“God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.”
— James M. Barrie
Here you are again
Waking up early
Only to realize
You are just a couple of weeks
Short of 76
You come to terms
With three grown up daughters
(One of them moved on in 2021)
And six grandchildren growing fast
You reckon with
Mountain of files
Hundreds of souvenir programs
Thousands of unclipped and uncollected stories
Old letters from famous people
Thank you notes for stories you no longer remember
And tons of photographs!
You realize
You are not a good collector of family albums.
You don’t have a photo
With your mother or father
And only brother.
But you have hundreds
With your grandchildren
From baptism to school fetching days
First nights at the ballet
Matinees at the theater
Breakfast, lunch and dinner
With famous people.
You have boxes full of memories
Old letters dropping from unread books
Autographed books and photos
In the living room book collection.
Meanwhile
The kitchen yields old kettles
From the island
They smell of island cooking
You don’t get to taste these days.
But just looking at them
Unveils moments
When your mother cooked island delicacies
And she making sure you enjoy them.
Lots of memories in the island
The town by the sea
The cemetery overlooking islets
Mountain ranges
Sliding down hills dividing towns and villages
You remember
Swimming naked by the river
Your first movies in the capital town
Acting in a couple of school plays
And singing in the college glee club
How come you still remember
Your first eclipse
In this Bicol village by the sea
In the late 50s?
You come across an old photo
Of your younger self
In your grandson’s baby book
Taken in a Guimba, Nueva Ecija studio
In the late 50s
You remember the photographer
Covered with mysterious cloth
And asking your cousins to smile
You examine your last stories
And your latest poems
And you see your lifetime merging
With people and places
In your stock file of memories
Suddenly you are not in a hurry
To publish those stories
The flood of poems
That came rushing
In the early morning hours
Of the pandemic
Suddenly you are weary
Of the vagaries of networking
Just choosing the poems and the stories
Renders you tired and wasted
But you are energized once again
By the good words
Brought in by famous people of the written word
You are just a couple of weeks away
To closing 76 years of a life.
It is a lifetime of
Of scenes from childhood
The endless pain of adolescence
The overpowering weight of adulthood
When you wake up
One day in your life
Your daughters have their own families
And their own choices
And how they see society in transition
Meanwhile
You have seen eleven presidents
And with them came
The new versions of clowns and crocodiles
In the house of the people
It was your first taste of the pandemic
Your first year locked in your house
Unable to trod on familiar streets
With your grandchildren
And coping with the tyranny
Of face masks and face shields
In a couple of weeks
I am 76
You grapple with
Seven decades of discoveries
And your share of modest triumphs
And coming to terms with your strength
And your share of human frailties
At year’s end
Your youngest granddaughter
Turns five and the youngest grandson
Spritely at 4
I am 76
I am not bothered
By non-existent legacies
And imaginary virtues
That people like to collect
In their frail human drawers.
I survived the virus
And the carnival of the animals
In my work-a-day world
I am 76
It is pure exhilaration
To see the world
In the eyes of a septuagenarian
Who has seen it all.