Remembering a distant past

Reunion of the Romblon High School Batch '61 in April 2011
at the house of Benita Reyes in Sawang, Romblon, Romblon

A set of reunion pictures sent to me by a high school classmate revived not only my memories of the past but also the question about life's meaning that I have been grappling with since I was in college. We belong to Batch '61 of the Romblon High School in a small town called Romblon in the heart of the Philippines. That means that we are now more than 60 years old.
The first time I looked at the pictures, I could hardly recognize most of my former classmates. I had to compare notes - by email - with another classmate, Jim Marquez, who is now in the US. Since both of us were not at the reunion, we made a little guesswork and agreed on Napoleon Lim, our salutatorian we fondly called by his nickname Dandette.
Dandette, who could have been the dream boy of many girls because he was not only brainy but also handsome, was a son of a prosperous businessmen in Romblon, a small town in a province after which the town was named. So it did not come as a surprise to me that he became an engineer. What I heard of him was that he became an executive of a multinational oil company with offices in Manila.
The women in the pictures, most of whom were pretty when we were young, still have traces of their youthful glory. But the ravages of time have undeniably taken their toll. It is futile to deny that time, reputed to be a great healer, is a lousy beautician. I have always remained young at heart but the pictures reminded me that we are now in the twilight years of our lives.
I remember having surreptitiously inserted love letters in the books of some of the girls with whom I had a crush. The letters were signed Doveglion, the pen name of the famous Filipino poet Jose Garcia Villa. I did not have the courage to sign my own name on the letters not because I did not like the name with which I was christened but because I was so dark and ... well, neither tall nor handsome.

A farmhand, I was shy then, a loner who would melt under the spotlight. I remember having just two close friends in our class - Rolando Mingoa, who lived in a farming village next to one where I lived, and Victor Lagman, whose family came from Davao del Norte down south.
The dictum that birds of the same feather flock together applied to the three of us. Rolando, nicknamed Lando, and Victor, who was Vic to those who knew him, were not social mixers as well.
I have a fond memory of Vic - my seat mate in fourth year - during a quiz in Literature. Sensing perhaps that I hadn't studied the previous night, he left his answers wide open and told me to copy. "No, thanks," I declined.

The administration building of the Romblon National High School,
formerly Romblon High School, and part of the marble grandstand.

We never talked about the incident after the test, which I passed with just a little above the borderline grade, but I knew that I had gained his respect. We often sat together at the marble grandstand during PE watching other students playing on the ground - with a few moments of conversations once in a while. It was friendship that thrived even in silence.
Lando came from a village called Agnipa, about two kilometers from Ginablan where my sister and I lived with the family of my uncle after my father died in Bacolod City where I was born. Lando and I both dreamed of going to college, although we knew how enormous were the challenges before us, particularly because there was no college in Romblon, Romblon, then.
Lando's family had a tract of land whose produce wasn't enough to send him to college in Manila or in any other city. He wanted to become an engineer and so did I. Despite the odds, we kept on dreaming and believing in the saying that, "if there's a will, there's a way." After graduation, Lando left for Manila. I went to Bacolod, which I was familiar with, a year later. My journey to Bacolod later took me to Batangas and Manila a few years thereafter.

The athletic field and one of the two wooden grandstands.

I agree with people who say that the best time in our lives was our high school days. Those were the days when we started dreaming of our future and did not have much cares for the here and now. I recall the dying days of our senior year when we were asked by some of our classmates to write in their slum books on what we wanted to be and other personal circumstances.
I remember that apart from my dream to become an engineer, I added an entry that I wanted to own a ranch. That entry caught the attention of a classmate, Arturo Fabellon, who kidded me that I could easily fulfill that dream if I would settle for a ranch with only one or two cows. I did not mind him. Youth was a time for both dreams and fantasies.
Most of our classmates became what they wanted to be. Dandette became an engineer. Senia Galindez became a teacher and so did Vilma Muleta,Yolanda Mindo, Melba de Joya, Arturo Fabellon and Wilmo Fallar. Jim Marquez became an architect and Vicky Uy a nurse. I haven't heard on what happened to Ruben Famorcan, our valedictorian, and had lost contact with Lando and Vic.
There were more than 50 of us in Batch '61 and it isn't possible to keep track of each of us. In the pictures sent to me by Benita Reyes, who has settled in a village called Sawang after working in London, I did not see Ronaldo Platon, who was among the popular guys in our batch, Louie Morente, whom I courted quietly, and Leny Capa, who was so demure you could put her on a pedestal.
I did not become an engineer and that's a long story that may take a book to write. But in a nutshell, I realized when I was working on my way to college - first as a construction laborer and later as a security guard - that an engineering course was too expensive for me to pursue. That convinced me that our fate is not always in our hands, no matter if Shakespeare tells us that our destiny is not written in the stars.

My destiny was written in the stars since I started to develop a passion for writing when I was in high school.  Although I was just an above-average student in my academic subjects, I was getting very high grades in formal themes. Knowing my passion for writing, a friend advised me to take journalism when I was about to enroll at the Lyceum of the Philippines in Manila later.
Let me take a little ego trip.
In high school, I remember that one of our English teachers, Mrs. Amelia Festin, once called me to the teachers' room. With my formal-theme writings on her desk, she told me I had a knack for writing and advised me to keep the writing torch burning. Another English teacher, Miss Milagros Mayor, a distant relative who became Mrs. Gutierrez, had asked me once to take the entry exams for staff members of The Marble, the school paper. Dreading competition, I did not take the tests.
I dreaded competition in high school. That was why I always wanted to be in Section 2. But in fourth year, I wasn't allowed to go back to my home section where I was king.
There were two important lessons I learned in life. First, we have to dream. That's the same advice the fairy tale Cinderella gives us. Second, we have to learn how to  appreciate whatever blessings that come our way. Life will lose its meaning if we do not enjoy it. But enjoying life does not necessarily mean going to parties or outings. You can enjoy life even in silence.
In the twilight years of our lives, I am reminded of the famous Shakespearean line that life is "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing". The Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible has another version for that - all our worldly endeavors are just like chasing the winds.
Having said that, let me leave a small reminder to close this article. In life's dying embers, may we realize that however we highly think of ourselves we are no more than pilgrims in this world and that our lives are just fleeting shadows of our dreams and passions.




Please visit my other blogs Miscelleous at http://www.miscellaneous-oddnews.blogspot.com, Viajero at http://www.viajero-funtravel.blogspot.com and Fun in Life at http://www.salt-funstories.blogspot.com.


To my classmates. You may want to read my book "The Gypsy Soul and Other Essays" which is available at amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. The book image is on the top-left side of this blog. Just click the image, it will direct you to amazon.com.
I extend the same invitation to other readers.
I hope I could launch another book next year, That's a dream.
Have a nice day.