Musings for 2006

Christmas Day has come and gone, the New Year is upon us, and still I am not done wrapping and sending out presents. The two weeks leading to Christmas were the craziest, busiest ones I’d ever had. I was down with a bad cough and cold that refused to go away, there were commitments to fulfill, Christmas parties to attend, the regular daily grind to live out, the mad rush of last-minute wrapping, sending, gatherings. In between all that, I could only count on one hand the number of times I was able to sit down and really enjoy an uninterrupted meal. To top it all off, I was busy preparing for a trip.

If you think it’s hectic enough trying to get everything down pat before going away on a trip, try doing that during the Christmas season. It’s absolute chaos. Like a bodega – full of wonderful things but a bodega nonetheless.

Who would have thought paper bags would keep me sane throughout the mad rush? Whereas before I had all the time to just leisurely wrap and trim presents for months on end, this year I only had two weeks to seriously attack and address my Christmas list. On the bright suggestion of my Aunt Fergie (so called because she is happily forgetful), I went to Wrap Shop to buy all the plain brown paper bags my eyes could see. I loaded up on hundreds of them, in many different sizes. Delicate Japanese tissue paper in bright Christmas colors, rolls of pretty ribbons and double-sided tape completed my wrapping arsenal. It was liberating, quite fun, but in truth I felt I was short-changing the recipients somehow. I’ve always believed that, more so at Christmas, the presentation is also the message. Alas, I was time-strapped, and I comforted myself with the reality that at least I was getting somewhere. Or so it felt. There was (finally!) this dust of hope that I would get everything done before the Feast of the Three Kings, my self-imposed deadline.

It’s funny how deadlines make a person more efficient. Necessity really is the mother of diskarte – instead of lamenting the I-should-have’s (I should have started earlier, I should have bought more of this or that, I should have started sending them out the last week of November...), I just learned to take each day as it came, and made the best of it I could. I was never as systematic as I was this year.

By consciously putting a sense of order into the way I did things, the pieces somehow started to fall into place. I categorized my Christmas list and wrote out cards accordingly. Then I wrapped and wrapped, and wrapped (by that you now know I tossed them into bags, covered them with tissue, and made them look pretty with ribbons and accents). After attaching the card to the gift, off it went to be delivered. Those that already came packaged in pretty boxes I no longer wrapped. A pretty ribbon around it was enough. With every batch sent out, my working table and floor started becoming visible again. So, too, did our house start to look more like the home that it was – less of a warehouse.

Juliana came home the day before our trip, while I was preparing a whole batch of presents to be delivered. She had been out the whole day and upon seeing my much neater work area said, "Uy, mommy, out of stock na ang store mo?"

Yes, Juliana. Mommy’s home department store is now on break for the holidays. The unwrapped and undelivered presents that account for 30 percent of my Christmas list will just have to wait until I get back. I don’t think I will make my self-imposed deadline of getting everything done before the Feast of the Three Kings (I am on extended vacation) but at the most I will only be a week late. Oh, what a tragi-comic contradiction my gift-wrapping was this season! I was never as efficient, but I was also never as late.

At the airport, for perhaps the first time the whole week, it really felt and looked to me like Christmas. Yes, there was a mad rush, a flurry of activity, late passengers begging to be accommodated still, baggage being off-loaded, people hugging, crying, saying hello and good-bye. Oddly enough, the air smelled sweet. Like freshly baked donuts. Maybe because of all the sweet goodies passengers were lugging around as pasalubong. More than that, though, it must have been all the happy smiles. The holidays really are wonderful, no matter the frenzied state it puts everyone in.

* * *

From Dec. 23 onwards, I (like my Aunt Fergie who savored hers much, much earlier) really started to enjoy the holidays the way it should be, by having a leisurely time catching up and bonding with kith and kin, in this much quieter part of the world, sans the frenzy of last-minute shopping and wrapping. Here, too, I have had time to devour each page of the wonderful new book by Gilda Cordero Fernando, The Last Full Moon. Do get a copy if you haven’t yet. I am on the last few chapters already – what a lovely, lovely read. Her stories never fail to make me laugh, cry, smile, remember – they are stories that make one grateful for the gift of life.

Gratefulness. That is the real gift we all must embrace.

As little children, Christmas was almost always defined by the gifts we received – from Santa, from mom and dad, grandma and grandpa, ninongs and ninangs. As the years go by, though, the season starts to become less about what we receive and more about what and how we can give back to the people who have touched our lives. It no longer is, thank heavens, just squarely about our belief in Santa and the naughty-or-nice, tit-for-tat principle of gift-giving. It becomes an act inspired by genuine appreciation, not obligation. That is the heart of the matter right there.

* * *

I attended many parties in December but the most eye-opening was the last one I attended a day before New Year’s Eve. It was a Christmas party for our key people from the farm and the charismatic community I grew up with – men and women who have been with our family even before I was born, whose children were playmates of my siblings and myself, and whose children’s children are now also Juliana’s playmates whenever we come home to the province. It probably was the simplest, as most parties nowadays go, but it was also the richest – in laughter, fun, and genuine good cheer.

The people who live simply are the easiest to please, the most appreciative, and, I dare say, the happiest. They live for today, they know how to hope for a better tomorrow, and they honor their yesterday by remembering it with a smile, sometimes sweet, other times bitter, but they do not dwell on it. And what faith they have.

They’ve led hard lives, but they have mastered the art of smiling through the curtain of pain and discomfort. Almost nothing is ever handed to them on a silver platter, yet they happily get by. How can you question the existence of God when you see a couple, eight children, three in-laws and four grandchildren in tow, survive solely on the salary of the breadwinner, which is equivalent to only one indulgent dinner for two in the big city? I told that to a friend and she said, "Remember, in the province there are lots of fruit-bearing trees. It is easier to survive there because you just pluck and eat." Okay. Maybe that makes sense. But I still choose to credit it to Divine Providence. The fact that the tree has fruits good enough to pluck and eat is proof of a Father’s providence, not coincidence.

The poor take what they’re given, but their resignation to fate is obviously born, not out of necessity, but hope – that tomorrow will be a better day, that God will see them through as He always has in the past. Talk to them about all the bumps and bruises they have been through, be it as minor as a high fever, as worrisome as not knowing where the next meal will be coming from, or as tragic as the sudden death of a family member (usually the breadwinner), and you will realize that they always temper the blow by saying, "Ay, dili nalang mi magu-ol kay Ginoo ra ang mag-igo sa among mga problema." (We will not worry nor be sad; God will resolve all our problems.)

It is uncanny how life’s comforts (and the constant enjoyment of them) spoil us, deluding us into the belief that we deserve all the good things we have, in the same breath making us quick, too, to complain about the tiniest things when on the other side of the fence are folks with problems and pains bigger and decidedly more real than ours. Yet they hardly gripe, even if by all standards and measures they have every reason to.

Surrender. Not as a sign of defeat, but as a leap of faith – in the God who is bigger than the biggest burden you can imagine. I don’t think I can ever learn that enough.

Kris Aquino, in one of our long conversations, shared with me something I will never forget. She said she was watching an episode of Oprah where a young man was being interviewed. He was very good-looking and had a bright future ahead of him, that is, until he was struck with Bell’s palsy. What kept him going through his darkest days, he shared, was the inspiration that was Arthur Ashe, the famous tennis player who died of AIDS after being infected from a blood transfusion. Arthur Ashe had pointed out that when he was at the peak of his glorious career, while he was in the eye of applause, fame, and success, he never asked God, "Why me?" What gave him the right to ask God the same question now that he was struck with the tragic disease?

Gratefulness, a real appreciation of life and all that comes with it, finding pure joy in the simplest of things – these are the nuggets I wish we all would carry in our pockets throughout the New Year.