured her to come in.

As Criselda led her to the president's office, she asked her a question she was not prepared to answer.

"You're here for the experience alone, aren't you?"

Cautious, she hesitated. "No."

She noticed that what seemed to be the lobby was enclosed in concrete walling with doors at each of the four sides. They walked passed the sofas at the center of the floor into a door a few meters ahead of them. She noticed that it was very quiet in this part of the building. She saw no other personnel, and she saw no children. She then presumed that the two doors she saw a few meters away from both her sides would either or both lead into the children's rooms. Behind her was the door leading back outside.

What she noticed, too, was that the walling was bare, and the entire space was lacking in upholstery and any other decorations. Ornamental plants in pots occupied each corner of the lobby.

"You wanted to work abroad but got no experience," Criselda continued as though she did not hear her.

She turned her head back to Criselda. "No, that's not true."

Criselda turned around to face her. "Then why here?"

She found it ridiculous to keep answering her. She wanted to feel irritated, but she managed not to. Instead, with a composed voice, she said, "I think I'll reserve my answer to that for the president."

Apparently insulted, Criselda turned around, knocked at the door of the president's office, and said to her, "You're gonna end up like the rest of them. That's for sure."

A woman's voice spoke from behind the door. Criselda opened it and gestured her to go in.

After they finished bathing the ten children and dressing them, she noticed that Ricarda was unusually quiet as she slumped on the chair by the empty desk near the room's only door. When she was done dressing up Trisha, the 14 year-old girl with Down Syndrome, she went to join Ricarda.

"Something bothering you?" she asked.

The dreariness that she saw in Ricarda's eyes was not the same that she had seen in the past months and years. It was something more, something deeper.

Ricarda looked at her, and her eyes were that of a cat left out in the rain and waiting for the kitchen door to open. Ricarda thought for a moment, and then weakly spoke, "My son called last night. My husband had another episode yesterday."

Concerned, she sat beside her friend to console her. They were a portrait of two wounded women at that moment, one torn apart by space and time, striving from the constant call to be with her husband and son, the other faced day after day the hurtful convictions of her children to her choosing this kind of job.

"I'm sorry," she softly uttered, her head leaning against her friend's. Their eyes closed, hers were condoling, Ricarda's were lamenting.

She learned about her colleague's sad life story. She then knew how rough life was for Ricarda, she then knew how pain had measured her bravery and determination, and she then also knew how Ricarda's ordeal tempted her to question her existence and purpose. But she was proud of her friend, for in the midst of all those storms she remained anchored.

"How is he?"

Ricarda wiped her tears with the back of her hand. "He's in total paralysis. And it's irreversible."

She gasped. Silence.

"You need to go there."

Ricarda shook her head. "You know I can't. He forbids me. He still hates me."

She cupped her friend's face and made her looked into her eyes closely. "A heart full of love is powerful than a raging fire. Don't wait for anything worse to happen. Things are already worse, Ricarda."

Ricarda went silent. Inside her, emotions were screaming and spreading outward like wildfire. She waited for them to subside, for it was only by then when she could listen to them. After a long while, she softly said, "I'll think about it."

She went to hug her colleague, her friend. And they stayed like that for a while. Her eyes were staring at the other end, on the white, lifeless wall.

Across the floor, she noticed something that warned of flawed, intense emotional eruption.

Marielle, one of the ten violent special children in the Cherubim Room, was amusingly playing with a stuffed doll when another girl, Chelsea, dashed to grab the doll from her strong hands. They were pulling and pushing each other when she came to control them, and gibberish shouting and screaming stirred the room. The other children's playing turned into ecstatic wailing and, before she could ever meddle, Chelsea knocked the other girl, Minerva, sitting on the floor nearby, whose anger soared as quickly as she was disturbed. Minerva grabbed the girl's hair and, with so much intensity, slammed the girl's head into the floor like a basketball.

She and Ricarda did not see it coming; it happened so suddenly. Their hearts pounded and sounded like a stampede of frightened horses as they dashed toward the three fighting girls. The room was now in pandemonium. The other uninvolved children found what they'd seen inviting, and many of them, too, jumped into the brawl and frolicked so madly.

She went to restrain Minerva, who was wildly kicking and scratching her fingernails in the air, like a captured tiger battling for its vague survival; her power was overwhelming and unbelievable. Ricarda went to control Marielle , who was kicking at everything on the floor; toys of all sorts, crisscrossing the tiled floor, her hands hoisting wildly in the air, trying to grab Ricarda's face and hair. Near their feet was Chelsea lying on the floor, groaning in pain.

"Jemma, call Justin in! HURRY!" Ricarda screamed at her.

She was the one closest to the door, and she screamed at the top of her voice for help.

Photograph by Ana June. Please CLICK HERE to visit the owner's Flickr page. Thanks!

Eden of Angels (PART 2 of 3)

2009-04-22T21:33:00.010+08:00

A woman in her early fifties sat behind the president's table. She was wearing eyeglasses where her eyes darted out to Jemma as she walked inside. Strips of white ran along her shoulder-length curly hair, which swayed as she shifted her medium-built body. She gestured her to sit down. Jemma's brief research the other day revealed the woman's name.

"I've already made a perusal on your credentials that you've sent through mail, and I see that you are not quite qualified for the position," Mrs. Hinaloc began. "Now I need to hear from you how determined you are, and convince me that you have the dedication for this job."

This was her very first job application since she graduated college in 1998. After graduating and after she got pregnant, she got married. She failed the teacher's board exam the following year and the year after that. Frustrated and disappointed, she had decided to channel her interest into something else. And for the next eight years, she was hopping from one job to another, all without the hopes for financial stability. Her husband supported the family in majority, but with their two sons their income were not enough.

Now, facing this seemingly straightforward and stern woman, she couldn't help herself from fidgeting. She pressed both her palms against her lap.

"It makes me happy to be around with children. The kind of happiness that you cannot feel from somewhere and someone else. Children sparks my reason to live longer," she explained, abashed by her own words and by her sudden talking of things like that. Whatever doubt and self-questioning she felt, she muffled them inside.

"You mean, normal children," Mrs. Hinaloc said in a tone that was not suggesting but correcting.

"There's just a little difference between them, I guess. You just need extra time and effort to tend these kind of children," she went on, defending.

Mrs. Hinaloc glared silently at her, scrutinizing her mind through her eyes. After a while she looked down at the resume on the table. "Extra time and effort can sometimes be detrimental and deadly here, Mrs. Bermoy. Once those extra time and effort ran out, things around here get spinning out of control, overpowering you. These children here can shatter their own lives once you ran out of those, or shatter yours."

Jemma felt embarrassed. She felt like melting, and she needed badly to melt away so fast. Mrs Hinaloc, leaned back on her cushioned swivel chair, and then continued, "These children here don't need those extra time and effort, Mrs. Bermoy. They need most of those that you'll be left with no extra time and effort for yourself and your own kids. Now, tell me, are you willing to risk it?"

"I can risk my time. I will take the risks," she said, firmly.

"I mean your family."

She went silent. "Oh, that."

"Do you think you can survive?"

She recomposed herself, and looked straight at the woman. "I know this requires a lot of physical strength, but I'm accustomed to that. That will not be a problem to me."

Mrs. Hinaloc removed her eyeglasses and rubbed her temple. With a little trace of exasperation, she looked at her and said, "I'm not talking about physical endurance. I'm talking about emotional survival. We are not dealing with children who have control over themselves and over the things around them. We are talking about children with unexpected tantrums and special attention. Children with beyond ordinary needs. Yes, you need to endure them, but it also requires your right emotions to understand them, and make them understand themselves. In that way, you can help them control themselves."

"That is a challenge I am willing to take. To help them feel they deserve to carry on their existence, to make them feel valued. I want to make them feel welcomed, that they deserve to be in this world as much as we do."

Mrs. Hinaloc looked at her and smiled. "That's a wonderful drive. But then again I need to know that you are willing to pour your life here. "

Jemma shifted her weight and replaced her palms to her knees, and this time she was pressing them harder. They rested there, tensed and stiff.

"My two sons are old enough to prepare themselves for school, and they are old enough to understand that I needed to do this for them. Having this job will in no way affect our relationship and respect to each other and everything in between."

Mrs. Hinaloc went to scan her resume again as she retorted, "Children sometimes aren't old enough to distinguish what they should and shouldn't feel envy from. At some points they will come to feel jealousy and resentments for your tending children not your own."

"I will talk to them about it. I am completely aware of that reality, and I know that it's not just a possibility. I will explain everything to them. My husband is there to look after them."

Mrs. Hinaloc sighed. Then looked at her. "How would you not confuse yourself from and not going to incorporate your own issues with that of the Shelter's? I ask you this because, although we need you to let your dedication and passion for the children here to flow into your blood, we don't expect you to integrate your personal life and struggles with the situations we always have here. It is important to see the thin line in between."

"I understand it, ma'am. And I 'll never do that. It's not going to happen."

Mrs. Hinaloc stared at her again, this time even more penetrating, as though peeling her painstakingly to reveal her flesh and bones. "Good."

But she did not feel comfortable. She felt she was not convincing enough, judging the kind of tone her interviewer had delivered. She felt the urge to keep going, to be more persuasive. "Of course I know pretty well that this is a job. And I know that work and personal life should always be separate. Mixing them is destructive either way. These mongoloid children and ---"

Mrs Hinaloc glared sharply at her. She looked agitated. She ceased from leaning on the chair and moved her body forward, closer to Jemma. With a firm, pressing voice, she interrupted, "You seem to have no idea what this is all about. You see, this is not just a job. And this is not just one of those responsibilities that you have to perform. This is about involvement with what you do, and connection to children. This is about letting them flow into your life, treating them as if you die without them. This is about understanding what these children need most, how they really feel about themselves and about the things around them. This is about loving what you do and keeping to the end the same inspiration you feel at the very start so you can keep going. Do you see it that way?"

Sheepishly, she nodded. "Yes, ma'am."

Mrs. Hinaloc, went on, "And we don't call them mongoloids or retarded children. That's too harsh and cruel. Very inhumane. They don't deserve that, just like black people don't deserve to be called 'niggers'. These children can even feel, too, how people really treat them by calling names like that. And it hurts them. We prefer to call them Special, or Challenged. But not Retards."

"I'm so sorry, Mrs. Hinaloc. I don't mean to convey such thought or to imply such horrible level of treatment. It just came out wrong."

"It's OK. Just don't say it again."

When Mrs. Hinaloc went back to reading the entries on her resume, Jemma succinctly closed her eyes and sighed, fearing the dark destination in which this interview was leading to. "It won't happen again."

"Good," Mrs. Hinaloc uttered and then paused. Her eyes were still on the papers, appeared to be reading. Jemma, disparagaed with fading hope and enthusiasm, waited.

Mrs. Hinaloc looked up at her. "Very well."

Another pause. Another waiting.

Without any other applicants for the past five weeks now and time had already ran out, Mrs. Hinaloc was left with no other option. She had to succumb her standards and surrender her techinicality if she needs to. "OK. Let's give it a try. I will give you two weeks to make me not regret doing this, Mrs. Bermoy."

Jemma, confused but nevertheless happy, smiled reluctantly. After the news had sank in, she said, "Thank you, Mrs. Hinaloc. Thank you very much."

Mrs. Hinaloc smiled for the first time. "Call me Vilma. Surname's too formal and territorial."

After another word or two, they both stood up, shook hands, and Vilma led her to the door. A few meters outside the gate, Jemma turned to look back. She didn't really mean to stay there for long. Criselda was right, she just needed the experience alone to qualify as a caregiver for special children in Canada. She already had the papers needed for the application, and she had already borrowed money to cover the estimated expenses. What she was told to acquire was a certification from a training center and a certification from an employer to fortify her application. Everything had already been set, and nothing could ever change what she had already planned. After a while she smiled, and then went to continue walking.

They brought the children to the playground one Saturday morning. With Justin and Enrico helping them looked after the kids, any outbursts would easily be controlled. There were no swing, no seesaw, no slides; they posed high risks of getting the children hurt. They placed rubber padding on the ground, and provided no plastic or metal toys. All were rubber, inflated, or made of stuffed cloth.

The shadows of the trees were the children's utopia; the sun cast its eastern radiance through a series of mazy holes in the foliage and landed triumphantly on the smiling imperfect faces of the running and playing children. They were oblivious to the world around them, for in their own motley world they were busy painting the colors only known to them.

But such beauty of their world was twinned with fragileness and threats. And as the four of them were mesmerized by the unexpressed Eden of the playing children, a sudden horrified shriek tore the thin sheets of lightly moving air. And it came from the inside of the Shelter.

She wanted to run into the house to know what happened, and to help if needed. But she couldn't leave her own responsibilities in the playground. And as the screaming and frightened commotion went louder from inside, Enrico dashed to help. Afraid and unsure, she and Ricarda grouped the children into one and protected them from the unseen yet eminent danger.

A few minutes later, horrified but focused Enrico dashed outside into the parked L300, in his arms the unconscious body of 13 year-old Maricar, one of the 33 children from the Seraphim Room. From her head trailed several profuse streams of blood.

The heartbreaking and shocking sight of the young woman sent uncontrollable tremors all over her body as she gasped. Ricarda covered her mouth with both her hands, fighting frantically from screaming.

"What has happened? What's going on?" her strained confused voice reverberated across the lawn.

Josephine, shaking and crying, briefly explained. With his instinct waking him, Justin ran past Criselda and Andrea, toward the vehicle and hurriedly opened it for Enrico to put Maricar inside with him. Scared but controlled, Andrea followed inside. Justin closed the door and went to driver's seat and turned on the ignition.

The first day wasn't at all that easy and welcoming. It wasn't as hard as what she had expected; it was much more harder and exhausting.

She was met in the Guest Receiving Room by one of the social workers on duty that day. Her name was Ricarda Maputol, a medium-built woman in her late forties. Married for seventeen years with one son. Annulled on the eighteenth. Roughly six years ago, Ricarda made a terrible mistake that derailed her from the promising railways of her life into perdition. She played fire with another man, and was caught by her husband. Everything was hell after that, its demon snatched away her husband and her son. The annulment was painful, and the settlement for the custody was even more disheveling. After winning the case her husband, bringing with him their son, had flown to America. She couldn't blame her husband, and she hadn't felt resentments toward somebody else but herself. And in all those crushing years, what she ever wanted was to have them back. And all she ever needed was salvation. Forgiveness. Redemption.

Sut Jemma never saw traces of those story in the woman's face. And she had yet to hear the story. Ricarda smiled genuinely when she saw her walked in. The woman extended her hands happily as she introduced herself. Jemma smiled back, shook the woman's hand, and introduced herself in return. Jemma found her friendly and unselective. She immediately felt relaxed and comfortable.

"I can see in you myself years ago when I was still new here," Ricarda began as she led her to the side door. She pushed it with force, and then gestured Jemma to go inside. "And the same passion that I have, too. I can see them in you. You'll gonna stay long here."

Unsure what to respond, Jemma just smiled.

Smiling, too, Ricarda knowingly said, "Believe me, you will. Those others before you, I didn't see it in their eyes. And I knew right away they wouldn't last. And I was right."

She didn't know what to say. She just stood there, waiting for Ricarda to lead her through. As she turned around, she saw before her the real world inside the Shelter. All of the realities came rushing all at once to her as she watched there, transfixed.

A children of around thirty litter all over the floor, each of them engulfed by and dwelling in their own world. The room was noisy and hyperactive; children were groaning and laughing and whining; most of them by themselves. Some of them were talking to one another in gibberish, some of them were actually having conversations with the attendants or with each other, but with difficulty and less or no sense at all, and with random pauses. The six social workers, all of them women mostly in their early thirties, were busy tending some of the children. Three of them were feeding those who had not yet taken their breakfast. The other two were leading the children to the kitchen for toothbrushing, and the last one was on the floor scrubbing and drying the spilled liquid that smelled of urine. The room was slightly pungent, and her mind was already spinning wildly. But she did not cover her nose. She gave a faint smile as the woman on the floor looked up to see her, but the woman went immediately back to cleaning.

"How many children are there?" she asked Ricarda, who was on her right side. They were now walking toward the three attendants who were feeding some children.

"In this quarter, we call it Seraphim Room, we have thirty three children," Ricarda replied. "And in my quarter, and your quarter, we have ten children." Then she introduced Jemma to the three workers, and to the woman who was on the floor, cleaning.

After exchanging a few words with them, she went to continue her conversation with Ricarda. "You said a while ago that there are only ten children in the other quarter. That sounds too few compared to here."

"Oh, believe me, Jemma. One day you'll gonna wish they were even fewer, if not beg to be transferred."

Her heart made a sudden leap of wonderment. Curious, she asked, "Why? How many are we there?"

"Just you and me. Every now and then Justin will come to help. He's the all-around guy. And sometimes, when we can't control it anymore, Enrico will come to our aid. He's the driver here, our only driver."

They were walking toward the kitchen, which was located behind the main building. When they were there, Ricarda told her that it was where they prepare the foods for them and for the children. The huge bathroom adjacent to the kitchen and next to a row of toilets is where they brought the children to brush their teeth and to give them a bath. The other children in the isolated room had their own bath- and restroom.

From there she was taken to the sleeping quarters, which she later found out to be more of a huge hospital ward. Two rows of eight beds each lined against the walls, just like with the other room where there were seventeen beds.

They were standing outside the social workers' quarter when Jemma asked, "The other ten children, why are they separated from the rest? Are they in grave condition?"

Ricarda turned to face her, and then looked at her in the eyes. Then she held her hand and said, "Come with me."

Photograph by Dizzee Dayzee. Please CLICK HERE to visit the owner's Flickr page. Thanks!

Eden of Angels (PART 3 of 3)

2009-04-22T21:32:00.007+08:00

She left for work one morning with her heart choking with wounded emotions, her eyes lost their radiance, and her feet insensible to her strides. The domestic turmoil had become increasingly complex and harder. The tension had made her relationship with her sons brittle and fragile. She was losing control of her own issues.

"Are you okay?" Janice, who worked for eight months now as Ricarda's replacement, asked from behind her.

She was kneeling on the floor, scrubbing the stains and dark dirt. She didn't noticed the time, because her mind was drifting somewhere else. She was a bit startled by Ricarda's intrusion. She looked up at her and replied, "I'm OK."

"You've been scrubbing the same spot over."

She glanced at her hands and at the floor, paused, and then managed to gave her a faint smile. "I'm just stressed out, I guess. But I'll be fine."

Discontented, Janice pressed, "I'm your friend now."

She dismissed her. "Really, I'm OK."

"Very well," and Janice started to walk away. After a few steps, she turned back. "By the way, Esmeralda and Andrea wanted to know if you will go with them to the cemetery this afternoon. I've already asked Justin to help me here."

Maricar had not survived the hemorrhaging. Too much blood had been lost, and the fracture in her skull had been fatal. An accident involving another child from the Seraphim Room, Martin James, had claimed her life when they had fallen off her bed. She'd fallen headfirst. The local newspaper had questioned their capacity to take care of the children, and the legal battle had been noisy and feasted.

"OK. Thank you."

Janice smiled and walked away.

By 8:30 that same morning, she brought Minerva with her along with Rodrigo, the 19 year-old boy with a worse case of Down Syndrome and was the most restless but less violent, to the bathroom to help them brush their teeth. The two followed her with total obedience.

"No, I want other paste. Don't like that," Minerva refused to brush her teeth with a green paste over the bristles.

She checked the supply in the overhead cabinet but found none. To Minerva she said, "We will replace it tomorrow, honey. In the meantime, that's very tasty. It tastes like candy."

Minerva's unfocused eyes rolled without intentions, and the fatty cheeks of her moon-shaped face rattled as she briskly shook her head. "No."

"You liked it yesterday. You will like it today, I promise. Rodrigo likes it very much, right Rodrigo?" she was pleading silently that Rodrigo would cooperate even just for once. Rodrigo was standing beside Minerva, his twisted, spasmic arms shaking lightly on his sides, giggling. A small amount of saliva drooled from one corner of his mouth. His right hand was holding his empty toothbrush.

"See?" she said, cheering Minerva up. "He's smiling because he likes it."

Minerva shook head head briskly again, her voice now angry, her feet began to thump the concrete floor --- her indication of the oncoming explosion of her inner lava. "No!"

She took a deep breath, then sighed. "OK. We'll do the brushing this noon. Your aunt will go to the store and buy your favorite toothpaste. OK, honey? Rodrigo, come here, darling."

But Minerva erupted like a growling wolf sensing competition over its food. And before she knew it, the girl started to attack her. Minerva was screaming and shrieking with exploding madness, her arms stretching out to her, fingers bending like hungry paws.

When she took control of Minerva, her own anger suddenly was unleashed, and almost involuntarily her right hand swung swiftly from the air above her into the big frame of Minerva's face. She froze in disbelief. Minerva was standing there, perplexed and horrified, unmoving; her narrow, cloudy eyes opened wide, petrified, questioning, teary-eyed.

She just stood there transfixed, reflecting fast at what she had just done to the girl. When it finally settled in, she stepped back without excusing herself, turned around, walked hurriedly toward the backdoor, opened it drastically, and leaned on the wall outside right next to the door. She was breathing hard and rapidly as she cupped her forehead, her eyes stared blankly into the space below her. And then she wept.

Ricarda opened the door of the isolated room, located in the right wing of the building. When they entered she saw four of the children were already awake, two of them were out of their beds and on the floor, sitting. The room was quiet, with only the scraping of a spoon against a china echoed from the four, white walls. A man in her early fifties, which Ricarda introduced to her as Enrico, was feeding a teenage girl. The all-around man, Justin, who had just finished mopping a liquid under one of the beds, smiled at her as he walked toward the door with the mop and a half-full pail.

Jemma saw no one in serious health conditions among the children inside. As she scanned the room, all she saw were sleeping and awake children but seemed harmless and peaceful. She turned her head toward Ricarda and, with questioning eyes, looked at her.

Ricarda read her mind. "These children are the most violent and the most detached. Their tantrum burst unexpectedly, and when they do, they are monstrous. Literally."

Hearing this, Jemma looked at the children again, and looked them more closely. She was searching for those madness in their blank eyes. The girl on the floor, her hair badly cut short and her face a crisscross of scars and fresh wounds, stared at her. Jemma looked at the girl, whom she guessed was in her late twenties, and then smiled. The girl flashed a smile in return, exposing her missing teeth and reddish gums.

"Her name is Minerva. She's mentally unstable, aside from her Down Syndrome. She's the most violent among all the children in this shelter," Ricarda said in a hushed voice.

"But they seem peaceful. It is like this every morning, or just today?"

Instead of Ricarda, Enrico turned his head toward them, and answered, "It's like this every other day. But not all. Sometimes they wake up mad and out of control. And it's very hard to pacify them, it takes hours sometimes."

Ricarda nodded in agreement. "They will test your patience and self-control, Jemma. And they will question your own capabilities and your own purpose here. That is why I need you to be strong and brave and ready."

By ten o'clock that morning, all of the remaining six children were already awake. Ricarda asked her to help them fed the children. She found it difficult to get the attention of the teen boy she was feeding to, and she found it hard to control his unfocused attention and hyperactivity. His arms were spreading and swaying everywhere, knocking the plate Jemma was holding and hitting her on her breast. The other children, who was watching her curiously, cracked into unusual laughter. Those kind of laughter she only heard here, and the kind of laughter that she wonder if she could ever forget.

After feeding two more children, she tried to take a short break. She was exhausted with only one task she had done, and her energy was drained like it had never before. But, after a few minutes only, Ricarda announced that it was time to help the children brush their teeth.

It was supposed to be temporary. She was supposed to quit her job after six months. She was supposed to be in Canada now, working as a caregiver. That was the plan. But she'd been working in the Shelter for already four years now, and the idea of quitting was tucked below her horizon. Her mere interest had turned into a passion, and she realized that too late. But what didn't know was that such passion had already become an obsession.

In her four years of working she had brought many changes to the Shelter. With her spearheading, they had managed to raise more funds for the children, and had changed certain policies that she had deemed inappropriate. She had gravely opposed the way the social workers mixed the toothbrushes of the children in one place, and without proper assignments as to which toothbrush belonged to whom. And she had also encouraged the idea of exposing the children to the outside world, developing the undiscovered talents in them, and giving them the perception that they had the freedom to move in the outside world.

But her obsession threatened the foundation of her family, a price she had never expected to pay. And now, she was torn between the two most important things in her life.

Lying in their bedroom at home, exhausted and drained, she immediately fell asleep. She woke up with a headache a minute past seven in the evening, to the bickering voices of her two sons. She didn't hear her husband's, and she presumed he had not yet arrived. She stood up and went downstairs to them.

"Enough," she told them, her voice a warning, her eyes half-asleep.

Her ten year-old youngest was weeping. When he spoke he was desperately seeking compassion. "He won't give it back to me my sling. I found it!"

"I told you I will, tomorrow," Homer, the eldest, said.

"You're lying!"

"I'm not!"

"You, too!"

Listening to her two sons raising their voices, her head throbbed achingly, sending sparks of impatience and exasperation all over her. She exploded. "JUST GIVE THE DAMN SLING TO ZANDER!"

The two boys suddenly fell quiet. Zander muffled his sobbing, while Homer glared at her with burning eyes. He threw the sling to his brother, who did not pick it up. Silence wrapped them with fiery blanket.

"Do you do that to them, too?" breaking the silence, Homer asked, his breathing hard and hurting.

She did not get what he meant. She snapped, "What?"

"Do you shout to those mongoloids, too, or just to us?"

"Don't you ever call them that! You have no right to call them names like that!"

Raising his voice to overwhelm her mother's, he asked again, "Do you shout at us because we are your son, and you have the right to do whatever you want to do to us?" His voice showed his pain and resentments as he stood there fighting back his tears.

"Shut up!" She couldn't take it; his words were a knife, cutting her heart and making her bled. And she was drowning, such overwhelming truth and such hurting of his son were pulling downward into the dark, cold, sad abyss. She turned around and burst into crying.

Realizing what he had done, Homer slowly walked toward her and hugged her tightly as he wept.

Later that night, she couldn't sleep. Her mind was wide awake, spinning with thoughts and reminiscing. Her wristwatch ticked another minute. As she lied in their bed without the lights, her mind was sailing in a penumbra of her plethoric memories. And in her deep reverie, she recounted those happy days, and the day that she never knew would change her life...

When she woke up the next morning, she already knew what needed to be done to redeem her life back.

Photography from www.pictures.linkmesh.com. Please CLICK HERE To visit the source. Thanks!

A House at the End of the Road

2009-04-05T17:08:00.011+08:00

She was standing at the end of the dirt road leading to the old wooden house twenty meters or so ahead. From where she was she could see the vines creeping up the facade and the side walls.

The french windows were badly weathered, some of the glass were broken if not smeared with dried dust and dark-green stains. Some of the wooden planks had been detached from the walls, eaten to rot by termites. Weeds and wildflowers fought each other on the lawn and around the house, occupying the once manicured gardens and invading the cobblestone driveway. And under the sweeping of the wind, they were swaying like waves of gold and brown and green and yellow.

The mango tree beside the house was still there, gloriously spreading its branches and swaying its foliage against the wind, as though welcoming her back. Dried leaves were scattered everywhere by wind and time; the bark of the trunk showed that it was aging fast. The hammock under it had long been gone, and the metal swing by the mini-playground on the other side of the house had succumbed to the wrath of corrosion.

From where she was standing, she could hear the house squeaked against the blow of the wind. And the roof was now dark red, its fragmenting edge curled up as the wind swept against it and smashed lightly back against the wooden truss. The house, from her vintage point, looked perfect for a serene and dramatic photograph or a masterpiece painting, one which would send a message that would reach out into the inner hearts of men.

But it was not just a painting. It was her childhood. A proud and standing memoir of her life as a child. It was just she who neglected it, it was just she who ignored the very witness of the life she had here. It was the very house whom she had shared many countless and immeasurable moments, moments that would never happen again in her lifetime, or in the afterlife.

She started to walk slowly toward the two-storey house, wading across the wildflowers and cogon grass. When she reached the door she unlocked and unchained it, slowly turned the rusty doorknob, carefully opened the door, and stepped inside.

It had been a very long time since the time she was leaving the house with her parents. It was thirty already years ago, but she could still clearly remember how she was flatly and nonchalantly accepting the reality that they would be abandoning it. She could still vividly remember how she was casually walking away without turning back, as if she had known for so long that it was written in her fate and should unfold. And she could still remember how it was so unimportant for her to cry for leaving the place behind. She did not understand why, then; she couldn't understand why, now. Perhaps, she suspected, she was still too young to understand everything, to feel what she should feel.

She felt sorry now that she did not think of it herself to go back here, that she'd had to wait for something to happen before finding within herself the longing to go back here. She didn't want to consume all the time she had now thinking about it, blaming herself and regretting things, and so she just shrugged it off for now.

After adjusting her eyes to the dimness inside, she looked around, darting her eyes from the living room to the hallway and back. Dust settled on the rotten upholstery, eating them slowly to rot. Cobwebs warned of the years she's gone, and reminded her of the past she'd let time buried it here. Fragments of glass littered on the floor with dust and debris and dead leaves.

She walked toward the hallway that led to the staircase. When she came near she noticed the faded Pentel Marker drawings and scribblings across one side of the hallway: her childhood art and the evidence of her passage to literacy. They were very faint now, but were still visible enough to know and read what they were, for they still stood out from being devoured by the rotting of the plywood.

My name is Pearl Anne Ramos. I am 8 years old. I have one brother and one sister.

Then, there was another one written below it. It was obviously written on a different date the than first. She knew because she could still remember herself writing it, and she could also remember how she had really felt. Although she couldn't remember how dense the anger and hate that had hung over her family, and how deep the loss and anguish her parents had felt, she could tell it was something that time had no power to subdue and erase because until just last week the broken and wounded relationship between her parents and her grandfather had not healed. And though she'd never looked inside to find it, it was something that had also lived in her for so long.

Silently with her eyes staring at the wall, she read:

My brother Jason died yesterday and my parents cry all night. I am very sad.

After a while, as she was standing there, her body began to soften as she remembered how she would hurriedly ran home from school to be with his brother and take care of him and play with him. It was so long ago, but she still missed her younger brother so badly.

She climbed up the stairs into the bedrooms. And as she walked toward her brother's bedroom, the memories of the sad past had slowly awaken in her mind, flowing in like water through a funnel, waking up emotions that had long been asleep. In her mind, the fateful, tragic day began to flicker and play...

It was a Summer. That Saturday morning her parents were preparing for the planned picnic on a beach resort, fifteen kilometers away from their house to the next town. Her mama and papa were very busy packing up things and putting them to the baggage trunk of their car, and were crisscrossing between the kitchen and the garage. She was also dressing up herself for the trip, and at the same time sneaking time to play with his younger brother. Her elder sister was upstairs busy doing something, too. She didn't knew where his grandfather was, and she didn't think of looking for him. When she went to call her mama and asked her to help her zip her dress, nobody was attending her brother Jason. And nobody noticed him walked out the front door and into the lawn.

She heard, and she swore her mama and papa heard, too, their car's engine came to life. She was excited to climb into the car, and so she ran hurriedly toward the living room from the kitchen, and past the open front door.

Her grandfather was on the wheel, maneuvering the car backward from the garage into the driveway when he heard a loud thud from behind, like a large piece of wood hitting the rear bumper or a metal striking the rubber of the wheel. He thought it was the latter, as he felt the car rolled over it after he checked the back with the side mirrors but saw nothing. When he come to a stop and checked the side mirrors again, he saw her standing a few steps from behind the car, screaming and shouting at him. Her grandfather felt a sudden rush of fear crawled up his spine, and when he stepped outside he saw a pair of shoes under the car. Wearing them was his grandson, Jason.

Her mama was on the living room, calling at her elder sister Maggie and telling her to come down for they were now about to leave. Her mother looked around but couldn't find her and Jason. When she called their names, her mother heard the shrieking of her horrified voice and her grandfather's heart-pounding, mournful cry.

Alert, her father dashed past her mother toward the front door. With fear and horror shot at her mother like a thousand volts of electricity, she ran hurriedly after him, the Tupperwares filled with food smashed to the tiled floor as she lost hold of them.

It was the most horrifying day of their lives, to see Jason lying on her grandfather's arms soaked in blood, lifeless. The ambulance came too late to save him, and the news of his death from the medics caused so much confusion, disbelief, anger, anguish and loss all at once.

Her brother's bed squeaked as she stood up. She walked toward the window that faced the asphalt road that ran parallel to the house. From there the dirt road snaked for several meters toward the house. Directly under the bedroom was the garage, its driveway met the dirt road near the front door. The wind that swept inside the room smelt of wildflowers and dust and rotten wood. After closing the windows, she went out of the room, down the stairs, into the living room, and out of the house.

She was standing under the mango tree when she heard a car rolled to a stop next to hers. She turned her head to see who it was. A woman in her late thirties stepped out of the car, looked around and saw her. At first she couldn't recognize the woman, she couldn't tell who she was who's now smiling and waving at her. When they were both halfway to meet each other, she realized it was her childhood friend, Carmen. It was her best friend thirty years ago. And she was Carmen's long lost friend. She ran toward her to hug her and tell her how happy she was to see her for the first time in years.

When excitement and joy sank in, they sat on the mango tree's protruding roots and talked about so many things in between the last time they had seen each other and now. They exchanged life stories, and talked of the changes and the new things that had come to their lives. They talked about their past, their present, and their own families.

When silence wrapped around them, her friend turned her head toward the low, bare mountains that rose breathtakingly four kilometers away from behind the house. The mountains were light green not because of trees but because of weeds and cogon grass. No single tree dotted any of the mountains, and under the mid-afternoon sun they stood elegantly and beautifully against the bushy landscape.

"I still remember how you'd always wanted to go there," Carmen said, her eyes staring at the scenic view.

She smiled. She felt very happy to know how much Carmen had remembered about her and their childhood. After a while, she asked, "You've already been there?"

"Many times."

"I still want to go there."

"Let's go there now."

"Really? You don't mind?"

"No. Not at all."

"This is exhilarating," she beamed.

Carmen smiled.

"But I have one favor to ask you."

"What is it?"

"Let's drop by at my grandfather's grave."

"Sure."

They walked to their cars and drove off toward the cemetery. Along the way, the mountains came clearer and bigger, and so was the amount of peace she'd never felt before in her life. She might never knew it, but she was already on the road to reconciliation with her past and redemption of herself from hating her grandfather. He died a week ago right before her eyes, just an hour after they'd talk inside the Silver Halo Shelter. But she knew he died a happy man, for they had already forgiven each other before it was all too late.

Photograph by Jacob Krejci. Please CLICK HERE to visit the owner's Flickr site. Thanks!

LATE AFTERNOONS Part I: The Park

2009-03-24T17:14:00.012+08:00

Thursday late afternoon. Right after the school had ended for the day the three of them raced their way to the park at the end of the barrio to watch the sunset as they'd always do every Friday and Saturday. There they would be talking just about anything their young minds could ever think of as they would watch the clouds changed color from gray and ivory to orange and purple over the mountains that ran along the base of Cogtong Bay toward the other end, a place more than ninety kilometers east of Tagbilaran City, a place facing the tip of an island province of Southern Leyte, in a country called the 'Pearl of the Orient'.

They might have not consciously agreed, but over the years the park had slowly became part of their lives and was the sole witness of their growing friendship and of how far their imaginations and dreams had gone. They had always thought nothing could change how things were going; they had always believed nothing and no one could ever separate them. What they did not know was that fate was paving another road for them, a road that would split and lead into different destinations.

But that afternoon they were not there just for the sunset alone. And it was not their usual day to go to the park. In fact, it was their very first time to go there on a Thursday.

It was Donald who first reached the edge of the park where three concrete benches faced the view beyond. He was jumping in exultation as he celebrated his victory when Remma arrived, panting. Leandro came last and he, too, was catching his breath.

"You're cheating!" Remma complained between her breath.

"I did not!" Donald, 11 year-old, exclaimed. "It was you who grabbed my arms."

"Because you blocked my way."

"Doesn't matter," Leandro stepped in, still breathing heavily. "You get to learn to find a way to win."

"But that's unfair."

"Hey, look," Donald pointed his arms to the north, toward the sky above the mountains on the other side of the bay. "It's visible now."

They both turned their heads toward where Donald gestured them to look. It was still 5:15 P.M., but the comet was already slowly making itself stood out from being gobbled by the sun's brightness. It was long and beautiful; the head was small but bright, and its tail slowly spread upward. The view was ethereal that they just stood there in silence, engulfed.

"Swift-Tuttle," Leandro said in a voice that's more of a whisper than what he intended to.

"Huh?" his two friends asked in confusion.

"It's what they call it. I've seen the news on TV at Kuya Alberto's house."

"Its name is funny," 10 year-old Remma giggled. "But the comet's so beautiful. I better call it 'Dorele'"

Leandro frowned while Donald cracked into laughter.

"Where'd you get that name? It sounds weird," Donald still couldn't stop himself.

Remma faced him with arms in akimbo and looked Donald flatly in the eyes. "That's our name. I put them together."

Donald paused. "Oh."

Leandro, this time, guffawed.

The sun had already set, and the sky was completely black with the comet graced the eternal beauty of the night sky. It was now farther away from over the mountains, and its light now completely bathed their silhouettes magically. It was the brightest and most astounding among the stars; the celestial body that had drawn them more closely together that night.

"I've changed my mind," Leandro said after a momentary silence.

"About what?" Remma asked without taking her eyes from the comet. In the still silence of the night, it was more like a painting. A masterpiece of an artist.

"I want to study stars," he answered almost to himself.

"Oh, yeah?" Donald reacted cynically as he looked at him. "And what happened to your Geographer thing?"

"Donald," Remma reminded him of his attitude again. But Leandro was not at all pissed.

"It's still there. But tonight I see a more convincing reason for me to study what's out there."

"So you just change your mind that easy. Just because of that comet. What would ever happen if something else comes out? Something different, something not a comet or a star? Would you ever change your mind had we not come here?" Donald looked at the sky again. And, after a while, continued, "You better stick with something you really want, or you'll end up just standing there. Undecided. Dissatisfied."

Leandro stood up and walked farther toward the edge. "I don't know if it's crazy ---"

"It is crazy," Remma stressed the fact.

Leandro turned and faced them. "OK. But it's final. This is what I want. It's who I want to be."

"Right," Donald kicked the stone near his right foot. "As if we have a NASA here or a school for that."

Leandro went silent and thought that his friend might be right. He was too impulsive, too reckless in making decisions like that. He hadn't even heard about NASA, what it was for or what it meant. But then again, his friend might be wrong. Nobody's sure yet. Perhaps, he assured himself, there might actually be a school for that somewhere.

"You ever heard people talking about stars and comets on TV or radio? People like Filipino scientists? We're not even sure there is one," Donald continued.

Silence.

Remma uncrossed her arms, put them at her both sides, and shifted her weight as she leaned on them. "The thing is, if you really want something, like really want it, you can always find a way."

Leandro, 11, turned his head and looked up to the comet above. Then he smiled.

When Remma went home that night, she overheard her mama in the dining room. She was talking to someone, and was talking about her. She slowly and carefully closed the door behind her and tiptoed her way to the staircase. She could see from there her mama and papa, both their backs on her. Her mama was setting the table for dinner, while her papa was making something she couldn't tell what.

"She'll eventually adapt. The first year will not be easy for the three of us, but it's just normal for people moving in," her papa said in a reassuring voice.

Her mama, a grade school teacher for 10 years, sounded worried nevertheless. "She's too young to go there. She may not understand everything," her mama said.

"We've been through this, Eula. That is why we'll help her, as her parents," her papa slightly raised his voice. He turned around and put the bowl on the table as he continued, "Besides, Calgary is not far from Edmonton. She'll get to see her cousins there every now and then."

"You tell her. She listens to you more than to me," her mama placed the adobong manok in the table, next to the escabeche.

"Where is she? It's already late."

"Maybe she's in the park."

"The park? It's not Friday yet." Her papa, a radiologist in a community hospital three towns away, looked straight toward the dining room door and out the living room, then his eyes met hers. She was startled, and quickly climbed up the stairs and dashed toward her room.

"Where have you been?" his nanay yelled when she saw him walked in. "You know we can't start the dinner until we're all at the table."

"I'm sorry, nanay," he apologized. "We went to the park. We watched the comet. It's still out there, you can still see it. It's beautiful," he narrated enthusiastically.

His nanay seemed intrigued, and her voice suddenly softened. "A comet, you say?"

"Yes, and it's beautiful. It's called Swift-Tuttle," he said as his nanay walked out the door and into the yard outside. His two younger sisters trailed their mother excitedly.

He walked toward the table and sat to his father's right. "Tatay, what's a comet?"

His tatay, who had just sat there, took the rice and put some on his plate. "I'm not sure. People say it's some sort of asteroids or meteors or something like that."

"Where does the tail come from? The comet outside, it has tails," he asked with unsuppressed interest.

"I don't know. Maybe small fragments of it. Or maybe dusts," his tatay answered flatly with indifference.

"There's dust in the outer space?" his voiced raised in total surprise as his excitement soared.

His tatay glared at him."I'm only a fisherman, not a scientist. Now eat."

Leandro was daunted, and for a moment kept his other wild questions to himself. His youngest sister, seven year-old Phoemela, noisily rushed in with naked excitement.

"Hey, hey, hey!" their tatay saw Phoemela running toward them. "Stop running. I don't want to see a bloody nose in here. Sit down. Where's your sister? Julia!"

Julia went inside hurriedly. Their nanay followed behind her.

"Tatay, you better take a look!" Julia exclaimed.

"It can wait," their tatay was now upset. "I can't believe you're still ignorant at your age," he was referring to their nanay, who was now grabbing a chair.

"It's a once in a lifetime, Mateo," their nanay defended herself.

"Oh, right. Like you've never seen the Halley's comet before."

"What's the Halley's comet?" Leandro quickly asked.

"Keep eating," their tatay warned.

"Nanay, where do comets come from? Why can't we see them every year?" It was Julia.

"They say comets travel a very long route, that's why we don't see them often."

"Is it the same comet that appeared when Jesus was born?" Phoemela asked before sipping the Milkfish soup.

Their nanay shrugged.

"Tay, what do you call a person that study stars?" Leandro asked.

"I have no idea."

"Is there a school here that teaches about it?"

His tatay shut him a cold glance. " I don't know."

"I want to be like them."

"Who's them?" Phoemela asked without looking at him. She was busy deboning the fish.

"Neil Armstrong and --"

"Just keep eating, Leandro."

After dinner, Donald and his parents were sitting on the outdoor metal chairs in the lawn as they were gazing at the night sky. He got all his questions answered about comets and stars and constellations, and his mother told him stories about astronauts while his father talked about the Halley's comet and how big and bright it was. When asked why the sudden interest in celestial bodies, Donald just shrugged. He didn't want to become an Astronomer, as what his father called them, because he knew from his heart what he truly wanted.

The next day, on their way to the park, the two boys noticed that Remma was silent and seemed sad. They sensed something's not right. They were not racing their way there, and that, too, was unusual for them.

"What's wrong?" Leandro asked with full concern.

"Papa told me we will be leaving next month," Remma weakly said.

"Leaving? To where?" Donald asked.

"Canada."

Both the boys stopped from walking. Confused. Stunned.

"Is that for---how long?" Leandro spoke after his shock had disappeared.

"Papa said we'll be living there for a long time," Remma wiped the tears in her eyes with the back of her hand.

"You're not coming back, are you?" Donald asked with resentment in his voice.

Remma said nothing. She just continued walking. Leandro ran to catch her.

"Wait....that's not fair," his voice a mix of sadness and pain.

Remma just kept walking.

Donald just stood where he was, staring at the dirt road beneath his feet. His emotions were stirring and shouting out loud and fighting each other, but he couldn't hear them.

He walked along the gravel path toward the edge of the park that was overlooking the sea, and toward the very spot where they'd always sit together and watch the sunset. Remma and Leandro was already there; his buddy seemed to be consoling her. Remma raised her head and looked blankly far beyond the sea as Donald came and sat beside her.

"So what do you think we should do?" Donald asked after a long silence.

"I don't know," Leandro honestly answered.

"I don't want to go," Remma uttered, her voice started to hoarse.

Donald sighed deeply. "What happens to the promise we've made?"

"Donald, please. It's not her decision," Leandro pleaded. "She can't control it. It's gonna happen, OK? So maybe it'll help us if we just accept it this early. And then let's find a way to enjoy the time left now that we're still together."

"I can't believe you, Leandro. You're acting like it's so easy for you! Let it out, what you really feel!" Donald's anger escaped from his exploding emotions. Anger won the battle inside, and now he heard it clearly.

"Oh, yeah? Like what you're doing now?" Leandro controlled himself. "Do you really think that helps?"

Remma wept. She, too, surrendered to her own emotions.

Silence.

Remma wiped her tears. The silence had grown too heavy for them to handle. Donald kicked the junk food foil nearby. Leandro looked away and into the calmness of the sea below.

"This place has become part of us, y'know," Leandro broke the settling silence. "It's not easy to just let go of every mem'ries we have here. But I think this is how things are supposed to be."

"Don't talk like that, Leandro. Just don't," Donald sternly said. "It's freaking me out."

"I promise to go back here," Remma said.

"Don't make anymore promises!" Donald's anger rekindled. "We promised before, and now we're breaking it!"

"I'm not breaking it," Remma said softly, and then glanced at Donald. "Do you?"

Leandro looked at Donald, too. When his friend didn't say anything, he did. "Me, I'm not."

"And I meant it. I will be back. I don't know when, but I will," Remma interjected.

Donald crossed his arms over his chest. After a while, he spoke. "This will separate us, and who knows? Maybe forever." A pause. "Things will never be the same by the time you leave us."

"I think it's a test to how far our friendship can go," Leandro said reassuringly. "And this will draw us even closer. Friendship knows no distance. It can even shrink time."

"You know too much," Donald quipped.

"You're may be right, Don," Leandro said. "But you know what, now I see it clearly. The promise we had? It wasn't practical at all. We're just bluffing. Nobody can take hold of the future. We dream, we tell each other that. And by the time we grow old, we have to walk our own lives, and by the time we do, we're gonna part ways. That's the way things are. I understand it clearly now." A pause. Leandro seemed to be pondering on the things he had just said. "Yes, I'm certain I do."

Remma and Donald was silent. They didn't know what to say.

"But it doesn't mean we have to forget each other," Leandro continued explaining. "I think Remma was right. We have to promise to ourselves. And we're not bluffing this time."

Donald sneered.

"No matter what happens, no matter how far we go, no matter how time mold us to be, let's promise to go back here once in a while. The three of us. Together," Leandro said as he looked at them in the eyes. From Remma to Donald and back.

Remma nodded, but Donald was expressionless. A long pause. Leandro waited.

"OK," Donald finally agreed and then slowly, he smiled.

All of them smiled, and then hugged each other.

"I don't know what lies ahead of me," Remma whispered.

"Nobody knows what lies ahead," Leandro said.

The photograph used for this entry is from http://www.photographyblog.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=40528 Click the link to go to the site.

LATE AFTERNOONS Part II: She's Coming Home

2009-03-24T17:12:00.009+08:00

The first year was too hard for them. It was the year when they had to constantly struggle from pain and loneliness caused by Remma's absence. And the things they'd done together seemed too hard and heavy for them to keep doing without her. They had struggled and poured their efforts to keep everything as normal and unaffected as before, but they knew it from their hearts that it would never be. And so they had felt the need to reach out to her, and she had reached out to them, too, to keep herself from missing them so badly. And that had gone for two years. The year after that, their exchange of letters had become less frequent, and they had started to forget some things they used to do. And, unknowingly, the world had revolved against theirs. Three years after that, they had no longer heard from Remma, and Remma had heard nothing more from them. And they couldn't remember who had stopped writing letters first. And they had thought less of it over time.

"Turn the volume up," Donald, now a fourth year high school student, said as he took a bite from the fried chicken he was holding with his right hand. Leandro didn't hear him clearly because the sea breeze swept his voice and scattered it into the air. Their fishing boat rocked tenderly against the small waves.

"What?" Leandro, who was his classmate and basketball buddy at the same time, glanced at him.

"The volume, turn it up."

Leandro turned the dial of the battery-operated AM/FM receiver. The voice of Gwen Stefani drowned the serenity around them.

"It's 'Don't Speak'," Donald continued. "The band's called 'No Doubt'."

"No Doubt. What an odd name for a band," Leandro commented as he dug himself to the food on the Tupperware that he was holding with his left hand.

"Did you hear the rumor about the Spice Girls?" Donald asked.

"What about them?"

"That they're a bunch of gays?"

Leandro looked at him and frowned. "No way."

"Just a rumor," Donald shrugged and went back to eating.

"I have a crush on Posh."

"Nah. Too sophisticated. I like Baby Spice," Donald remarked.

"Oh, yeah, she's hot," he agreed. "But too innocent-looking."

"What, you like Samantha?" Donald laughed. "She's hot and liberated."

"From Section B? Get out," he frowned and shook his head.

Donald chuckled.

Silence.

Leandro pushed the oar, which was lying on the floor, aside and took a bottle of Coke from the styropore and gave it to his friend. Then he took another one for him.

"When you ever start courting a girl?"

Leandro didn't look at him. He acted like he didn't hear him. "What?"

"Okay," Donald sighed deeply and slapped the outside walling of the boat with his left hand in exasperation. "Here we go again."

"You know my answer, and you're gonna hear the same now." He opened the bottle with his teeth, and then gulped some soda.

"C'mon, be serious. School will be over in two months and you haven't even told me yet about your crush at school."

"I found nobody I like yet. Maybe in college," he threw a piece of the fried chicken to the water and watched enthusiastically the small school of fish that began feasting around it.

"You're unbelievable."

"That's me."

"You're completely honest?"

Leandro nodded.

Donald looked at him for some time, remembered something, and then suddenly smiled to himself.

"Do you still have Rem's picture?" Donald asked him casually.

He hesitated. He couldn't sense where the sudden change of conversation was leading to, but he took some precautions. "Uh-huh."

"Where'd you put it?" Donald still didn't look at him. He just continued eating.

"In my photo album. Where else?"

"I don't know. Your wallet?"

"I don't have one, and you know that."

"Oh, yeah," Donald said, nodding. "But Julia said she saw it in your bed."

"She's lying."

"She is?"

Leandro gave in and rolled his eyes, and said that once or twice he took it from the album and held it when he sleep.

Donald's stifled amusement erupted into laughter.

Leandro realized what it was about.

"Hey!" he said defensively. "It's not what you think. I know you still think about her, too. Admit it."

"Yeah, but not like sleeping with her pictures in my hand."

"It's not what you think."

Donald's eyes narrowed teasingly as he looked at him, and then nodded amusingly. "Oh, yeah. Sure."

After their lunch break they proceeded to the site where they had submerged the fish nets, circled around it once more to scare the fish and eventually lead them into the nets. When they came to rest and waited once more, Donald said he was in the mood to swim.

"Do you ever wonder how she's been?" Leandro asked as Donald took off his shirt.

"Yes, sometimes," Donald replied. "But not as often as you do."

Leandro threw a chicken bone at him. Donald winced.

"Stop that."

"It's true?"

Leandro did not answer. Instead he went on. "It's been three years since her last letter. She seems to be forgetting us already."

"Well, the thing is, we stopped writing her, too. It's either she forgets us or we do," Donald looked at him in the eye, and then went on to fold his shirt.

"I still miss her."

"You see? It's not ordinary anymore."

Exhausted, Leandro said, "Okay, okay."

Donald grinned victoriously. After he placed the folded shirt on top of the styropore cover, he spoke seriously, "Write her a letter."

"I don't know what to say."

Donald squinted his eyes and spoke knowingly, "Oh, you know exactly what you're going to say."

"Maybe you should write her, too."

"I have nothing else to write except consuming the whole page explaining why we stopped writing her letters. But you, you have something to write more important than that," Donald said as he unzipped his pants.

Leandro leaned forward, pressed his elbows against his knees, folded his arms between his legs, and said, "Her grandma said they've changed their address."

"I'll take care of that. I'll go ask Lola Dorya for the address."

"You're gonna do that?"

"Uh-huh."

"Gee, thanks."

"Nah," Donald dismissed it by waving his right hand forward and down. After a while, as he stood there naked and the boat rocked under his weight, he asked, "You sure you ain't swimming?"

"The sun's already high. You'll get sunburn."

"Well, not only me," Donald said and then threw himself into the water in an awkward angle on his attempt to dive headfirst but lacked enough height. When he resurfaced he hit the water with the base of his right palm, which then sent a shower of seawater toward Leandro enough to wet his shirt.

Leandro protested, but Donald just kept laughing.Then came another one. And another. He quickly undressed himself and went after his friend who was now boisterously laughing. The echoes of their yelling and laughter tore the quietude of the afternoon sea.

During recess at school, if not chatting around with his classmates or sitting in the cafeteria with his best friend or in the gym doing a basketball round, he would consume the whole thirty minutes digging himself on books. Sometimes he would excuse himself from his group of friends, and some other times he would go in the library with Donald. But that was rare, for most of the time Donald would just go with him if he felt like reading, which seldom happened. But Donald knew where to find him every time he's not around with him, just like today.

Leandro found an empty table next to the huge west window, which was visible from the main door, and from the strict, man-eating librarian. He was flipping pages of an astronomy book, found the page where he stopped during his last visit, and then continued reading. Beside him was an unopened encyclopedia.

He was reading about space explorations when he noticed someone walked toward him and stood in front of him. He looked up and saw Leah, his classmate since their first year but were never close. He didn't ask himself why, for he never had the slightest urge or reason to. They had different group of friends, dissimilar interests, different taste on most things. They just knew each other as casual friends. But today he was completely surprised to see her in the library, alone.

"May I sit with you?" she asked.

"Sure," he said with inquisitive look.

"You don't mind? I'm not disturbing you?"

"No, it's OK."

Leah grabbed a chair and sat. "Is that an Astronomy book?"

He darted his eyes from her to the book and back to her, and then smiled faintly. "Yes, the only one here."

"Astronomy is interesting."

"You think so?" he was surprised to hear that, but was skeptical to believe her.

"Uh-huh," Leah affirmed. "Why don't you share it with me? What you're reading now."

"You serious?"

"Yes. Tell me something about stars and comets. Those, I'm more fascinated with," Leah managed a smile.

After thinking about it for a while, he nodded and said, "Alright." He paused, and then went on, "The comet we saw back in '92, remember that?"

Leah nodded. Yeah, she remembered.

"It was the only comet believed to come into contact with our planet," he said, knowingly.

"You mean collision?" Leah's forehead wrinkled.

He nodded. "But, that's the basic theory. After some recalculations and study they said it might not happen at all."

"That's scary," Leah said, expressing her pure concern.

"Well, not in our lifetime at least."

"It's still scary."

Leandro thought for a moment, trying to scan his memory for something more interesting to share.

"The first recorded collision between two objects in the solar system was with a comet named Shoemaker-Levy 9 and the planet Jupiter. And that happened 4 years ago. During our first year here."

"OK. That's too scary for a start," Leah laughed nervously.

He laughed, too.

The librarian looked at them and hushed them. Silence followed.

"I know I'm not a nerd, but you think I'm a geek?" he asked in a low voice.

"No, you're not," she said while shaking her head. "Not at all."

"You're being nice?"

"I'm being honest."

Another silence.

After a while, Leah spoke. "Look, this Friday's my birthday, and I'm inviting you to come."

He looked at her, waiting.

"I know this is kind of unusual, but yeah, I'd like you to come."

"We're not that ---"

"I know. I'm just hoping you'd still come," she sounded nervous with her seemingly controlled yet heavy breathing. "You can bring Donald along, if you want."

He thought about it for a while, and then shrugged as he pouted his lips. "Okay."

"Really?"

He nodded.

"Friday then?"

"Sure."

After staying there for a couple of minutes, Leah stood up, collected her things, and said goodbye to him.

When she walked past the librarian and into the door, Donald came in with his duffle bag hanging from his right shoulder. Leah smiled and walked past him. Donald went straight to him with a curious, questioning look.

"What's going on?" he asked with a frowning, smiling face.

"Nothing."

"You're lying," he grabbed the chair previously used by Leah, put his bag on the table, and then sat. "No secrets, man. No secrets. C'mon, what did I miss?" he asked as he bent his body forward and leaned with his arms folded on the table.

"She invited me to her birthday," he said, expressionless, as he continued reading.

"Ahahaha!" Donald exclaimed. "I knew it!"

The librarian heard the noise, glared straight at them, and warned, "Silence!"

Leandro glanced from the librarian to his friend and muffled his giggling.

In a hushed voice Donald continued talking. "I knew something's up with her. I just couldn't tell then. Now I know it. I think she likes you."

"Nah. She's just being friendly," he reasoned as he flipped a page.

"You're unbelievably insensitive!"

"I may be unbelievable, but not insensitive," he flatly said as he continued flipping some pages.

"Whatever."

Donald turned around to check the librarian, and then turned back again to look at him. He moved his head more closely toward Leandro. "Guess what."

"What?" he asked with less interest, his eyes still on the book.

"Try."

"Christine's pregnant?"

Donald grimaced. "What the --- get lost!"

"Tell me."

"I've already talked to Lola Dorya."

"Now, this is conversation," he said jokingly and shifted his attention to his friend. "You got the address?"

"Uh-huh," Donald answered almost like hurriedly. "Here's more, she said Rem's coming back."

Leandro was speechless for a while. "No bullshit."

"I'm serious," Donald pressed. "And guess when?"

"When?"

"In May. No specific date, but most probably before the fiesta," Donald grinned widely, and raised both his brows rhythmically.

Leandro went back to reading. And smiled.

That evening when Leandro went to bed, he turned the battery-operated AM/FM receiver on and lied there staring at Remma's picture. She was 12 years old in the photograph; young and innocent. Her smile was pure and contagious, which made him smile, too. After quite some time he went to sleep when the radio played the song of Richard Marx.

Donald was just staring blankly at the ceiling in his bedroom. It was already past midnight, but he still couldn't force himself to sleep. His mind was traveling far away into an unknown distance. Wandering. Searching. Discovering. Drifting away with thoughts and images and memories. He was dreaming wide awake.

The photograph used in this entry is from Chokkolat's Flickr page. Click here to go there.

LATE AFTERNOONS Part III: The Reunion

2009-03-24T17:11:00.007+08:00

Leandro had started counting down days from the day he heard the news in January about Remma's coming. He couldn't really satisfy his own question why, but he knew something more intense and more important than that had lived and occupied a place deep inside him. He began to think of her more often than he usually did, and couldn't help but wonder how much had changed in her looks. He hadn't receive any more pictures from her since his sixth grade, and he hadn't received any response yet to his letter that he had sent in the second week of January. He was anxious and thrilled to see her, but today was already the eight day of May and still no word or news of her. Her grandma, Lola Dorya, didn't know either what date they would arrive. But Lola Dorya had long since prepared herself and the house for Remma and her parents.

The Friday late afternoon was cloudy and shady, and the sea breeze swept the shore with mild, cool air. After their eleven-hour stay at the sea fishing, they finally decided to go home. They had already collected their catch and put them in the big white styropore filled with ice, and they were now rowing their way back to the shore.

"So when are you planning to go to Manila?" Donald, who seated at the other end of the boat behind him, asked.

"I was advised to be there by the end week of this month," he answered. His hands on the oar, still rowing. "But I asked them if I could stay here for the fiesta and go there first day of June instead. They said OK."

"Well, at least we could still play basketball or go fishing for two more days after the fiesta," Donald said.

He took a deep breath. "Yeah," he agreed. "Or be with Remma for two more days."

"Uh-huh."

A pause.

"I'm gonna miss you, you know."

Leandro looked straight away toward the shore. He stopped rowing. "Same here."

Donald stopped rowing, too, and looked away blankly to his far right. "So, I guess we're finally parting ways, huh?"

Leandro sensed something funny and chuckled for a short period.

"I'm serious."

Silence.

"This has to be, right?" Donald went on.

After a while, Leandro spoke. "Do you still remember that day when Remma told us she's leaving?"

"Who can ever forget that?"

"And I said we have to part ways and walk our own lives?"

Donald went silent. A moment after he sighed, he continued rowing. "So it's happening now."

"But I still keep the promise," he said, and then turned his head toward his friend. "You?"

Donald did not respond, but after a while he nodded.

When they reached the shore Leandro put his oar aside, jumped off the boat and into the knee-deep seawater. Donald followed and helped him push the outrigger boat into the shore.

"I have heard about this thing called the Internet," Leandro said as they pushed the boat. "Is it also covered by the course you choose?"

"Yep," Donald quickly replied. "I asked the Dean last April when I was enrolling in, and she said Web Designing and Programming will be covered. Computer Science is broad. Said it's a new entry to the curricula."

"Cool. Never seen what Internet is like, though. No idea," he said. A pause. "You've already found a boardinghouse in Cebu?"

"A dorm, yes."

Leandro straightened up as he went to unload the styropore. Donald went to get the oars. At that very moment, with their backs facing the seaside road, they heard a woman's voice behind them. Donald turned around to see who it was. Then he froze. When Leandro noticed that his friend was not moving, he looked up and saw his friend staring at the woman, transfixed. He darted his gaze to the woman and he, too, froze.

"Hello guys," Remma flashed the smile they'd last seen six years ago. The very smile they could never forget.

She was almost totally different now. So much had changed in her looks. Her hair was long and was smoothly swaying against the breeze. She was taller than they had expected, and her skin was white and rosy. Though her eyes were the same, something in her told them that time had molded her so beautifully. She was no longer a girl; she's already a woman.

"Mind if I hop in?"

They had just docked the boat and was about to leave, but none of them could refuse.

"Sure," Leandro heard himself said. He freed himself from the styropore and offered his hand to her as she took off her sandals and waded her way to the boat.

After Donald went to the boat to load back the oars, he turned around and commented, "You look so different now."

"Negatively?" she asked, smiling.

"You're stunning," Leandro said.

"Oh!" Remma almost lost her balance as she pulled up her right foot from the water and into the boat. Donald and Leandro went to catch her.

"It's Friday. I went to the park before I came here," Remma began when they had finally went off to sea with Donald and Leandro sitting at both ends of the boat, while she sat sideway between them. "I thought you were there." Her voice and face showed no emotion of any kind.

"Well, we are fishing today," Donald explained.

Remma seemed dissatisfied with his answer. She continued, "What happened to the park?"

Donald and Leandro were confused. "Why, what about it?" Leandro asked.

"It's so different from before. It seems --- deserted."

Donald silently glanced at Leandro.

"We still go there once in a while," Leandro reasoned. "But since I voluntarily took over some of the responsibilities of my father, I do the fishing every weekend and every summer."

"And I volunteered to help him do the job," Donald quickly added. "And it turned out to be more fun than I thought it would be."

"Your parents, they're not against it?" she asked Donald.

"No, not at all. As usual, they see the positive side of everything than otherwise."

An awkward silence wrapped them for a while.

"Can we go to the park, the three of us?" she asked to no one in particular.

"Sure," the two replied in unison.

Remma poked her fingers to the seawater as the boat rowed away toward the center of the bay. Ripples and small waves trailed behind her fingers. "What else happened while I'm gone?"

Donald rested the oar on his side as he answered, "Leandro and I still went to school on the same section. We played basketball alot, won some tournaments at school and outside."

"He plays soccer, too," Leandro added.

"Really?" Remma asked interestingly. "I thought you're scared of soccer."

Donald shook his head and grinned. "Not anymore."

Remma retrieved her fingers from the water and straightened up. She turned her head toward Leandro. "What about you, Lean?"

Before he could answer, he heard Donald spoke.

"He graduated valedictorian from grade school," Donald answered. "And from high school, too."

Remma's eyes beamed. "You're amazing!"

Leandro, all of a sudden, smiled shyly. He was aware of it, but was already too late to stop himself. Before he could make a statement, Donald went on.

"Last year he got a scholarship, full scholarship," Donald dramatically paused. "Guess where?"

Remma turned her head from Leandro to Donald and back. "Where?"

"University of the Philippines. In Diliman."

Remma gasped in disbelief. "UP Diliman? Wow!"

"Last April he went to Quezon City to enroll."

"What major?"

"Astronomy," Leandro said.

"Astronomy," Remma repeated with a smile as she nodded. "So you really are now up into living your dreams. I'm so proud of you."

Hearing her said that, Leandro felt happy like never before.

Moments later, Remma stared at the oar that Donald was holding as he was rowing and maneuvering the boat. She sat there watching him, mesmerized.

"Teach me," Remma said.

"Huh?" Donald asked, confused.

"Teach me how to do that."

Leandro watched in amusement as she tried hard to keep the boat moving. When the boat drastically changed course and back, she screamed and laughed and clapped. They were all laughing. As they maneuvered the boat back to the shore, he couldn't help himself from looking silently at Remma.

The wind played with Remma's hair, which swayed and cascaded toward her right. Leandro looked at her squinting her eyes as she scanned the vastness of the sea and the mangroves not far from them. Not far from where they were she could see the park a few meters above the shore. She could clearly see the unfinished lighthouse, and the benches below it.

"Look," she pointed toward the park.

Donald and Leandro turned their heads toward where her finger was pointing.

"It looks so different from here," she uttered.

"It's bushy," Leandro commented.

"It's beautiful," Remma praised.

Friday late afternoon the next week. They didn't go fishing. He had told his tatay the day before that he would be at the park with Remma and Donald, and would skip going to the sea just for one day. Now, as he was hurriedly walking toward the end of the barrio, he saw Leah in the distance walking toward him.

"Hi, Leandro," Leah smiled when she was near.

Leandro smiled back. "Where you goin'?"

"I'm actually going to your house," she said. "I'm looking for your mother."

"She's at home when I left. She was about to go to the town, though. But you may still catch her," Leandro said as he looked past her into the far end of the road, which intersected with that of the park's.

"Oh, yeah. I better be hurry," she said with a trace of urgency. She started walking again but after a few steps she stopped, turned around, and called him.

He turned around. "Yep?"

"Next week I'll be leaving for Cebu," she said. "I just want to say goodbye."

Leandro thought about it for a while. "You won't be coming back for the fiesta?"

She shook her head. "After enrolling I'll find a part-time job. Tourism is expensive, you know, for me. But it's what I want."

"That's good," he said. "I'll be working part-time, too."

"Yeah, I've heard," she smiled. "So you're leaving first day of June?"

He didn't had the chance to wonder how she knew about it for he was too busy to free himself from the conversation so he could go to the park on time.

"I've heard she's back," Leah casually said.

"Huh?" He didn't quite get who she was referring to, but after a short while he did. "Oh, yeah. Friday last week."

"You seemed so happy."

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LATE AFTERNOONS Part IV: Like the Old Days

2009-03-24T17:09:00.006+08:00

Remma and her parents wouldn't be staying long in the country; they were scheduled to return by the 31st of May. Completely aware of the reality that time was too short for them to waste, they had spent as much time as they could with Remma. From rowing boat to fishing to watching sunsets to having road trips on Donald's Honda motorcycle, the three of them were like back in their younger selves: happy, carefree, and not caring about the world around them.

They were at the park on the 23rd day of May. It was Saturday, and they were there by 3:00 o'clock in the afternoon. Leandro spread the blanket over the grass, after which Donald unloaded from the bamboo basket their sandwiches and sodas into the tray that he placed at the center of the blanket. Remma unfolded the big outdoor umbrella and positioned it to shield the afternoon sun.

"Did you bring the bottle opener?" Donald asked Leandro as he placed the basket at one corner of the blanket, and sat sideway next to him.

"Yup. I put it in there," he answered as he gestured toward the basket. Donald looked for it and found it under the tissue paper.

Remma was standing by the edge of the park, and looked down at the white crests of small waves below. It was ebb tide. Not much disturbance in the waves. She felt the pure, rural air.

"Do you know who's coming here this 29th?" Donald asked.

Leandro, who was lying on his back with arms folded behind his head, turned his head toward Remma but didn't say anything.

Remma, who was half listening, asked, "Who?"

"Cesar Montano," Donald answered so casually that Leandro almost wouldn't believe it.

Remma gasped as she quickly turned around. She was a fan of Cesar Montano since their grade school years.

"No way," she asked with evidence of excitement in her voice.

"Yeah way," Donald said as he picked a sandwich.

Remma glared at him and snapped, "Don, we've just arrived!"

Donald almost instantly dropped back the sandwich into the tray as Leandro laughed out loud.

"Okay, okay," Donald surrendered and jokingly raised both his hands upward.

Remma went back to the blanket and sat with them. She leaned on Donald's back, and then looked at Leandro. "Is it true?"

Leandro shrugged. "I have no idea."

Remma laughed at this, cynically. "Do you really believe that? I mean, would he ever come to a rural place this far?"

Without looking at either of them, Donald spoke, "He's spending a few days in Baclayon, then our Mayor, who's close to Cesar's father, personally invited him to come over. There's a rumor he's going to endorse something."

"I doubt it," Remma interjected.

"But you sounded excited just a while ago," Leandro insisted.

"Yeah, " Donald agreed. "An I bet you, Leandro, she'll be the first person to hang around the stage waiting with a poster."

The two of them laughed as though they were conniving.

Remma spanked Leandro in the leg. He grimaced while he continued laughing.

Remma fetched the guitar that Leandro had brought along and gave it to Donald, and asked him to pluck any song. Leandro rose from lying, and then thought of something to suggest. Donald was starting to strum More Than Words when Remma said she wanted to sing something else.

"Baby Come To Me," Leandro suggested. "By Pattie Austin."

"Oh, I love that song!" Remma gasped with delight. "You still sing that song, too?"

"Sometimes, when I'm taking a bath," Leandro grinned.

"That's not a cool song for a picnic," Donald protested.

"But it's beautiful," Remma defended.

"You know the chords?" he asked Donald, who nodded in affirmation. "Okay. Let's sing it, the three of us."

"I just told you what I thought about it."

"Don, don't pour water into the fire."

They were in the middle of the song when he caught Donald staring secretly at Remma as she was singing her part of the song. It was brief, but he saw it. And it was a stare very unusual to come from his friend. Something mysterious, something deeper. Suddenly Leandro felt an eerie moment, but immediately dismissed it. When he looked away and focused back on singing, Donald glanced silently at him.

After playing and singing two more songs, Donald announced, "I'm starving."

They were halfway eating their sandwiches when Remma, on her second sandwich now, said she needed more soda. They had brought only three.

"We should have brought some more," Donald sounded regretful.

"It's OK," Leandro said as he stood up. "I'll buy one."

Remma sheepishly took back her word. "No, it's Ok. Really. Never mind."

But Leandro insisted.

"Gee, thanks, Leandro," she said, beaming.

He nodded and started to walk away when Donald called him.

"Use my motorcycle," Donald said, and then tossed the key to him.

When he returned after a few minutes, the mood had changed: Remma was silent and Donald couldn't look at him straight in the eyes.

Three days before the fiesta their barrio started to get flooded with balikbayans and relatives from other towns and cities as far as Manila, the UK and the States for a short vacation aside from the fiesta. This is the usual event every year during fiesta as though it was a vow they all should respect and observe. There were many people now in the streets; people he'd never seen before, and people he'd only seen way back in his younger years. Strangers and familiar faces mingled in the streets exchanging how've-you-been's and personal stories.

His aunt and two cousins from Mindanao wouldn't be in their barrio until the 28th, the day before the fiesta. But it was Phoemela's birthday today, and his nanay cooked pancit and calderetang baboy. Phoemela invited only a few of her classmates and friends, and there were enough food left to give some to Remma. He knew she liked pancit, and he was sure she missed eating them, too.

When he pressed the doorbell of Remma's house, her mother, Mrs. Eula Olandria, came out. After exchanging hellos and handing to her the pancit for Remma, he learned she was already out with Donald for some rowing. Earlier that day Donald borrowed one oar, but he had not asked who would be with him.

Donald was pushing the boat when Remma saw him coming.

"Hey, I thought you won't be coming," Remma said, apparently surprised.

Donald turned his head. "It's good you're here." When he was satisfied the boat was already afloat, he faced them as he continued, "Changed your mind, huh?"

Leandro dug his hands to his pants' side pockets. "I figured there was not much thing to do after my sister's small celebration. Julia took care of the cleaning."

"Good," Donald said. "Hop in."

Remma was staring at her feet when Leandro offered his hand to lead her toward the water and into the boat. She looked up and smiled, and then took his hand.

"Not all Filipinos there are living the life they'd come to experience. Many struggled, too. Financially and all," Remma went on telling the story of what it was really like living in Canada.

Leandro, sitting at the hind end of the boat with his oar, said, "But the government there is giving support to the people, right? Even give or help find a job for them."

"If you lost your job, yes," Remma added. "But even if you already have a job, sometimes it can't provide you a long-term stability."

Donald, without turning his head to them, said, "And yet, when they come back here, those jewelry dangling around their necks are shouting and bragging their 'affluence' out there."

"Because that is the perception that our society here engraved in the minds of its people," Leandro quickly explained. "That if you're working abroad, you are successful and life is far better than here. And when you go back here, you are expected to share your affluence with the community no matter how you struggled and suffer overseas."

Remma agreed.

Leandro rowed a few times before he continued. "And because of our nature to brag, we chose to let that kind of perception to stay and not even try to change it because in the end, it's what we wanted, that people will look up to us."

Remma cleared her throat and was about to speak when Leandro spoke again.

"But I'm not stereotyping the Filipinos abroad, Rem, OK?"

"I know," Remma answered. "And you're right."

A momentary silence.

"How far is Nova Scotia from Alberta?" Donald asked from out of nowhere.

Slightly baffled by the change of topic, Remma, who sat sideway behind him, looked at his back. "Very far. It's in the Atlantic. We're somewhere in the middle of Canada."

"It's where Mafia originated, right?"

"It's Sicily," Leandro said, amused. "It's in Italy, not Canada."

"Oh."

Remma giggled.

"OK," Donald appeared hurt. "I'm not that smart."

"Drop it, Don," Leandro frowned.

Donald raised his oar and rested it beside him inside the boat, and then turned to sit facing them. "How cold is it there during winter? Is it as cold as getting out of the water naked?"

Chuckling but clueless, Remma answered, "WAY colder. Below freezing."

Leandro stopped rowing and placed his oar beside him, too. He sensed where the conversation was leading to. He muffled his own amusement to Donald's silliness.

"Oh, yeah?"

"Uh-huh."

"Is skinny-dipping a hype there?"

"What?" confused, Remma's forehead wrinkled.

"This very spot where we are now, right here?"

Remma looked around suspiciously, her face questioning. "What about it?"

Donald smirked. "This is the skinny-dipping zone, and everybody's required to observe it."

Remma, who found it hilarious, started laughing but remained reluctant and cautious.

Leandro was shaking his head now, chuckling.

The boat rocked wildly as Donald stood up. Remma shrieked as she balanced herself by holding at both sides of the boat's frame. She was terrified but still laughing.

Donald started stripping and summoned Leandro to do the same. He dared Remma to follow them. Remma shook her head wildly as she closed her eyes. She kept laughing and shrieking hilariously.

Donald and Leandro were now naked, with both their hands cupping over their groin. Remma shrieked even more when she saw them naked and shut her eyes closed again. She covered her eyes with her left hand.

Then the two boys take a loud, noisy plunge.

Not so far away from where they were, at an abandoned wharf near the base of the elevated road going up the church and the plaza, stood Leah. She was there for quite some time, watching quietly at them, observing their activities and absorbing their laughter.

By the time they rowed back to the shore, with Donald and Leandro exchanging positions in the boat, Remma glanced at Donald and kept her eyes at him quietly for a long time. Donald looked at her, too, then to Leandro's back, and then looked away onto the wharf in the distance.

The day after next. After lunch he decided to drop by at Remma's house before going to the town. His nanay asked him to buy some groceries for tonight and for the fiesta tomorrow, the busiest day of their barrio, and there would be no time for eleventh hour errands. And besides, this evening would be the arrival of his aunt and two cousins from Butuan, a city in Mindanao. And his nanay was planning to cook something to welcome their arrival.

When he was about to go out of the house, he saw his sister Julia coming in. His sister asked him if he had time to drop by at her friend's house on his way to the habal-habal terminal. Said she forgot to give back to her friend Sally the pocketbook. But he was in a hurry. He said he'd be dropping by at Remma's house, too.

"Remma?" Julia asked. "She's not in their house."

"How d'you know?"

"I saw her and Donald on his motorcycle just a while ago."

"Where d'you think they're going?"

"I don't know."

On his way to the terminal, he saw Christine, Donald's girlfriend and their classmate as well, walking toward him. She smiled when she saw him.

"Where you going?"

"To Donald's house," she said. "He must have forgotten that he's supposed to take me to the town."

He hesitated for a while, and then said, "I think he's not in their house now."

"Where is he?" Christine sounded hurt and angry.

"Uhm," he was frantically looking for an explanation. "He went off to the next town. Said it was urgent."

The photograph that appears in this entry is from avi876's site. Please click here to go to the said webpage. Thanks!

LATE AFTERNOONS Part V: The Tempest

2009-03-24T17:06:00.006+08:00

He needed to know. He needed to understand. He needed to reassure himself. That's because lately he sensed something was up among the three of them. He felt and knew there was something else going on, something that only happened when Remma came. Something unintelligible. Something he had yet to find out.

He understood that the three of them were just trying to cope up from the long time they had lost, and he knew they were just enjoying the time they had now. And whatever came in between, were just manifestations of their happiness of being together. But there was also something else that's unfolding along with it in the shadows. Though he forced himself to dismiss all his doubts and suspicion, his mind was dictating him, urging him to discover what his heart and soul needed to know and understand.

29th of May, the barrio fiesta. He was not supposed to go out of their house. He was supposed to be helping his family in preparing foods and the table for their visitors from other towns, relatives and friends alike, who would be flooding their small house by noon time, after the 10 o'clock mass.

He was supposed to be with his two cousins whom he hadn't seen since his second year in grade school. But when Donald went to him to borrow his boat, saying Remma insisted on going out to sea for some rowing for the third time this week, he offered to come along. Donald was vaguely reluctant, but Leandro felt it.

Remma was waiting down at the foot of the gradually elevated road near the shore and not faraway from where the boat was docked. They were descending halfway down the road when he remembered the oars. He forgot to bring it with them partly because he was in a hurry to go along with Donald, and partly because his mind was pre-occupied by a thought he couldn't clearly comprehend.

Remma was standing at the left shoulder of the gravel road, the side that ran along the shore. She was facing the row of boats anchored at the shoreline, idly watching the waves that were wildly rushing in for the high tide, the white crests colliding and splashing against each other and against the dark sand of the shore.

When Donald arrived and stood next to her, he said, "He's coming with us."

Remma looked away from him to her right, toward the far end of the road. She just stood there, occasionally brushing her hair that the strong wind had swept wildly over her face.

When he was certain that Remma wasn't talking, he asked, "What's going on, Rem?"

Silence.

"Rem---"

"There's something I need to tell you," Remma said after a while, loud enough to resist the blowing of the wind.

"Alright."

Remma turned her head and looked at him. "Lean wrote me a letter last January," she said with a blank expression.

"I know."

"He said he loves me," Remma continued.

"It's true," Donald looked away and darted his eyes to the rushing waves.

Remma looked ahead past the mangrove forest to the distant mountains beyond the sea. "Why didn't you write me?"

Donald didn't answer because, he realized, he didn't know the answer at all.

"It was your letter I so long to read. I kept sending you letters, but you stopped responding," her voice now sounded hurt and faltering.

Donald slowly looked at her. He looked down at the ground beneath his feet and then at the waves. His heart was pounding hard not because of something else but because of fear, his fear of something about to happen or come that he couldn't foresee. He could hear Remma's emotional turmoil, but not his own.

"Part of the reasons why I wanted to come back was to see you again," she continued. A pause. She was fighting over her own emotions, too. After a while she glanced at him, and stayed. "I love you, Don."

Flabbergasted, it took a while for him to comprehend. Donald shook his head as he closed his eyes. "No."

"I knew it since we were still in grade school."

Donald shook his head again, and then looked at her. "Oh, Remma, please. I've already told you how much he dreamed of this day to come. I don't want to hurt him."

"Hurt him?" she asked in disbelief, her voice filled with pain and anger. "What about me?"

"I can't betray him, Rem," he pressed, his voice heavy and harder to come out. "He loves you, so much."

Remma's emotion exploded. "But I don't love him! All I want to know is if you feel the same way to me. Make me feel what you really feel inside."

Remma moved closer to him and held him in the face with her both hands. "Look at me, Don," she said in a tender, passionate tone. "I love you."

Holding the oars with both of his hands, Leandro was walking round the bend when he saw Remma and Donald in the distance facing each other. He was about to continue walking when he saw Remma kissed his friend. His chest suddenly tightened, his face redden, his anger soared while his heart shattered and drowned.

When their lips parted, he swore Donald must have said something that caused Remma to step back, quivering as she walked away from him, sobbing and crying like the world had fallen and collapsed around her, and then dashed hysterically toward the sea and into a boat he didn't recognized. Fear crept swiftly all over him, and instinct told him to ran after her and save her from the lurking danger, waiting to devour the broken woman. The only woman he loved.

Donald frantically called out for her and ran after her, but fear and confusion crippled his soul and slowed his body. Leaving the oars behind, Leandro was running faster than he could muster and jumped into the air and landed on the water. Donald was shouting and telling her to come back and stop what she was doing, but she had already boarded the boat, and rowed it furiously and wildly toward the open sea. As panic and fear wrapped around him, Donald dashed along the shore looking for a boat with an oar. The waves were bigger than those in the days before, and she was a woman not born to row a boat.

"WHAT"S GOING ON?" Leandro screamed with fear and confusion, demanding answers from his friend.

"I DON'T KNOW!" Donald unfocused, shouted back, as he continued looking for an oar from the other docked outrigger boats. "THE OAR. WHERE ARE THE OARS? YOU GOT THEM? HURRY!"

Leandro realized he had thrown it away. Focused and determined to go after her, he helped his friend looking for an oar from the other boats. When he found one he quickly jumped into a boat and maneuvered it as fast as he could toward the open sea and after her.

Donald was running after him, the seawater loudly and wildly shooting everywhere with his every thump. "HEY, WAIT UP! WAIT UP! WAAAIT!"

She was fifteen or twenty meters away from Leandro, her boat arcing up and down the waves. When her shoulders and arms started to get numb, she stopped rowing and instead sat there crying loud. She heard Leandro calling out her name, urging her to come back. She stood and turned around to face him.

"LEAVE ME ALONE!" she screamed, her voice faltered and her throat began to sore. The boat swayed furiously under her weight and, when a series of bigger waves slapped the left side frame of the boat, she lost her balance. Her left foot caught the fishing nets lying on the boat floor, and trailed her as she plunged into the water.

Leandro's eyes opened wide in horror.

That night, when the plaza was packed with anticipating audience and screaming fans, when Cesar Montano climbed up the stage and caused so much excitement and pandemonium, when people where pushing forward and each other, the three of them where stuck in the four white walls of the community hospital in the nearby town.

Inside, Remma was stable but asleep. A doctor was there as well as her parents. Outside, under the big, old mango tree, the two of them faced each other in silence. Leandro was leaning against the tree trunk, while Donald was leaning against the concrete perimeter fence of the hospital. Leandro's mind was spinning like a tropical storm, while Donald's was drifted somewhere else, in a place where he felt like crawling down a dark pit into a sea of red, fiery lava. But the volcano inside him was threatening to spit him out with all its might.

"You owe me an explanation," Leandro broke the eerie silence.

Nothing. Donald just stood there, calculating everything, weighing his every move and words.

"TALK TO ME, DAMN IT!"

In the darkness, Donald looked at him. He couldn't see in his friend's face the anger, but he could feel it in the still air. He looked away.

"She told me about your last letter," he began, but it required his strength to let the words out.

Silence.

"And I told her that it's true, what you've told her."

Silence.

"She said---" he paused. It was so much harder that he thought. Oh, how he'd wished he could just disappear and be somewhere else.

"Tell me," firm and heavy, Leandro's voice was dark and menacing.

"She said she don't love you," Donald close his eyes. He didn't want to talk anymore.

It took a while for the words to settle in. And it took a while for Leandro to speak another word.

"That's not what she said," he said, trapping his mind from such poison.

Donald said nothing.

"Tell me."

"I'm so sorry, Lean."

This caused Leandro's turbulent emotion to break into a perfect storm. "DON'T YOU EVER FEEL SORRY FOR ME! DON'T YOU EVER FEEL SORRY! YOU'RE LYING!"

"I never lied to you."

"Then why she's acting like that? WHY SHE WAS RUNNING AWAY LIKE THAT? WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?"

Donald told him, and then hold his breath.

Leandro dashed so fast toward him that he was startled and, before he could evade, Leandro punched him in the face and wrapped his arms around him and knocked him down.

"BUT I DON'T LOVE HER, OKAY! I DON'T LOVE HER! STOP IT!" Donald was screaming at the top of his voice, needing to be heard, needing to be understood, needing his friend to believe him.

But they kept struggling; Leandro kept punching him. But he didn't resist, he didn't fight back. He never wanted to, so he just raised both his arms in total surrender. His friend cursed him with hateful and painful words, but he said nothing back. He swallowed everything Leandro had said to him.

After a while Leandro left with anger still clouding his face, leaving him lying there, feeling the pain crawled all over his body. Physical pain, and something much deeper.

The photograph used in this entry is from Petervanallen's Flickr page. Click here to go to his webpage. Thanks!

LATE AFTERNOONS Part VI: The Confrontation

2009-03-24T17:04:00.007+08:00

"Julia, is Leandro here?" Donald asked when he saw her as he arrived at his friend's house two days after the incident. He decided to let the tension to subside before talking to Leandro, but he also realized it would be too late for the three of them to wait that long.

"No, he's not here," Julia said and walked away from her two cousins and toward him. In a hushed voice, she asked, "What's going on? He seems not with himself today."

Donald chose not to talk about it with her. Rather he said, "Nothing. I need to go. I need to find him."

For whatever reasons he didn't find Leandro at the park; instead, he found him below it. He was sitting on a boulder less than a meter away from the base of the shallow ridge, his feet submerged in the seawater. It was where they used to pick sea shells when they were younger. And it was where he was saved by Leandro from drowning.

"Lean," he said, uncertain how not to disturb him.

"I need to be alone," Leandro said without turning.

"Lean, you're not like this. This is not you," Donald said, "Please, let's talk it over."

Silence.

"I don't understand," Leandro began. "I have never felt like this before in my life. This is my very first time to feel what it is like to fall in love. But it's being snatched away from me."

"I didn't---"

"You snatched it away from me," Leandro said in a pressing tone, and then turned around and looked at him. "Why?"

"Could you please stop it?" Donald slightly raised his voice, exasperated. "I don't love her, OK? I'm not taking her away from you."

Leandro looked away.

Silence.

"I can't believe that after all these years you still don't trust me," Donald sounded hurt and resentful.

"Just leave me alone."

"Look, I can't live like this."

"DON."

Silence.

"OK," Donald gave in, sighed, and walked away. After a few steps, he turned around and said, "Remma is leaving today for Canada. In an hour. I thought you should know."

When he saw in the distance the SUV pulling from the Olandria's garage, panicked crept all over him and triggered him to ran after it. He was only a few meters away when the SUV rolled into the street that leads toward the highway. He ran even faster with Donald trailing behind him.

"REMMA! REMMA!" Leandro cried as he ran after the vehicle. "REMMA, WAIT! WAIT!"

The SUV kept running as though oblivious to his cry and presence. He nearly outrun it; he was running almost alongside it and slapped its hind side over and over as he went yelling, "REMMA, STOP THE CAR! STOP THE CAR! DON'T JUST LEAVE US LIKE THIS, REMMA! REMMA! STOP THE CAR!"

The SUV suddenly pulled over and Remma's father got out from the passenger seat and then faced him.

"Please, just leave her alone," her father said in controlled anger. "She's breaking apart, and she needs time to heal. Not this one. Not this."

Leandro was begging, but Remma's father was all stone to him. He climbed back to the SUV, drove off, accelerated, turned around the bend, and was gone. Leandro was left there standing, heartbroken, and devastated.

After a long while he turned around and stormed past Donald without looking back.

June 1. Leandro was standing under the waiting shed a few blocks from behind their house, right along the main road that leads toward the town. He was waiting for the bus that would take him to the city. Today was his schedule to go to Tagbilaran and take a flight for Manila. Though the wounds was so fresh and his heart was still broken, he had no choice but to leave this place emotionally shattered.

He was standing there with his bags beside him on the dirt road when Donald came. They were standing side by side without saying a word for several minutes. None of them had the courage to talk nor the strength to listen. They were just there feeling each other and watching people passed by. A deafening, eerie silence wrapped around them.

After a long while, Donald spoke. "I hate to see us part this way."

No response.

"We don't even have the chance to talk about it."

Silence.

"Lean, talk to me, for Christ's sake. This isn't easy for me to see you go like this. Please say something. This is killing me."

Leandro grunted, and then faced him. "What do you want me to say?"

Donald closed his eyes and sighed in exasperation. "Jesus, Lean! Stop acting like that. If you think this is my fault, I'm sorry. I told you I don't love her! I ---" he stopped himself. He couldn't do it. He couldn't say it. Because at that moment he couldn't understand why he was about to say it, or if he meant it at all, or if it was what his heart had wanted him to say all this time. He stopped to question himself. He stopped because he realized that the emotions within him was trying to surrender him and spit him out with all its might.

"What else do you want me to do?" Donald went on.

"Bring her back."

"This isn't going anywhere," Donald said while shaking his head. In the distance, the bus appeared and rolled fast toward them.

"You're right," Leandro. "This is not going anywhere."

"Lean, please," Donald said. "Think it over. This is shattering us, please listen to me."

Leandro said nothing as he waited for the bus to come to a stop.

"Come back home once in a while, OK?" Donald said. "Promise me."

Leandro reluctantly nodded.

"I'm gonna miss you, man," he was about to hug him but Leandro bent to pick up his bags and walked into the waiting bus.

Donald was left behind, staring at the leaving bus. It was the last time the two of them see each other.

The photograph used in this entry is from Arun Kumar Sinha's Flickr page. To view the owner's webpage, please click here. Thanks!

LATE AFTERNOONS Part VII: The Journey

2009-03-24T17:00:00.005+08:00

Their lives were never the same again. Though Donald had tried to bring their lives back to normal, the trail going back had long been weathered and gone. The following years had been too hard for all of them; a constant struggle to overcome guilt and pain, a struggle for understanding and acceptance, a struggle to heal wounds, and a struggle for redemption.

During his first year in UP-Diliman, Leandro refused to have his room provided with a telephone by the scholarship coordinator. He reasoned he didn't want any distraction to his studies, and that telephone would be of no use to him anyway. Their barrio had no telephone lines, and even if it had they still couldn't afford to subscribe. His parents sent him letters every now and then, and he wrote them back once in a while. In August of that year he received a letter from Donald, and then another the next month and the following month, but none of them he had opened. All of them trashed and forgotten. On the other hand, he still had no news about Remma, had not heard a word from her. His calls to Canada were all answered by an answering machine, but got no return calls. It went on like this for another year, another hard, painful year.

On a night of mid-March in 2000, the telephone rang and echoed from the walls of his dorm room. His roommate went home in Cebu for the summer vacation. He was left there alone in the room. He missed his parents so much, though, but still he didn't want to go home. He preferred to take yet another summer class to busy himself.

Leandro, who was reading, glanced at the clock. 9:45 P.M. After the fourth ring, he pushed the book aside and picked up the receiver. He realized he needed one after all, especially now that he did not go home for two successive summer. His parents must have been anxious to hear his voice, to check if he was alright. And just last month he requested to have a telephone installed in his room after learning that their barrio already had a telephone service, and that his parents could call him through a payphone.

"Hello?"

He heard nothing but static noise. At first he thought the call must had been disconnected, but seconds later he heard a familiar voice.

"Lean, it's me," It was Donald, his voice shaky with anxiety and excitement.

He was surprised to hear him, but suppressed it almost instantly. "Yes."

"How have you been, Lean? It's been a long time." Donald could hear his own voice flickering in the line.

"I'm OK."

"How's your schooling?"

Leandro stared at the wall before him; a moth hovered under his study lamp. "It's good. I'm on a summer class now."

"So I've heard. You're not coming home for the fiesta?"

"No," he said weakly.

"OK. So I guess we're not gonna fish this summer, huh?" Donald managed to laugh faintly, but awkwardly.

"Don," he interrupted. "I have an exam tomorrow, and I---"

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know," Donald apologetically said. "Listen, I am calling from home. Our barrio has already a telephone service, you know, just last month. Just in case you want to call me ---"

"I have to go now."

Hesitating, Donald said, "OK."

Leandro hanged up and stared at the wall again. A few moments later he grabbed the book and continued reading, but after a few lines he pushed the book aside again. His mind was flying somewhere else. He picked up the phone and, for a hundredth time in two years, dialed Remma's number.

She was having lunch in a fine restaurant outside Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City. She attended university in Montreal, but once in a while went to Quebec to unwind and see the old French architectures in the city. But today she was not alone. They were in a middle of a conversation when her cellular phone rang. She excused herself, fished out the phone from her bag, and checked the caller ID. She thought about answering it for a while, but then pressed a button to cancel the call.

"You're not answering it?" it was her fiance.

"It's my cousin back in the Philippines. I'll make a return call later," she said, and then smiled. It was Leandro. And just the other night, Donald called her, too. But she still couldn't draw her courage back together to face the past.

Donald was in the abandoned wharf that same summer, alone. He was there for an hour, gazing from the open sea to his right to the mountains ahead in the far distance to the mangrove forest to his far left. The breeze was milder, and the waves created lesser white crests. White seabirds hovered above the fish pen near the mangroves. He was throwing pebbles into the sea when Leah appeared and stood beside him.

"I can throw farther than that," Leah spoke.

Donald, startled by her sudden appearance, turned his head to her. "Oh, yeah?"

Leah picked up a pebble and threw it as far as she could muster. Donald followed the stone with his gaze. It landed in the water a little farther than his.

"See?" Leah said, smiling.

"You're good," he said. A pause. "I've heard you're in a dean's list at University of Cebu?" Donald asked still throwing pebbles into the sea.

"I'm not consistent," Leah looked at the water where the pebble had landed. "Last semester I almost did not make it."

"But still you're good," Donald commented.

Leah looked at him and asked, "How about you? How's everything going with you?"

Donald stopped throwing. "I'm OK. My grades aren't doing good, though," he said, turned at her and smiled. "But I'm OK."

"Good," Leah said. She looked away and darted her eyes into a fishing boat not far away.

Donald fished a pack of Salem from his pocket and asked her, "Do you mind if I smoke?"

Leah turned her head to him. "No, it's OK."

Donald pulled one from the pack, put it in his mouth and lighted it.

Remma watched and, after a while, said curiously, "I didn't know that you smoke."

"Oh," Donald pinned the cigarette with his two fingers, exhaled the smoke, and said, "Sometimes, yeah. When you're bored you get to learn some things, you know."

"You're not the kind of person who easily gets bored."

"Well, I guess people changed. People tend to get bored more easily than before."

Silence. Donald kept sucking his cigarette and exhaling smoke. Leah, on the other hand, watched the dancing reflection of the afternoon sun in the seawater.

"I've called him just recently."

Donald turned to look at her. "Leandro?"

She nodded.

"Why?"

"Just wanted to know if he's OK," Leah replied. "He sounded so different, so detached. I couldn't almost recognize him."

Silence.

"Do you love him?"

Leah said nothing.

Silence.

"You're so different, too. You're not the same old Donald anymore."

Donald managed to chuckle as he looked away. "What, is that a compliment?"

Leah chose not to answer. Instead, she looked down to her feet and back to the sea, and then went on, "How's it with you and Leandro?"

"Leah, where is this conversation going?" Donald interrupted and asked suspiciously as he looked at her.

Leah faced him. "Donald, I know things are moving the other way from you. You are in pain, I can see it in your eyes. If you just let me---"

Donald quipped, his anger awaiting explosion. "Leah, whatever happens between me and him, it's between me and him. You are out of this. Don't try putting your feet in."

Leah was persistent, "You are hurt. And it hurts me to see you like this. You need to move on. I'm willing to help if you just let me."

"Who the hell gives you the right to say things like that to me?" Donald erupted. He angrily pointed his finger at her, the cigarette clipped between the pointing finger and the middle one. "This is my fucking life! Just keep your shit away from me!" And then he walked away.

When Leah called him, he turned around furiously and snapped. "WHAT?"

Fidgeting, Leah said, "There's something I need to tell you."

"Don, don't walk any farther," Leandro cried to him, but he kept walking.

"Come here, look!" he excitedly cried to his friend who stood by the boulder behind him. "There are alot more fish here!"

Leandro's worry rose to fear when he realized the water was now deeper for his friend who kept on walking.

"Don, stop! The water is deep in there!" Leandro cried as he panicked and ran toward him.

He turned around and saw Leandro running toward him, and then his right foot hit something under the water. He lost his balance and plunged into the water.

Leandro screamed, "DON!"

Deep in the water he could see nothing and could not breathe. Fear crawled all over him. He kicked upward and drank seawater and coughed. Then he felt something grabbed him and pulled him up and away. He blinked his eyes but could see nothing blurriness.

Donald woke up that last night of summer. When he couldn't go back to sleep, he stepped outside his bedroom and into the balcony. He lighted his cigarette and stared into the darkness. There, at the back of his mind, he saw the image of his friend sitting on that boulder staring at him.

The following morning, after spending the whole night thinking and contemplating things over, he went to Leah's house.

"Something wrong?" Leah asked.

"I need to talk to you."

Year 2002. Two months before their graduation, Donald learned something that occupied his mind the entire night, and of the nights that followed. He was finalizing his thesis that night when he received a call from Leah.

"You watching the news?" Leah asked.

"No. Why?"

"Turn your TV on."

Donald picked up the remote control, turned the TV on, and found the news. For a moment he didn't know what it was all about, then it slowly sank in.

Right after he had seen the news he called Leandro on the phone but nobody answered. He called again the following night, and the night after that. On the fifth night, he quit.

An hour after the Dean had called him he heard the phone rang while he was on the kitchen. When he picked it up and heard the voice of the caller, his heart raced so suddenly with overwhelming mixed emotions and disbelief.

"Remma?" Leandro's voice quivered with indescribable exhilaration. He frantically grabbed a chair and sat. "Remma? Is that you?"

"Yes, it's me."

"Oh, I can't believe it! God, oh, God. How have you been? Tell me something, tell me everything's OK with you. God, I need to know you're alright."

"Lean, I'm alright. Although sometimes I---" her voice quivered. She sounded like she was fighting back tears. A pause. "Look, I felt so bad that I don't even know if I can ever forgive myself for being so stiff and coward. I felt so terrible for tearing our friendship apart and did nothing to put it back together."

"Rem, it's not too late to put it back together."

There was silence on her side of the line.

"I'm so sorry I make the three of us suffer like this," Remma said. She was breaking, surrendering. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please forgive me---"

"Rem, it's almost four years now and I'm still not over it. Until now I still don't know what really happened. You just left without even telling me what's going on, and you're not answering my calls. So I don't know if, if---" Leandro's mind was swirling so furiously with so many questions, questions that demand answers, yet he found it hard to determine what they were. Then one question emerged. "Tell me Donald was lying, Rem. Please tell me he was lying."

Remma collected herself for this. She needed to compose herself, to make sure she could do as little damage to him as possible. "When you asked me why I didn't write you back, I was lying when I said I wanted to surprise you with my visit. The thing is --- the truth is that I couldn't find within me the right response to your feelings for me."

"Just say it."

"I love you, Lean. But not like the way you love me," she said, and closed her eyes.

Leandro was glued to his seat, numb and drifting. He hadn't noticed how firm and strong his grasp to the receiver had became.

"It's Donald. I love him, Lean," she continued. And in a soft, faltering voice, she said, "I'm so, so sorry."

Leandro closed his eyes as his chest tightened, his limbs soft and supple. He couldn't take it anymore. This was just too much. He bowed his head and wept.

After trying to compose herself again, she added, "But he doesn't love me. And it's so heartbreaking for me."

Leandro was taking it all so hard that he wasn't listening on the receiver anymore. When Remma spoke again, he thought he was just imagining it. "He doesn't?"

"He doesn't."

At first he couldn't believe it, but then his heart and mind started to take it in. And Leandro felt so terrible. He felt so bad. He should have listened to Donald, he should have believed him. He felt like he couldn't forgive himself for making it hard for Donald and for them. And for making him suffered the way he did.

"Oh, GOD!" Leandro said as he closed his eyes and exhaled loudly.

"Wish I could go there, to start things over. To put us back in one piece again."

Leandro opened his eyes. "We miss you. I miss you--- so much."

"Lean---"

Leandro quickly said. "Please come back."

Remma paused. "I can't."

When everything had settled in clearly, Leandro decided to finally move on and start healing wounds. He needed to forgive himself, but before he could he needed Donald to forgive him, to take him back as a friend. He needed his acceptance and reconciliation in order for him to redeem himself.

He dialed his friend's number the following night. Donald picked up the phone on the fifth ring.

"Hi."

Donald immediately recognized his voice. He straightened up and spoke. "Oh, hi. I'm so glad you called. I've been trying to reach you."

Leandro noticed that Donald's speech was loose and fluid, but went on. "I'm sorry I called back only now."

"It's OK," Donald replied. A pause. "I've seen the news."

"Oh, that," Leandro almost forgot about it.

"I'm so proud of you, you know, for winning that award, and for that scholarship from NASA," Donald said, trying to be sober.

"Thank you."

"Am I invited for the celebration?" Donald asked jokingly.

Leandro replied, "You're still my friend."

"Really?" Donald's voice raised not with anger but with his longing and anticipation to hear words like this from him.

"Listen, Don," he went on, "Remma called me last night. And---"

"She did?" He was surprised by this that he stood up subconsciously. The beer spilled from the bottle that he was holding with his right hand. He struggled to keep his balance.

"Yes, and she told me everything."

"And you believe her?"

"Yes, I do."

"And you don't believe me."

Leandro went silent on the other end. "Look, Don, I'm so sorry for making it so hard for us. I wish I could turn back time."

"It's OK. It doesn't matter now. What matters is that you're back, and you don't hate me anymore."

"No. I don't hate you, I never did," Leandro was fighting back tears when he spoke again. "Oh, God, I'm so sorry, Don, I'm so sorry."

"Sssh," Donald closed his eyes. "It's OK, it's OK." He said as he leaned on the living room wall. Tears silently streamed from his eyes.

"I felt so fucked up and stupid. So stupid!"

"No, no. Listen, I completely understand how you felt, Lean, and why this all happened. But I don't blame you, because it wasn't your fault, it wasn't your fault."

A momentary silence.

"Don, please, let me make it up to you."

Donald smiled. "Let's say, let's go fishing again. How about that?"

And they both laughed. Just like they used to.

After a while, Leandro spoke again. "Look, I'll try my best to find time to go there, OK? To see you. It's been so long, y'know. And I miss you."

"When are you leaving for the US?"

"Right after the graduation. They want me to be there that early."

"Your papers all ready?"

"No, but almost."

"Then you don't have time to waste," Donald said. "Just come back here when you're ready. I can wait no matter how long."

"When is your graduation?"

"Second Friday of March."

On Donald's graduation day he did not expect Leandro to come, because he knew he was preparing for his flight the following day. And neither did he expect a package to be delivered to his house right on the day of his graduation. There was no return address on the box, just his name and address neatly written across one face of the box.

When he opened it, he saw a miniature model of a Spanish Galleon about a third of a meter in length, its brown polished body complemented with white sails protruding from the body. It was enclosed in a clear fiberglass box.It was meticulously and painstakingly crafted to perfection and, right below the bow, a name DONALD was artistically painted in white. The boat was breathtaking.

It was where Leandro consumed his time during those moments when he needed to be consoled. During those stormy nights he found solace and serenity on crafting the boat.

It was the most beautiful thing Donald had ever seen.

The photograph used in this entry is from www.johnnytrapper.com. Click here to visit the site. Thanks!

LATE AFTERNOONS Part VIII: Standing Before Love

2009-03-24T16:58:00.004+08:00

After three years of working as a stewardess for the domestic flights of Philippine Airlines, and after undergoing several training and assessments, Leah was finally living her dream of being one of those who served as a business class stewardess for PAL's international flights.

She had already been to as far as Paris and California. She was very competent and very professional that she even received certain merits on her career. She was even offered a position in the corporate ladder months later, a good space in the PAL head office that promised lucrative income, but her heart remained on exploring places she'd never been.

On the other hand, Remma consumed her time moving in from once city to another, looking for a more promising career avenue, looking for a more stable life. In her first year after university she lived in Drummondville in Quebec, and then moved to Ottawa the year after that. Then she decided to run away from her chaotic life in Canada, and so she moved to Los Angeles and finally found her passion. Donald and Leandro had lost contact with her as an effect, and Remma seemed to be too occupied paving her own path.

Donald graduated without much recognition. When he failed to excel in the Web Development sector, he was opted to follow a lower path, something he slowly learned to embrace and love. He proceeded to take up some units in Education and, in 2004, passed the licensure exam for teachers. Following his achievement he applied for a teaching position in a state college in their town, and in 2005 was taking up a masteral study in Computer to upgrade himself to professorship.

Leandro had spent most his time digging on books and classes and projects that he had little time for himself or for a vacation. His feet were completely on two pedals to pursue the thing he wanted most: the fulfillment of his dream.

He had traveled from Houston to France and London. He had attended different exhibits and experiments conducted by renowned scientists. He had spent alot of time in the observatories. He had witnessed rocket launching and spacecraft landing. To him, these were all fragments of a picture he needed to put together for him to achieve his dream.

And during those times his mind was slowly pulled away from all his personal troubles that he sometimes regarded as distractions. He had also slowly forgotten that there were also personal things that needed to be considered, needed to be faced, and needed to be fulfilled.

And some of those forgotten things was his promise to Donald that he would be back, and of his promise to find Remma with the hope that she would somehow realize that love was indeed a process that needed to be learned to feel. All of those things, they were all slowly fading with time.

Donald woke up one morning in October of 2006 with a strange, numb feeling in his arms. When he faced a mirror he noticed for the first time the seemingly skinny arms, as if muscles were drawn out. And his left arm seemed to be unusually slightly twitched.

He canceled his class that day; he was supposed to give a preliminary exam but decided to conduct it the next day. He went to Tagbilaran with his cousin on the wheels to see his doctor. After half an hour of examination, his doctor referred him to a neurologist. Although his doctor said nothing serious about his finding, either he preferred to give the burden to the neurologist or he was honestly unsure, he still felt something was wrong, and it's serious.

When he visited the neurologist that same day, and after scrutinizing the test results, he was diagnosed of a motor neuron disease, a terminal illness for men above 50. And he was only 25. The doctor said his was a rare case. But even so, the disease was rapid and unstoppable. His body felt limp when he knew he was on a slow spiral journey downward to death.

It was a shocking, devastating news for him and his family, but he chose not to let people know outside the walls of their home. He wouldn't tell Leandro and Remma; he didn't want to derail them away from their lives and get them involve in his personal fight.

He still went to school; he wanted to try to live a normal life while the disease had not yet consumed his strength and body. But slowly and constantly, his body began to succumb. But not his courage to continue living, and certainly not his will to fight it.

One day, when he was at the park sitting on a bench alone, he was staring solemnly into the vast open sea and beyond. He was there for some time, watching the coming and leaving of time, staring at the occasional fishing boats at the sea below, and at the sea birds whose cries sometimes broke the silence. In his mind was a movie playing, jumping from the old days to the present and back.

When the sun had set he looked around him, from the unfinished lighthouse behind him to the old kiosk near the acacia tree and beyond it to the only entrance of the park. Then he realized something; he smiled when he knew what needed to be done.

One night, a week before Christmas, he got a call from Leandro. Though their friendship were getting back to normal, he still hadn't seen his friend since their first year in college. He had been looking forward to go fishing with him again, but he also understood how difficult it was for Leandro to follow such a wonderful but tough dream. So he just kept on waiting, and once in a while he felt contented and happy to hear him on the phone.

"In August they will be sending me on a mission to Mars," Leandro reported.

"You're now an astronaut? And did you just say Mars?" Donald exclaimed enthusiastically. "That makes you the youngest astronaut, right?"

Leandro smiled at this. "Right now I'm undergoing a series of simulations and training, and by early February I will be in Tokyo."

"Life is good, Lean. You're finally living it," Donald said happily. "Bring me home photographs of stars, up close, will you?"

Leandro chuckled. A pause. "Look, I'm so sorry I failed you. But I'm not forgetting my promise. I'm truly, terribly sorry I still can't come home."

"Don't worry 'bout it," Donald assured him. "I can wait."

After a while, Leandro asked, "So how's everything with you out there?"

Donald paused to look at himself, then said, "I'm good. I'm the same happy Donald now."

"I bet many students are now enrolling to a Computer major, huh."

Donald laughed. "That must be a school's credit."

They both laughed.

"So you're not settling down yet?" Leandro asked.

Donald paused for a moment. "Got no suitor yet."

"I mean, seriously?"

"No. Looks like I'm still enjoying my single life. Maybe I'll come to it one of these days," Donald answered. "You?"

"Nah. Looks like we're both doomed."

They laughed.

"About Remma, got any news from her?" Leandro asked.

"No. I haven't heard from her for ages now," Donald said. "I kind of miss her, you know."

"Yeah, miss her, too," Leandro replied. "I called her parents last month in Calgary, but still they didn't know how to reach her. Said she's now in L.A., and she sometimes called them, but wouldn't give her number. She calls them on a payphone."

"I wonder how she's been."

"After the fight with her parents, I have a feeling she's still not alright."

"Maybe she'll call one of us this Christmas."

A pause. Then Donald said, "Lean, Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas, too, friend."

His flight to Tokyo was delayed for one hour, and he was stuck there at the gate lobby. Pissed and outraged, he needed to cool himself and went to a nearby cafeteria. He was having a drink when he saw a familiar face passing by. He swore he knew her; he couldn't be wrong.

Pulling a trolley, she was walking graciously along the aisle toward a reserved lounge. She was tall and slender and confident. Her dark long hair neatly clipped to her head, her face flashed a smile so vibrant. She was stunning and beautiful on her stewardess uniform. A PAL logo pinned on her left side of the dress.

"Leah?"

The woman turned to see who was calling her. Her face beamed when she saw him. "Oh, my God! Leandro?"

"This is my first year on international flights," Leah crossed her legs as she talked. They were at the cafeteria waiting for the announcement of their flights.

"You have a place here in L.A.?" he asked.

"Near Long Beach," she replied and then sipped her coffee. After she replaced the cup to the saucer, she asked, "You're living now in California?"

After sipping his coffee, he said, "No. I'm residing in Houston. Came here for a meeting yesterday, and now I'm off to Tokyo."

"I'm taking a flight to Manila in about thirty minutes now," she said as she glanced at her wristwatch.

"You're going to Bohol, too?"

"No. But I'm taking a vacation in May next year. You're going there for the fiesta?"

"It seems vague as of now. Not sure yet,"he said. He leaned back on his seat before he continued, "Tell me how are things over there."

"So much have changed. So many things," Leah replied. "You should go home sometimes." Leah stirred her coffee. She was thinking for a while on something, but then dismissed it. "I talk to Donald once in a while."

"You see each other?"

"No. On the phone, most of the time. He's completely back to his own self again after you two were back in good terms."

Leandro looked down at his trousers. "That was part of life, y'know. But it was very remorseful."

Leah glanced at him apologetically. "It's been a long time, and I can't believe why I'm digging it. I'm sorry."

Leandro looker at her. "Do you know that life has made you become someone you wanted?"

"I'm asking you that same question."

"Oh, man," he groaned. "I made it appear like I'm bragging about it."

"No, you're not. You're just holding things too tight," Leah quickly responded. "And you look dry."

"What are you saying?"

"All I'm saying is that," she uncrossed her leg and continued, "you need to give yourself a time off. You need a break."

A woman's voice from the overhead speaker announced that a PAL flight had just arrived. Leah heard it said, "Well, it's good to see you. I gotta run now."

Leandro stood as she did. "This'll not be the last meeting, I hope?"

Leah smiled and said, "Let's see."

The news about the Mars mission had spread faster than wildfire and caused so much obsession. Local televisions and newspapers in the Philippines allotted longer airtime and longer columns on covering the whole event, and radio stations talked about it more than any events in the recent local history. It was the very first time that a Filipino would take off into the outer space.

Donald missed no coverage on the news, and collected clips and pictures from the newspapers. He had quit his job as a secondary Computer teacher in a state school, not because he had lost his passion but because his illness had weaken his arms and legs.

But even so, he had found another passion on which he poured most of his time. That afternoon he went to the park and observed the progress, and he went home early this evening with a more lighter feeling. Now he was sitting on his parent's house facing the television, watching the ongoing replay about the takeoff.

The news program had taken a break when the phone rang. He had a hard time walking across the living room to answer it. He picked it up on the ninth ring.

"Hello?" he was breathing hard when he spoke.

"Donald?" came the voice. It was Leah. "Is that you?"

"Yeah," he struggled. "It's me."

"What happened to your voice?"

"Nothing. Just got a hoarse voice."

"You've seen the news?"

"Uh-huh," he said. "Watched it just a while ago." He paused to breathe. He was having difficulty speaking lately. He wondered if the disease had already invaded the muscles used for speech.

"We've met, accidentally, at the L.A. airport last February," she reported.

"Ah, on his way to Tokyo," he said it affirmatively.

"Yes," she said. "He told you that we've met?"

"No. He hasn't called yet. How is he?"

"He seems haggard, but he's good. He's a grown man now."

He cleared his throat. It was dry; he needed water. "You see each other again after that?"

Leah hesitated. "Yeah, four or five times I think."

Donald said nothing.

"I'll be coming home in May. My vacation request was granted," she said. "And Leandro said he will be coming, too."

Donald felt suddenly elated. "Wonderful."

Phoemela, Leandro's youngest sister, after she passed the licensure exam for Physical Therapists, decided to focus her services to the patients in the rural areas of the province. She would be driving from one town to another to visit and give home-based therapies, mostly to injured patients and sometimes to those who suffered from strokes. It was her first case to attend a patient with motor neuron patient. And it was not just another patient; it was her brother's best friend.

Donald couldn't stand by himself anymore; his illness had partially shutdown his feet and arms. It turned out that the disease was more aggressive and rapid than it was expected. And the doctors were helpless, yet Phoemela was not giving up hope on him as much as he was not giving up on himself.

He was on a wheelchair when she arrived. Before she started the session, Donald held her arm lightly and spoke with much difficulty, delivering those words almost by syllable. "You told him?"

Phoemela shook her head. "I made a promise to you. I can't break a promise."

"Good."

"How are your parents?"

Phoemela carefully and slowly stretched his legs. "They're fine. They said to give their best regards to you."

"You're all been good to me."

She looked up at him and said, "Because to us you're more of a family."

"They told him?"

"No. They won't tell."

"Good."

She and her family respected him and what he had asked from them. They might had not understood why, but they did not bother to know. Even if it means breaking the heart of their own Leandro, a promise made was a promise kept.

After the session she offered to take him back to his room. When they were inside, she noticed a picture hanged on the wall. It was the same to one of those pictures his brother had sent them five days ago. It was a picture of the outer space in all its grandeur. The same picture they had in their house was a 4R size. The one she saw right now was blown into an 8"x10" and beautifully framed.

Saturday night on the third week of October. They were sitting on a garden in a fine restaurant in Las Vegas. It was the first time they had met after he arrived from his month-long space travel. He'd been so busy in the first two weeks after his team had arrived, and she had been to Asia and Europe in the third week.

"We'll be having a ball this second Friday of December. It's a big event," Leah said, changing the topic. "I want you to come with me."

Leandro stopped eating and looked at her. "Are you sure it's OK?"

"Actually, we are supposed to be bringing with us our spouses," she looked down at her food and continued, "or partners."

"Oh," Leandro said, "Sure."

"You're not busy?"

Leandro sliced a small amount of meat from the spare rib. "I don't recall an appointment for that day."

"It will be held in San Francisco. And it's far, you know, given the fact that you're in Houston."

"It's fine. It's no big deal."

Leah smiled and thanked him.

Their conversation drifted two or three more topics, when Leah talked about Donald.

"I've called him in mid-August, the day after the takeoff," Leah said after taking a sip from a glass of wine. "I told him you'll be coming for the fiesta."

Leandro went silent for a moment and when he spoke again. "It's not that I'm perturbed by it or something, but I've noticed that every time we sit and talk we always have a line about him. And I'm not being rude. He's my friend."

"Because I'm worried about him."

"What do you mean you're worried?"

"He sounded not OK, but he's not saying anything. I called home and my mother said he's sick or something. You have to call him, Leandro."

Late that night he sent her to her room in the hotel. They were there at the door standing face to face, saying nothing. When she stared back at him, something urged him to kiss her. He slowly moved closer to her, and she met him halfway and close her eyes as they kissed. When they parted their lips, she was still closing her eyes while he was looking down, unsure of what he might hear from her after such act.

When he heard no word from her, he said, "Good night, Leah."

"Good night," she replied softly. As he was walking away toward his room, she was still there at the door leaning against it.

When he called Donald the following day, his friend's mother, Mrs. Ricarda Gulle, answered the phone.

"Is he alright?"

Mrs. Gulle was silent for a moment. "He's fine. He's just tired."

"I've heard something's wrong with his voice."

"Oh, don't worry about it. It's nothing."

"Please tell him I called."

"Sure, I'll tell him," she said.

"Do you think he's all stressed out by his job?"

She went silent again. "He's --- not working anymore. He quit his job."

Leandro was purely surprised. "What? Why? When?"

"It was his decision, and we respect whatever he thinks is best for him. But don't worry, he's fine."

When they arrived at the venue that Friday night on the second week of December, the guests were stunned to see the most famous Filipino man coming in. He was one of their own, and people gathered around him extending hands and exchanging smiles.

Leah walked beside him as they waded through the crowd in gowns and tuxedos, until they had reached the table where they were to be seated. As they approached the table, an elegant woman in black who was talking to a woman and two men, more likely guests, turned around to face them. And by the time he saw her, his world suddenly stopped revolving. It was Remma.

Leah was not surprised at all, in fact, she was expecting to see her there. She knew sometime in September that Remma worked in an affiliate office in San Francisco as a Marketing Director, and learned that the event was organized mainly by her office. Remma was with the company for a long time now, but she didn't knew about because she'd never been to San Francisco and Remma had been using a different surname. As a matter of fact, this was their very first encounter.

On the other hand, Remma was completely abashed. Like the rest of the people that night, she had not expected to see him there. She followed every story that had spread across the country about him, partly because she was his friend and partly because something deep within her told her to. She admired how far her friend had gone to reach his once childish dream. And now he was walking toward her, he and his living dream. But her mind still couldn't think of the most plausible reason why he was there.

In the gardens outside the hotel, the two of them sat side by side on a metal outdoor bench. There seemed to be two different worlds that were revolving that night: the hubbub of voices and music inside the hotel, and the stillness of the night around them outside. Leah had excused herself to give them time to talk and keep up with each other.

"We've been trying to reach you. It's been a very long time and you haven't even called us," Leandro heard himself ask.

"I was running away from a past that's been too harsh for me," Remma answered.

"The same past that I had?"

"No. Lean," Remma turned her head toward him but couldn't look at him. "I was married."

Leandro wasn't sure if he could let those words in. He wasn't sure if his heart was drowning again or shattering. Or numb. "How come you never told us about it?"

"It was a mistake, OK? It was one of those stupid things I've done. I suffered so much, and so desperate to be all over it. I was so confused and moving without direction. I was so dumb and stupid. But I guess love makes you dumb sometimes," she said, sulking. "I was just trying to bring myself back together."

"When you called me back then, and told me you can't come home," Leandro said, recalling that very day she first called him. "Was that because ---"

Remma nodded.

Leandro looked away.

"Lean, I was so scared. I was too weak to tell you because I know I would only break you," she reasoned as she rubbed her hands subconsciously over her knees. "And it was too hard for me to give up Donald."

"You broke me when you told me you don't love me. Why didn't just drop it all?"

Remma couldn't think of a reason. "I've been causing so much misery to myself to those people around me. I don't know what to do anymore."

Silence.

"How are things turning up for you now?" Leandro asked.

"That part of me is completely behind me now. Things are OK now, I guess," she said, wiping her tears as she was composing herself. "Although sometimes I think that I have already gone this far but still couldn't figure out what I really want to do with my life. And sometimes I push myself to turn around and look back at the things behind me, looking for the things that I've done significant enough to justify why I'm here, or why I still exist."

"We all come to that at some points in our lives. I am sure that, like most people, you're gonna find them...what you're looking for."

"No. I couldn't, and I thought that perhaps I never would. But then I saw you on TV. And before I knew it I see you everywhere. I see you in my mind. And whenever I see you, something inside is starting to come alive. And everything that's troubling me, all those uncertainties, they're gone. Things suddenly changed, Leandro. And I don't know why," Remma uttered. "And now you're here."

Leandro pondered on what she was saying. "You still have that feeling for Donald?"

"No. I couldn't understand it, too. But it just disappeared over time."

"Perhaps you still love him after all. You saw him through me. When you see me, you are looking into your past. And they're getting clear again. And maybe that's what make things so different now."

"No, no," Remma shook her head as she stood and walked a few steps away. "There's just this something else that came rushing in recently, stirring me. It's something beyond explanation, something strange."

"Remma---"

"At first I thought they're making no sense at all. But now---I think I do," she paused as she thought about what she had just said, and then turned around to face him. "Yeah, I think I do."

"What is it?" Leandro asked.

"I think I'm falling in love with you."

"That's crazy," Leandro said, unbelieving. All this time those were the very words he'd been longing to hear from her. All this time he refused to believe that she didn't love him at all because he knew somehow she would learn to love him back. And this was what he had really wanted her to feel for him. And now that he heard her say it, he wondered why he didn't feel completely happy. He still felt incomplete. And now, deep inside him, he began to question his own feelings for her.

"I know. But it's this crazy thing that makes me feel sane and human."

"Look, Rem, you're just being impulsive and confused. You're just bluffing."

"I'm not bluffing," she insisted. She walked back to him and kneeled before him. She held him in the face with both her hands and guided him to look at her. "Leandro, look at me in the eyes and tell me you still love me. Tell me you're still in love with me. It's not late for everything. It's never too late, Leandro. You're right, you couldn't just wake one day and say you love someone. And I know it's absurd that it took me this long to realize that I'm in love with you."

Leandro couldn't understand his own emotion. They were rising and whirling altogether inside him again, screaming and fighting at each other, needing to be heard, needing to be clearly heard.

"Leandro, do you still love me?"

Deep inside him he was measuring how deep was his feelings for her. But after a short silence, Leandro heard himself said, "I don't know."

"Search your heart for me," Remma said, begging.

"All these years I've been hoping that one day I could find you and see you again. It's what's been encouraging me to keep going. I thought I could make you love me, and now you do," he paused, searching again for something inside him, something he needed to know to understand his own feelings for her. Then he looked at her and said, "But it's all gone. It all fade away. I don't love you anymore."

He stood up and was about to walk away when Remma held him in his arm and made him face her. And almost instantly she kissed him hungrily and longingly on his lips and stayed there for a long while. But she felt nothing but his cold, unresponsive lips and a lifeless kiss.

Leah was standing quietly at the threshold, looking out into the gardens and into the two of them. She didn't even recognized the beauty of the gardens or the sparkling of the lights. She saw them kissing and, before they parted their lips, she turned away and walked inside until she was lost in a sea of people in merriment.

Back in the garden, she was still kissing him. When their lips parted, Leandro closed his eyes. He was certain those feelings for her had died inside that he didn't even notice it was gone. And when he was searching for an answer, his heart finally shouted the emotion that his heart wanted him to hear. And this time he listened. He knew the answer clearly now. Yes, he loved someone. But not Remma.

When he opened his eyes he said, "I'm sorry. I have to go."

He walked away to find the woman that his heart was fighting for.

The photograph that appears with this entry is from wwww.terrifictoy.com. Please visit the site by clicking here.

LATE AFTERNOONS Part IX: Homeward Bound

2009-03-24T16:56:00.004+08:00

When he arrived at Leah's hotel room, the door was unlocked. He heard some movements inside, an indication that she was already home. He opened the door and stepped inside. He found her at the living room by the fireplace with her back on him. When he closed the door behind him, Leah turned her head and saw him.

"I was looking for you back there," Leandro said as he walked toward her.

"I got tired and sleepy," she said. The wine softly swayed in the glass she was holding as she turned around. "And I rather not disturb the two of you."

"She asked me if I still love her."

"And?"

"I don't love her anymore," he said. He walked closer to her until their heads touched. He gently placed his right hand thumb and forefinger on her chin, and made her look at him. "It's you that I love, Leah."

Leah was about to say something when he kissed her passionately on her lips. He wanted to make it last longer, but Leah backed her head and turned it sideway. She looked down, away from his eyes.

"What's wrong?" Leandro said, wondering.

"Leandro---" she let herself free from his left hand that was wrapping around her waist. "Please don't get everything wrong."

Leandro was perplexed. He couldn't understand it at all. His heart raced so hard and so loudly. "Tell me what's wrong."

"Leandro, I don't love you."

He heard it. And then he felt like his heart was stabbed with those words and left him bleeding. Suddenly, the world around him was spinning wildly. Muted. Blurred. Numb.

They were sitting on the couch side by side; she was sitting there feeling sorry for him, feeling down and sad for him, and feeling guilty of not telling him earlier when it wouldn't be this painful yet. Leandro, on the other hand, was sitting there, feeling the world collapsed cruelly unto him.

"I love Donald," Leah said after a long silence. "I love him so much that I couldn't love anybody else like this again."

Leandro said nothing. He was just sitting there, his body leaned forward with his elbows resting on his knees and his hands cupping over his head.

"And I would do everything to make him happy," Remma continued. "He wanted the three of you to reunite. And I'm doing my part to make that happen."

Leandro was confused. He looked at her with questioning eyes. "What do you mean?"

Remma couldn't look at him. "The reason why I brought you along tonight, is for you to see her."

Leandro grimaced in rile and disbelief. "You planned this?"

Remma weakly nodded. "This is what he wanted for the three of you."

Leandro breathed in heavily and then sighed. He had just dumped Remma, and then Leah dropped him and watched him rolled down a bottomless cliff. Now this.

"Why is this happening to me?" Leandro desperately asked not her but the world.

"Leandro---"

But he wasn't listening; he was breaking.

Silence. None of them wanted to speak. None of them had the courage to break the silence. But after some time, Leandro asked, "Does he knows?"

Leah nodded. "We talked one summer, way back in college."

Leandro said nothing.

Leah stared down and sighed heavily.

"But he don't love me."

Leandro was astonished and, simultaneously, turned his head to her.

"What?"

"He," Leah stopped herself from crying. She was fighting back her emotion when she continued, "He don't love me, Leandro."

"And he don't love Remma, too."

Leah knew so well why. After fighting it over, after fighting so desperately not to tell him the truth, she heard himself say, "He's gay."

Leandro froze. Then he laughed at it as though it was hilarious and ridiculous at the same time. "Oh, ho-ho-hoow. You're not serious."

"He told me," she continued. "I know I am not in the position to tell you this, but I thought you deserve to know. He's your friend after all."

Leandro's face suddenly changed reaction. "Don't fuck with me!"

Leah went silent.

"You're just fucking with me, Leah," Leandro defended.

"I have no reason to do that."

"NO! YOU'RE LYING! YOU'RE FUCKING LYING! DON'T YOU EVER SAY SOMETHING LIKE THAT!"

She said nothing.

"This is bullshit!"

"He realized it by the time Remma came back. He had been through alot of time facing himself and asking who he really was, and why he suddenly felt that way to you," Leah went on. "His feelings for you became intense when Remma was around. It was so intense that he finally heard what his heart wanted to tell him for so long. He finally understood what it was, and what it was screaming for. And that was the reason why he didn't love Remma, because it was when he discovered the answer to his own question."

"Oh, God. This is unbelievable!" Leandro said after a long time thinking it over. He was weighing her words, her intention, her motive. But he couldn't find anything that would tell him she was lying.

"You promised him something, Leandro. I think it's about time to visit him. As his friend."

The day before the New Year, Leandro went to the living room and picked up the telephone receiver. He dialed Donald's number in the Philippines. He also called him the night before Christmas, but failed to talk to him. He wouldn't want to confront him or harass him and push him to tell the truth; he couldn't do that partly because he knew his friend so well, and partly because he wasn't convinced Leah was telling the truth. He just wanted to check if he was alright, thinking that failing to keep his promise to visit him would somehow be outweighed by a simple phone call.

The phone on the other end of the line kept ringing for several times before it was picked up by Mr. Gulle, Donald's father. Leandro could hear no loud voices or music in the background, which was unusual for the family whom he knew had never failed to welcome the New Year expensively. But tonight he felt it was very quiet in the Gulle house.

"Hi, Mr. Gulle," he said. "It's me, Leandro. Is Donald there?"

"Yes, but he's already asleep. I'm sorry Leandro, but I can't wake him up."

Leandro checked his watch. It was still 9:30 in the evening there. "Is everything alright?"

"Yes, everything's fine."

"Please give my best regards to him. I'm just dropping by to greet him a happy New Year."

"OK. I'll tell him."

One Wednesday night in the first week of May, he woke up from last night's party and booze to a phone ringing by the living room. It was a long distance call from the Philippines. It was his birthday last night, but he was not expecting a call from overseas. His parents had already called him yesterday. When he picked up the receiver he knew it was Mrs. Gulle, who sounded in pain and was crying when she spoke.

"What's wrong?" he asked. He suddenly felt tensed and afraid.

"I can't take it anymore. I can't take it anymore," Mrs. Gulle mumbled. "Oh, God, I'm so sorry."

"Please tell me what's going on?"

"Leandro, Donald is dying."

Mrs. Olandria explained everything he needed to know. After he heard it he felt so unimportant and trivial to had been excluded from being informed about his friend's illness as early as he should be. But then he couldn't really blame Donald for having that decision because, in the first place, it was he who had started it. But what his guilt was screaming of was the reality that after ignoring his friend for a long time, and after how his friend felt for being neglected and almost forgotten, still Donald cared so much about him that he had spared him from worrying. And in the end, though they had been through such fragile past, he still understood and respected Donald's reasons. Because after all, he had no reason at all not to.

He couldn't blame all those people who had kept it out of his life either. And he thought this was what he deserved to feel, this was what he rightfully deserve after wrecking their friendship and after letting Donald suffer to an extent he would never know.

Leandro was slumping beside the table, crying all his guilt away and all his pride and remorse for not coming back to see his friend. He could have done it if he really meant to, and if he really wanted to. But because he thought Donald would always understand, that Donald would always be there waiting, he chose to postpone it to another year, and then another, and another year. He couldn't stop blaming himself for so many things, for all those stupidity and arrogance that consumed him. He couldn't even forgive himself. He found nothing to console himself, so he let all of those things out and cried them out loud hoping that somehow all of these would just disappear. He cried so hard all night.

Before going to work to file for an emergency leave, he called Remma and told her about Donald. Remma took it very hard, too. After composing herself back, he told her that he would be going home the soonest time possible. The call had ended several minutes ago, but Remma was still standing before the telephone, leaning on the wall. And she was crying, too.

It was a Friday when he arrived in Tagbilaran City airport. From there he hired a taxi to take him to the town of Candijay, a small, quiet town on the eastern part of the island province tucked between the low-lying mountains and the sea, a two-hour drive away from the city.

When he arrived, he immediately went to visit Donald at their house several meters away from the church and a few meters away to the park beyond. Mrs. Gulle met her at the gate with a happy smile and sad tears. She told him Donald was spending the late afternoon at the park, just like he had always done for the past five years. Mrs. Gulle explained that Donald began spending his afternoons at the park after he secured a job at the town's only college, and was even more determined after he was diagnosed.

Leandro was so stunned to learn this. He couldn't believe at such drive, such patience, such effort, and such dedication to the promise they had made. He was so enthralled by his friend's passion to spend all his afternoons there, watching the sunset like they used to. Such passion was so immeasurable and astounding and intense that he doubt if he could ever manifest the same and he wouldn't trust he could do the same thing himself either.

And he was even more emotionally and physically shocked to see how much the park had changed beautifully. It had transformed from being bushy and undeveloped and deserted to manicured and landscaped and maintained. The weeds and bushes had gone; the grasses were trimmed and maintained; cobblestones replaced the dusty trail toward the end of the park; street lamps installed at uniform interval and were elegantly designed; concrete fence ran along the perimeter, surrounding the park. He walked slowly toward the edge of the park, admiring the view as he went along and couldn't help but wonder how come he had never thought of doing it himself for their friendship.

From where he was he could see at the far end a man on a wheelchair beside the unfinished lighthouse; he was facing the sunset. As he continued walking a young woman emerged and stood beside the wheelchair. He recognized her, and he knew she was tending his friend. Phoemela sensed his arrival and turned her head. She was surprised to see him there and to see him back, because in the first place Leandro told no one that he would be coming home. But she was also aware of not disturbing Donald from his drifting away into deep reverie. She silently smiled and stepped away from the wheelchair to meet him halfway.

Phoemela hugged his kuya whom she saw for the first time in almost ten years now. She hugged him so tightly, letting him feel how much she missed him. After a while Phoemela told him about Donald's present condition and stood aside to let him come closer to his friend. As he went nearer, the reality of Donald's rapid wilting became clearer and horrifying.

His heart began to ache and his soul began to break into fragments by the time he reached Donald. Nothing had prepared him to see Donald like this. He couldn't dare stare longer at that feeding tube that was being inserted into the skin above his stomach. He couldn't dare look at the neck support or the plastic thing that seemed to be inserted into his throat. He felt his heart was crushed; he felt weak and numb and shivering. Guilt and self-blame wrapped all over him at the same time he felt pity for Donald.

Leandro walked a few more steps and turned around to face him so that he was blocking Donald's view of the sunset and his back on the sea.

With so much difficulty speaking, he said, "Hello, Don." But it was far more harder to say those words or any words at all, than he thought he could.

Donald fought so hard to look up at him. His eyes beamed with so much happiness and excitement to see him at last. Oh, if Leandro only knew how much he longed to see him again. His mouth quivered, his eyes began to water and his body started shaking. But that was all he could ever do. The disease had totally shutdown not only his feet and arms, but had also damaged the muscles that controlled his ability to talk and swallow. And his breathing would be next. Those words he longed to say, those words of happiness and thank you and sorry, they all came out as groans and moans. But Leandro could still hear those words somewhere in his mind and heart, and he could also feel how much Donald had wanted to hug him so badly.

Leandro couldn't take it anymore; he surrendered totally to all his emotions. He slumped on his knees and hugged his friend as he wept; he hugged him for all those times he had ignored and wasted, and he wept for all those times he had let his friend suffer this much and made him fight the disease alone. He asked him to forgive him, and told him over and over how sorry he was.

And though Donald couldn't hug him back, Leandro could feel his friend's arms wrapping around him in return. Accepting him.

Leandro was closing his eyes and tears were flowing profusely as he was hugging his friend, when he felt someone was walking toward them. He could still hear Donald groaning and could still feel his body trembling, but Leandro sensed someone else was there. When he opened his eyes he saw Remma standing silently not far away. Failing to hold back her tears as she watched the two of them, she wept silently. Beside her was her five year-old daughter holding her right hand.

When she saw Leandro smiled as he looked at her, her emotions rushed in so furiously that she broke into crying and ran toward them. With all the words she wanted to say, she hugged them longingly.

At that point, though they had not realized, after a very long time of walking their own lives and chasing their own dreams, the road that led to three different highways had finally led them back to where they had started and into the very place where they had promised to be together once again.

The photograph used in this entry is from Vanilla Coquelicot's Flickr page. To view the owner's webpage, please click here . Thanks!

LATE AFTERNOONS Epilogue and Glossary

2009-03-24T16:22:00.005+08:00

The weather was calm and sunny that day. The foliage of the trees in the distance swayed and rattled gently against the mild wind. From where they were standing they could hear the cries of robins and ravens somewhere beyond those trees. Wildflowers dotted the vastness of the cemetery.

Leah laid the flower she brought with her and, after she lighted the candles, she stood up to pray. When she finished, Leandro spoke.

"You told me he's gay."

Leah nodded in confirmation.

"Does Remma knows?"

"No."

Leandro darted his eyes from the tombstone to the distant old acacia tree. "Why didn't he tell us about it?"

"Because he's scared of losing you."

Leandro looked at her. "Why?"

Leah looked at him in the eyes. "Because he loves you."

END

GLOSSARY OF FOREIGN TERMS

Tatay - A poor family's equivalent for Father

Nanay - A poor family's equivalent for Mother

Kuya - A name that refers to and is used to call an older brother or an older cousin as a sign of respect.

Lola - Filipino equivalent for Grandma

Papa - An average Filipino family's equivalent for Father

Mama - An average Filipino family's equivalent for Mother

Pancit - A noodle, which is cooked in water that is enough to be all absorbed by the noodle.

Adobong manok/baboy - Chicken (manok) or Pork (baboy) cooked in vinegar and soy sauce with pimiento and garlic.

Escabeche - fish prepared/cooked as sweet and sour

Balikbayan - refers to Filipinos working or living abroad who come into the Philippines for a vacation or holiday.

Habal-habal - a motorcycle that is converted for public transport from a town to a barrio and vice versa.

The photograph used in this entry is from Catskills Grrl's Flickr page. Please click here to visit the owner's webpage. Thanks!

The Secret of A Summer

2009-01-15T23:24:00.010+08:00

A sudden change of course in their lives happened on that hot mid-afternoon day in the summer of 1992. Five years after the turmoil at EDSA. A year after the Mount Pinatubo had erupted. It was the year when Fidel Ramos had sworn for presidency. And mobile technology was yet to dawn.

It wasn't at all fateful, as what both of them forced to accept. It could have not happened because their mind sensed something was wrong, yet they had let confusion dragged them to damnation.

They were supposed to go to Bagiuo to attend at his uncle's wedding, but earlier that morning he knocked at his parent's bedroom and crawled onto their bed. He had a terrible headache. After they gave him an aspirin he declared two hours later that he could not go with them; he told them the pain had not yet subsided, and wanted to take some rest. Thirty minutes after his parent rolled their car from the garage and into the asphalt road, his nanny called in and said she couldn't get there until five in the afternoon. She was supposed to be on her day-off, but in special cases like this she wouldn't complain for an overtime.

Twelve weeks ago, on a similar day like this, he was also left alone in the house with his parents out of town and his nanny left for the supermarket. He knew too well how his nanny would always leave early and spend unusually long hours elsewhere. He called at his close friend's house and invited him over to accompany him. He was already eleven years old, and next opening he would be in high-school, but his childish fear of being alone in their huge house still hovered over him. And besides, he was bored, too. His mother gave him a dry cell-powered robot as a present two months ago on his birthday, and Marciano, his childhood buddy and neighbor, would love to play more than he would.

They were half-way rummaging all the toys in his room cabinets then when he remembered his father had a new pair of binoculars like that in the movie they had seen together before. They went to his parent's bedroom and ransacked every overhead closets. Then his friend saw it.

"What is that?" nine year-old Marciano pointed his finger at the two rectangular blocks lying face down behind a big Tupperware full of old cassette tapes and casings that he had pushed aside.

"It's some sort of VHS tapes," he grabbed the two black objects and then checked it. There was no label, and the cardboard casings were all white. He ran toward the player near the foot of the queen-size bed, turned the player and the TV on, and then waited. Marciano sat beside him with curiosity.

The monitor flickered, and a picture started to move. They then both fell silent.

Today, for the fourth time since, they would be tucked again in his parents room and play the VHS tapes once more. He knew long before about his family's plan to go to Baguio, and he had it all planned that he would stay at home. He called Marciano in.

At 2:30, with the bedroom curtains all hang loose and the TV audio muffled, they sat there watching. After three sessions in the past twelve weeks, the first tape had finally ended. It would be their first time to watch the second tape, and they were both excited, shaky, and jumpy.

"Put it in," Marciano said.

Halfway along the scenes, both their eyes shut wide in pure shock and disbelief. On the monitor was a scene so unusual and intense that they dared not speak a word or two. Two men and one woman were having sexual acts. The men kissed the girl, and each other, too.

After some time he turned to his buddy and, out of nowhere, asked, "Maybe we should try it, too."

Esmeralda, a 35 year-old, soft-hearted woman who lived a life based on principles, thought the traffic jam along Shaw Boulevard would be worse at this time of day. Yesterday the traffic was slower than creeping when a huge billboard had slumped to the ground and damaged several cars. But now the condition was far lighter, and she would be at the Garcia's by four.

She didn't bother to use the doorbell; she had a duplicate for the gate and for the main door, a way of knowing her employer had trusted her more than anyone. She heard no signs of Juancho, so she called his name. No answer.

She went upstairs and saw the boy's bedroom door was ajar. She saw no one inside. She presumed perhaps he dropped by his friend's house, and prompted to start preparing dinner. She had already reached the staircase when she thought she'd checked the master's bedroom if it needs cleaning.

Marciano was sitting on the bed; his eyes shut close. To his right was the door. In front of him was the TV set; the movie still running. His pants were on this feet. And Juancho was kneeling before him with his head on Marciano's groin.

The door flung open.

Year 2009. All the seventeen summers that had passed were no longer the same happy, innocent times of their lives. It had turned harsh and painful. It was the cruel reality their young minds had never thought would unfold as a result of their frailness. And ever since they were forced to act and think like grown men for them to outlive the grimness of their action. Time had moved on, but the grasses had not yet fully covered the mud.

Juancho now lived among the natives deep in the boondocks of Papua New Guinea, doing humanitarian work and spreading what love could possibly give. He'd been there for quite some time and had learned to love the people and the place, and became contented of the life he now lived and of the company of people with so much love to give and of people filled with so much love received. Though he felt never alone, but sometimes throughout the mission he felt empty and lonely.

For years he fought the urge to look back. At some points in his life he couldn't help his past from rushing back to him, haunting him. And no matter how hard he had tried to move on, the image of his friend still lived in his dreams. But he was also consumed by guilt and remorse that he pushed himself to accept the truth that his nanny was right, and instead threw himself into things that would occupy his time and mind.

But he was perhaps a frail man; too weak to make a stand on everything he do or think. And he could fight no more the desire to see his buddy. And so, amid the storms that wrecked inside him, and of his personal war against himself, he began the slow journey to find his friend.

In the birth of modern technology, he realized how limp he was for failing to make use of it to find the person who's lost for so long. He had lost trail of his best friend, which started a very long time ago when the wound was at its freshest, yet he could not help but wonder what it would be like to see or hear his friend for the first time in years.

He had lost track of his nanny, too. He could have asked his parents and relatives as much as he could ask them about Marciano when he made long distance calls once in a while, but anxiety and fear of suspicion had held him back from doing so. He wondered how she had been. He wondered how all the secrets had been kept. She was the bearer, and she promised to keep it in the box. But he could not help but wonder if she had ever said a slightest piece of it to anybody. And such slightest piece would be a bomb that would explode very loud. But so far, he sensed no commotion yet among the foliage of menacing trees.

He could still remember that very summer so well. And how it happened. And why. And he could still remember how he felt like burning every time Esmeralda glared at him silently. He was so embarrassed and guilt-stricken that he and Marciano had not seen each other after he had ran away, and up to now.

Esmeralda had persuaded him to stop seeing his friend, for nothing good would come out after what had happened, and it would be for both their good to let time bury it. In a voice that's more of a command than suggesting, she said he should find ways to outweigh his sin with good ones. And with a mind so young and pliant and confused and scared, he had promised to devote himself doing something for the humanity. And in return she had kept her promise. His parents had never learned about it. She had told no one. And had talked of Marciano no more. Then she had said something to him that he was not ready to absorb: he should convince his parents to let him study in his grandparents' place -- Cebu.

Then he had later learned that Esmeralda had left and lived somewhere in Quezon province. No words had been exchanged between them. No goodbyes. And he was too scared to ask about Marciano, too scared to remember him, too scared to think of his friend. But now, not anymore.

He wanted to his keep his promise to his nanny, and had no intention of letting it go. But he could not live like this forever, too: hiding from the past. He had already forgiven himself, and it was about time to ask forgiveness from Marciano and talk, if they felt they should, about the past for the very first time. And talk about how they had moved on. He now had the courage to risk the many years of trying to straighten his life just find him, if it's the only way to heal and totally move on.

The summer came. Under the scorching heat of April sun he drove his way to the town of Mulanay. He remembered that his nanny had sometimes told him about the stories of her town. And this was his first to actually be there. After asking a handful of passersby, someone finally pointed him to a modern concrete house with a manicured lawn fronting the sea, situated at the south end of the coastal town.

A tall, light built man in his late fifties opened the gate. When he introduced himself a sudden widening of the man's eyes followed by a gasp of surprise escaped the man as though he had been expecting him for so long and had already given up hope when it had finally happened. He was led inside the house as the man, who turned out to be his nanny's eldest brother, started narrating the story that he had never expected to hear. He learned that Esmeralda had been in Canada since 1997, five years after she had left their house in 1992, and four years after she got married. She now lived there with her family, but never once forgot about him and every once in a while asked Poncho, her brother, if he had already given the letter to him.

He learned that Esmeralda had suffered an immeasurable emotional pain, but Poncho was not specific enough as to why. She had always wanted to reach out to him, to say the things she longed to say but had no chance. And so she had left behind a letter hoping that one day fate would lead him here. Poncho gave the letter to him, which he took and opened.

My dearest Juancho,

God knows how I've always wanted to find you and tell you how sorry I am for forcing you to do the things which you shouldn't have done. I had been too narrow and clouded by my dark conviction. I have longed to ask your forgiveness for tearing your life apart and for directing you to somewhere else other than what you've wanted to follow. It had been a long time, and as the years gone by my guilt haunts me even more.

I know this time would come, as to when, of that I have no idea. With this hope I write this letter to tell you the things I so long to say.

Juancho, everyone who walks this world has his own shortcomings. Though we were created as God's perfect image, but we evolved into beings plagued with flaws. I had my share of flaws as you had yours. It is a lot helpful to learn from our mistakes, but it would also be healthy not to stay long with them. I know you are strong enough to leave them behind, for I see them in you the very day you decided to go. I, on the other hand, was not strong enough to completely move on. I ask you to forgive me, and when you do I can then sleep deeper.

Your family has always been good to me and welcomed me with so much respect that you all made me feel valued and trusted. For that alone I could never forget you and your kindness even beyond this earthly life.

What happened a long time ago did not stain my respect and perception of you, though at some point I found myself questioning those things that I believe in and doubting my own strength to understand why it happened. For years I have chosen to keep it to myself, and what I know would be kept only to me from here to the afterlife. Because every time I look at you I see a person of pure heart and kind soul; I saw deep in you a hope that you would become a man of greatness. You are more of a son to me, a son I could never have. And I will protect you from all the harshness of the world in every way I can. It was my very intent, nothing more, to suggest you should leave because I know you have that courage in you to start over. But I could also not deny the fact that with that intention I had pushed you into the wilderness. I know you hated me. I just hope you don't hate me anymore.

I do not believe early actions define a man in later life, for with our desire to change and move on is always more powerful, and would always mend the wounds of the past. I asked you to draw the courage to start over and lead a better life, because I believe that you could. As for me, I am waiting for your forgiveness for me to survive.

For so many years I have not heard from you and reckoned that perhaps you've already forgotten me, yet it is my very hope that you are now living a life whose wounds from the past has long been healed, and whose new self is nurtured by forgiveness and redemption.

Always be your nanny,

Esmeralda

When he drove back home that day, tears couldn't stop from falling. For he, unlike Esmeralda, had not exerted as much effort to thank her. Yes, back then he felt resentments to his nanny and anger to himself, but now he'd seen where all those decisions and actions were leading him to. He should have thanked Esmeralda for redirecting his life. He should have thanked her for loving him that much.

That evening, he picked the phone and, holding his breath, dialled Esmeralda's number given by Poncho. It was Sunday in Canada, and he presumed she would be at home. On the third ring, someone picked up the receiver on the other end. He had trouble controlling his emotion and his body from shaking.

"Hello?" the voice of a woman cracked the momentary silence.

"May i speak with Esmeral --" he was shaking.

"Juancho?" he could feel her voice suddenly trembling with joy and disbelief.

"Yes, it's --"

"Oh, my God!" the woman gasped, followed by silence. He was about to consider that the end of the line had hanged up, but he thought he heard her sobbing.

"I'm so stunned. Oh, God, thank you for calling," Esmeralda exclaimed. "Oh, Juancho, if you only knew how long I have waited for you to call. Where have you been? How have you been? Where are you?"

"I'm OK. I'd been in Port Moresby. It's in Papua New Guinea. I'd been there on a mission. But right now I'm in Manila," his voice, too, sounded as if emotions that wanted to explode were suppressed. "I got your letter."

Esmeralda wept. For so long she had wanted this moment to come, and there were so many words she wanted to say, but she found it difficult to say them all at this moment. Instead, she just wept and said over and over how sorry she was, and begged him to forgive her.

"Yaya," he was surprised to find himself called her by the name he used to call her in his early years, but he continued, "please don't be. It is I who should feel sorry for what I've done. And I should have thank you ---"

"Ssshhh..."

"I'm so sorry..."

After sometime, when both their emotions had subsided, Esmeralda told him something. And she sounded urgent.

"You need to go to Chicago."

He was startled. Chicago?

"You need to see him, Juancho. Before it's too late."

"What do you mean 'before it's too late'?"

Esmeralda broke the news as he sat there listening. Then suddenly he felt like his heart was crushed forever.

Before he replaced the receiver, Esmeralda said something more.

"Juancho?"

"Yes?"

"He missed you so much, Juancho. He still does."

Esmeralda told him that every now and then she came to Chicago to visit Marciano hoping to bridge the long time that had been lost to the wind, and of trying to reconstruct with him all those lost times. She had called Marciano's home in Manila, had found out that he was in Chicago, and later learned she'd learned that Mariano was dying. When Esmeralda told him that time was running out, Juancho knew he had to act fast.

He had been to Marciano's house in Manila when he arrived. But all Marciano's aunt had told him was that her nephew and his parents were in Chicago. Been there for almost a year already. He had asked why, but she had said nothing. He had asked how he was and how he had been, but there was no mention of the terminal illness. What she had told him instead was the sudden pain and devastation that she remembered seeing in Marciano's eyes that very day her nephew learned he went to Cebu. And that it stayed in him for so long, and was never the same happy kid again since. None of them had understood the sudden coldness his nephew felt from him back then. Or why he had left so sudden without saying goodbye to Marciano.

Esmeralda met him at the hospital entrance. So much had changed in her. She was visibly older, much older than he remembered. After a long, emotional hug, they went inside and straight to Mariano's ward.

A woman in her mid-twenties opened the door. Esmeralda smiled faintly at her and asked about Marciano. He's not getting any better, the woman said, close to tears. Before Esmeralda could introduce him, a little girl around four appeared beside the woman.

"Reah, this is Juancho."

Reah started to tremble as her voice faltered when she talked. She was fighting back tears. "I've been looking for you for so long," she started. "It's all he's ever wanted all this time, to see you." She broke and excused herself, said that she was just happy that her husband would finally find peace within him. And in a soft but happy voice, she said, "Thank you for coming."

She did not mention about what happened that summer, and he wanted to ask her if he had confided to her. But it didn't matter anymore. And he didn't care anymore if people knew about it. They're reunited now, though it took that long, but still it helped mend their souls so much.

He was led to the bed at the far side of the room, the one next to the window. Marciano wanted to be near the window, Reah said, so he could see the coming and leaving of time, counting the days until this very day would arrive.

What he saw before him made his heart sunk and crushed into pieces. He was not prepared to see him like this, to see him suffer like this, to see his illness consumed his body so much like this. His body withered, his flesh sunk to his bones, his figure more of an old man than of a 26 year-old's. His heart shouted so much ache. He wanted to cry.

Marciano was awake but his face was turned to his right toward the window, and his eyes was wandering at the view outside. His mother sat next to his bed, reading a book out loud but softly. When he sensed people coming in, Marciano turned his head away from the window toward them. Almost instantly, as if he was expecting him today, a weak, faint smile crossed upon his face.

"I knew you would come," Marciano muttered. "I knew you would..."

Days before today he had prepared himself to what he was going to see or hear. He had prepared himself of the words he needed and wanted to say, but none of them seemed to come out the very moment he saw him smile. Emotions were screaming, and he wanted to know what they were, but he couldn't hear a word from them. They were close to exploding, and he couldn't find a way to suppress them. All those years of longing to find his friend were drowned by the overwhelming feeling that burst into tears. He rushed toward him and hugged him so tightly, and never wanted to let go.

So much time was missed by both of them; so much words needed to say and hear and understand, but at that very moment none of them spoke a word for the hug they gave to each other was more than enough to express all they ever longed to express, and was all they ever needed to shrink the time they had lost.