CGC's Reflections

Father's Love Letters and Other Stories [Response to Imnas]

Thanks Imnas.

I wanted for a long time to write about the love letters. My Sisters and Brother have never seen them because I found them a few days before I came back to the US.

The story that I learned was beautiful, the love letters (based from what I could piece from the dated letters) started when my Father was 19 years old, my Mother was 17 years old then. It continued even after they were married already, for a few years after that because as a carpenter, sometimes my Father had to live out of town, where the work was located.

It turned out from the letters that they were neighbors and grew up together. I knew about my parents being neighbors because sometimes it came out during our "Family time" on Sunday afternoons -- after all have come home from mass and we just finished our lunch.

Of course, every meal time -- breakfast, lunch and supper -- when we were young was "Family Hour". We spent about an hour usually, not just eating but talking as a family. But, the Sunday afternoons were more special since on Sundays, we were not supposed to work. So, Sunday afternoons were more stories and dances (I even got to dance with my Mother) and fun and laughter.

I had a personal page (with geocities) where some of the stories of those mealtimes and Sunday afternoons were told. But, I just found out that Yahoo has deleted my webpage already, since I have not visited for awhile. [I wanted to place those stories in another webpage -- since some people wanted to know more about me.]

It is too bad because sometimes I do not make copies of what I have written. Just like the above story, as everything written was spontaneous -- whatever got in my mind, so it is usually rambling.

This experience of my webpage being deleted is the reason why I am wary of placing too much even in Flickr because it might be the case again that Yahoo might do the same, in case I get inactive for a long time. And, it was not the first time that Geocities deleted my webpage.

Thanks for encouraging me, as well as those who have read this. I might get motivated to finish the story, one day. It might be one of the stories that will be part of my personal page that will ge linked with the Likas-Philippines website. The personal webpage itself will have my initials -- CGC. Tentatively, it is called "CGC's Reflections". So, maybe you will find it in there as one of the links.

I cannot promise anything because I get more busy everyday. Right now for example, a great deal of my time is spent trying to set up specific sections of the Likas-Pilippines Galleries. And, to think the latter is envisioned to be just a minor component of what was planned for the Likas-Philippines. I am lucky if I get 2-3 hours of sleep each night, as a result. Until I get more help with the website and the Flickr group, I am not sure if anything will change.

But, even then, I have so many other projects that interest me, so it is unlikely that much will change even when more Filipinos will volunteer to help in making Likas-Philippines truly a collaborative effort. I do not mind doing it though because I am learning so much, sometimes I even forget to eat, since I get so absorbed with what I do. I am a bit slow, that is one of my Waterloo. I wish I could live until I am a hundred years, but even then I think I would need so many lifetimes just to accomplish the dreams I wish to realize.

At the very least, if I get to busy for the above reason, I might include the "verse" I have written about the love letters -- about how they were found and why they were very important to me.

Back to the discovery of the letters, the reason why I was digging into our Family chest was for a different reason. I was trying to find if there were any of my old letters that were left. I used to write very long letters to my Family when I was in high school and college -- six to eight pages long, whatever came to my mind. But once, during my trip back to Manila, when I was already in college, something happened that shocked me to the core. I never told any of my Family about the incident, even to this day. And, most likely never will.

The incident made me even more private*** as a person. Since I was the only boy growing up at home when I was young, my Family have always been very protective of me. In return, I have always been very protective of the privacy of my family. I did not want people trying to involve my family -- as part of their threat to make me cower to their demands.

One of the crazy things I did as a result of the incident was to destroy all my letters that I could find at home, the next time I went home on vacation. I do not even understand now why I did it but that was the state of mind I was in, because of the incident.

It was one of the things I regret, since then, because they were treasured by my Family. The destruction of those letters were a great loss to me also because with my Family, there were things I could tell them more easily in letters than I could in person -- more raw with my feelings and sharing my thoughts with them.

It is funny in a sense but I have always been shy even with my family, when it comes to sharing how much I feel about them, as much as I know they feel about me. We are not big into saying "I love you" because it seems saying those words was an affectation.

In fact, my sisters knew I seldom say "Thank you", for the same reason. Some people find my not saying those words was lack of gratitude. Fortunately, when it came to my Family, they knew better.

Once, indeed, I uttered the words "Thank you" to my eldest sister, Manang Ching before I left after a very critical vacation. I was thankful because she had done so much -- for something very critical for my future. But, I must have always been transparent to her and perhaps the "Thank you" while indeed a sense of gratitude also meant something different for her, the way she knew me.

She never mentioned my slip.

About a month after I got back to Los Banos, I got a message from her to come back home. I did not know why and it was a very unusual request. Unbeknownst to me, she moved heaven and earth to help make my dream come true, after all.

Why that dream was imperiled was my own decision. In a split second, I turned down a fulltime fellowship that would have allowed me to come to the US to study, all expenses paid for up to three or perhaps five years, including transportation back and forth.

When you are poor like me, that decision was like turning down a kingdom. I never told my Family about it either. However, I did not have any second thoughts doing so, as a matter of principle. I resented the questions of one of the interviewers who was supposed to be on my side because we belonged to the same department. Instead, she was implying in front of others who were more friendly that somehow I might not be deserving of the fellowship.

Actually the interview was pro forma because the fellowship was already set-aside for me. The Chairman of our Department was astounded that I turned it down because he personally secured the fellowship for me. He tried to persuade me to go back, to tell the Interview Committee that I misunderstood. But, I told him emphatically why I turned it down and that I will not change my decision, even if it meant I would not be able to come to the US, to study.

No, my sister did not raise the money for me to study in the US, she was not that rich. But, if you ever read this famous line from Shakespeare's Richard III:

"A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse"

It was the "horse" that my Sister provided, so I would have a chance to pursue a dream. Everyone in my Family helped actually, my Father, my only brother, Mang Ter and all my other sisters pitched in, even my favorite Aunt Ilang, who was very poor gave some money.

I never asked for the money actually. I knew at the time that the amount was a fortune, if you are not rich. I just shared with my Father and my eldest sister Manang Ching that I won't be able to come to the US because I did not have the money required for my transportation and the initial money required by the school and the embassy before my student visa would have been approved at the time.

The act was a re-affirmation of how much they love me since I was quite young. One that I have tried to return in my own way.

I knew that with every passing of time, interacting with people, I have changed as a result fo the interaction -- some for the good and some for the bad. So, when I went home on vacation, when I was already living here in the US, I tried to find the boy that I was -- captured in those letters -- the innocence of my dreams shared so easily and the passion I felt for my family.

Maybe it was Fate that I found the letters during that particular visit, for many reasons. And, that was part of the story I was supposed to finish.


Thanks.

Cornelio
________
***And so, I resent it very much when people, who I do not even know "demands to know about me" -- as a pre-condition for initiating any association with me. It is different if I decide to share information as I am doing now. Or, to share it in a manner like this, for people who really go deeper.

The first webpage I created in Geocities actually was all about my feelings and my dreams and aspirations when I first discovered the internet and interacted with peoples of the world who I might never meet -- about the possibilities the internet offered. I realized later that many people in the internet tried to create a persona, other than who they are in real life. In my case, I opted to be who I am and assumed those on the other side did the same.

I talked mostly about my family , as I am doing now, not to brag about them, but to share and cling to a world that I find diminishing in our time. The only difference perhaps was how I presented myself and at my own pace.

As one of those who I got to know better, observed your page (i.e., the Geocities page) is more like an onion, you have to peel each skin to get to know the core. Indeed, I did not even know that it was what I was doing, but I did like to place links within the linked pages, so that a single page could lead to hundreds of discovereds of pages.