Santa Lost, Santa Found
“...He sees you when you’re sleeping... He knows when you’re awake... He knows if you’ve been bad or good... So be good for goodness’ sake...”
But today is much different from 20 years ago. Having been there and done that over and over, it’s as if the joy and wonderment in an experience wears off like shiny wood varnish dulled by time, wear and tear. This is not exciting and I am not at all happy to be here. The frequency of this type of silent dialogue between the me that I like and the me that I don’t like too much is worrisome. I’ve mumbled to myself with seatmates who hardly understand what I fret about. “Why is it that as I get older, the flowers aren’t as pink as I always thought they were?“ I’d ask. No answers. “The sky isn’t that blue or the grass that green. The mornings aren’t as hopeful and exciting. And, yikes, I actually look forward to retirement by 10 p.m.” I’m trying to stop the habit of mumbling. Time to investigate and follow the clues. What was lost? How do you find it again? Where do you start? Does anyone ever really get that lovin’ feelin’ for life back once it starts to wane?
From my window seat, I’m looking at the sky among the clouds that are perfectly formed and lit from within with the morning sun’s rays. Like a painting by Michaelangelo but, perfect. I remember believing that each cloud was the bed of an angel. And that they were a layer of guardians between heaven and earth. Come to think of it, I remember believing in fairies and elves and wishing upon the first star that comes out at night. I remember believing in Santa Claus and Christmas lists. I wrote a letter for Santa and asked for a toy slide for my Barbie doll when I was eight years old.
That Christmas morning, my brother was jumping all over my bed, “Wake up, wake up, look what Santa gave you!” In the small backyard where we play, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it. A real slide — for real kids like me! “Congratulations Korina, congratulations! Santa gave you more than you asked for!” my brother couldn’t get over it. I thought the slide was the biggest thing I’d ever owned. Such are the memories that make me believe in wishing upon a star, in hopes and dreams realized, in surprises, in Christmas and in hopeful mornings. Okay, okay, but I wasn’t exactly crazy about this particular morning. And I’ve been waking up greyer and grumpier more often as Christmastime was racing me to the finish line.
I’ve too much on my plate. I would have either killed or died for eight full hours of sleep rather than being on the plane on a flight to nowhere, nowhere land. I’d have rather been wrapping for the 1,000 people (or is it 1,014?) I have to send gifts to by the 20th — a yearly chore I just love inflicting myself with. I would have preferred to sit down and catch up on my finances with the accountant, or finalize the menu for Christmas Eve, look for that priest who could say Mass at 5 p.m. on Christmas Day, buy the flowers for my parents’ grave, follow up that lead on a story about drugs in the Visayas, check on my niece’s Kumon classes... it is, literally, endless. Having all that in my head, well, no wonder, really, why there wasn’t any space left for thoughts about angels in clouds or fairies flying over me at night while I sleep or looking up to the sky and waiting on the first star. I used to pity officemates who look forward to getting over with the holidays. Today is the first year I actually said it, too — “I wish it were January!” Have I lost all that has, all my life, made Christmas my favorite time of the year? At some point, I did stop believing in Santa Claus, I just don’t remember how and when. I’m too tired and too distracted.
The plane lands and I am in Ozamis City in Misamis Occidental. It’s the show’s annual charity project and I am almost regretting I even suggested the idea. But what a fortunate, wonderful surprise for me.
Thirty minutes from the Ozamis airport is Tangub. It is beautiful there. Going to Mt. Malindang, you drive by the province’s own version of Baguio’s zigzag road and the scenery of Panguil Bay with the backdrop of Iligan, Ozamis and Lanao del Norte, is breathtaking. The wind is cool and strong. The beauty of Tangub’s nature almost belies the poverty of its inhabitants. Tangub is a fifth class municipality that can only rely on the charity of wealthier localities. In Tangub, we found exactly the types of schools we were looking for: those with students who walk to school barefoot.
Our project was to give slippers to poor kids. It’s a nationwide outreach where we found that too many kids in too many schools start and end their elementary years without ever having owned a pair of slippers. A child’s bare feet would have to walk rough roads on the hills of these provincial areas, withstand scorching heat, immerse in mud puddles when raining and brave cuts from sharp objects on the ground.
You will not be able to imagine the expression on these kids’ faces wherever we went (Pampanga, Tacloban, Iloilo, General Santos and Misamis Occidental) when we arrived with sacks of colorful slippers donated by manufacturers and individuals. They would either run to us like we had manna from heaven for them — as if their life depended on it. Once neatly lined up to receive their new pair of slippers, they would jump around with it, dance, some would just keep looking at their feet — probably in disbelief. Others we saw would still walk home barefoot holding their new pair under their armpits as if it would be the first and last ones they will ever have.
I’ve done charity consistently over the years but took a break from the last five Christmases. My parents grew weak and sick and our family suffered loss that I could not, for a while, reconcile with good work that’s supposed to be rewarded with life, not death, from Heaven. Grief garnished with some measure of despair and feelings of betrayal make for some recipe for a dish called indifference. For some of us, it may be illness, financial problems, friendships broken, marriages dissolved, or your usual daily fatigue catching up with everyone above and ahead of us. It’s just the easiest thing to lose all that actually means the most and makes us happiest.
In Tangub, I rediscovered that looking behind and below us is an answer. It is the direction where we find what we lost and used to believe in — in our hurried pace to race to mirages, which seem to get farther and farther. We never quite reach it because it doesn’t exist. Going back to charitable work, after five years of distance and five years of indifference, the impact of direct contact with those who have all but a pair of rubber footwear worth P50 to keep them believing is undeniably an answer.
The moment smacked of all of that Hallmark stuff that we never read anymore — love, charity, faith and hope. It is everything that makes Christmas what it is — endangered as it apparently is among many of us. The program staff had to, each and every time, pull me away physically from fitting each kid with the right size of slippers. In one school alone, out of 400 children, 198 walked to school barefoot. You can imagine the hordes we faced every time. But the feeling is addicting. I remember how I felt when I received my life-size slide from Santa when I was eight. I saw it in the eyes of Mae-Ann, of April, of Rolen and Marvin and every kid who got his or her pair. It’s their turn to believe in Santa. And we have to make it as good for everyone else as it was for us. We are Santa. That day in Hoyohoy Elementary School in Tangub, I don’t know — the sky was bluer, the flowers more pink and the grass greener — as I always remembered them to be.
(E-mail me at korina_abs@yahoo.com)
