We have a steak dinner with mashed potatoes, asparagus and artichokes. I remember my first artichokes many years back, how I delighted in peeling off the bracts first till I finally got to the pulpy and tender heart. Eating it now, I think of how very much it is like growing old: the years peeling away until the person comes to his reward — death, perhaps; or, as in my case, grandchildren. I am spending a fortnight with my daughter’s family and enjoying the company of her two young boys, particularly Fred, the younger one, age nine.
Steve, my son-in-law, barbecues the steaks on the backdoor porch, rare for me, juicy and tasty, with some of the blood still oozing out of it. My daughter met him in college.
It’s almost eight in the evening but outside, the light still laves DeKalb with dull silver that is slowly tarnished by night. Outside, the air is crisp and nippy; it is early April, that time of the year in northern Illinois when the weather can change abruptly. The other day was warm like any day in Manila but now it is much colder than the coldest morning in Baguio.
Steve brings out the dessert — fresh fruit salad. He also brews some coffee and, for a while, its aroma fills the room. I shouldn’t be drinking too much coffee as it keeps me awake. It also increases the cholesterol level but I have not yet reached my three-cup limit — this is only my second.
“I think I will go for a walk,” I announce and Fred to my right immediately asks, “Lolo, can I come, too?”
“Of course,” I tell him.
Fred leaves the table with a whoop. My daughter tells him to bring a flashlight and a parka. I see no necessity for the flashlight but I have never interfered in the manner that my daughter is raising her sons.
“We will go to Babba’s,” Fred says delightedly.
“ Aha — there’s the ulterior motive,” his father laughs.
“What’s Babba’s?” I ask.
“That’s an ice cream parlor on the state highway a mile from here,“ my daughter explains.
I take my topcoat and my cap with earflaps from the closet by the door. Fred is fair like his father but has his mother’s dark hair. He is wearing shorts, over his T-shirt, a thin nylon jacket. He does not put on the parka which he carries. “It is warm,” he says. He is growing up very fast; two years ago, he was this short — and now, he is up to my shoulders. His older brother, Philip, is 13 and now he is much taller than I. These American kids — it is not just their genes, it is their food. Look at all those Japanese kids who have grown much taller than their parents, eating now as they do more meat, more bread, and drinking more milk, too.
We stroll out of the house into twilight, the western sky burnished with magenta and gold. Across the road, a small stream runs alongside. Until a couple of years ago, elegant willow trees lined its banks but they have all been cut and the banks of the stream are now bare. We cross over and walk along the bank of the stream at the other side; it is an asphalted footpath and to our left, a grassy meadow. It is now quite dark. Across the green expanse, the lights of a few houses shine. Across the stream, to our right, the indistinct shapes of houses, some of them lighted, their front porches aglow.
Fred keeps in step but sometimes he skips and jumps ahead then goes down the bank which is strewn with small rocks and gravel. I tell him to be careful lest he slip and fall into the water — not deep, no doubt, but cold.
He returns to my side and asks, “Lolo, can you hear that?”
I pause and strain to listen. “It’s a frog croaking.”
“No,” he says. “It’s a duck. I can tell if it’s a frog.”
I have seen a few ducks in the pond above the stream. “Nobody owns them?”
“Nobody,” he tells me.
“I used to catch frogs when I was a boy,” I tell him. “For food. I used a fish line without a hook; they would swallow the worm and hold on. I would raise the pole and they’d let go and fall into a long-necked sack. It required some skill to do that...”
Fred pauses and asks incredulously, “You ate frogs?”
I tousle his hair. “Yes. Someday you should tell your Mom and Dad to bring you to a restaurant in Chicago where they serve frog’s legs. Very expensive. The French like them very much.”
He is silent for a while.
“There is another way to catch frogs,” I continue. “During the rainy season, there’s a lot of them in the rice fields. I go there with a kerosene lantern, shielded on the sides and back so that its beam is like that of a flashlight. When the light falls on the frogs, they freeze. You just pick them up one by one and put them in a basket. During the dry season, it is different. They hide in cracks in the soil. You get at them with a length of thick wire with a barbed hook.” Again, I was reliving those days of boyhood in the village.
When Fred is with me, he is full of questions. Now it is my turn to ask him. “Are you still going to be a fireman when you grow up?”
“No, Lolo. I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to be a pilot.”
“That’s hard work. You have to keep fit all the time.”
“I do,” he says proudly. “I’m a very good pitcher. The best. Want to see me pitch?” He imagines he has a ball, he goes into position and throws the ball in the direction of the other bank. “Tomorrow I’ll show you. Dad will be the catcher.”
Knowing him, I know he will not stop reminding me until I have seen him pitch.
I start humming. “Remember this song?”
“Uh-huh.”
I taught him the song a couple of years ago. “Let’s sing.”
Our voices blend. He sings at the top of his voice: “O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain. For purple mountain majesties, above the fruited plain...”
I let him finish the song by himself. “I learned it in grade school,” I tell him when he finishes.
Like most American kids, Fred knows a lot about dinosaurs. He asks if there were dinosaurs in the Philippines a long time ago.
“I don’t know for sure,” I tell him. “They roamed the earth then. I suppose there were. But no archaeological evidence yet. The biggest animal in the Philippines today is the carabao or water buffalo.”
Fred has seen pictures of the carabao.
“I used to race them when I was a boy.”
“Like horses?”
“Slower. When you come to the Philippines next time, you will ride one.”
“Has Mom ever rode on a carabao?”
I laugh. “Your Mom grew up in the city. She has seen them in the fields, but ride them, never...”
“They have really long horns. Aren’t they dangerous?”
“Only when they are angry. Their skin has no pores. They don’t perspire. They have to bathe every day. They like soaking in the water or in mud. That’s why they are called water buffaloes. They are the farmer’s best friend — docile, hardworking, plowing, carrying heavy loads. But once they get very angry, there is no stopping them.”
A slight wind careens towards us from nowhere. It becomes more chilly. I put my hands in the pockets of my topcoat. “Aren’t you cold, Fred?”
“Nope.”
“Tomorrow, we go to Walmart. I will buy you a sweater.”
“I have lots of sweaters. Mom says I shouldn’t ask you for anything.”
“Or a pair of sneakers.”
“Oh, I’d love that!”
I want to tell him as a boy I was barefoot not because I did not like to wear shoes but because Mother could not spare the money. I finished grade school with wooden shoes — the only child, I could see that, on that great day with no shoes. “How many shoes do you have?”
“Four,” he says. “Two of them from Philip, too small for him now, and really still too big for me. The other two are about worn out.”
We can see the neon lights of Babba’s in the near distance, the cars speeding along Route 48. With the neon lights on, I presume it is open. As we draw near, we see three cars parked in the front, and the lights through the shuttered windows. “You are lucky, Frederick.”
We cross over another bridge, through a grassy lawn and the parking lot. It is pleasantly warm inside Babba’s and I take off my topcoat. There is nothing fancy about Babba’s, just the usual formica-topped tables and plastic chairs, the counter where the different flavors are displayed, the stainless steel ice cream machine. We sit in a corner. The other customers are at the other end, youths in jeans and flannel shirts, students perhaps at the nearby university.
As we walk towards the counter, Fred turns to remind me. “Mom says you cannot have ice cream. Your — your — what is it again?”
“Diabetes,” I tell him and spell it out.
Fred knows what he wants, a big vanilla ice cream cone with chocolate bits as topping. I want a cup of coffee. The other customers at a table close by are arguing noisily.
Fred takes his time with his ice cream cone, licking it with relish. When he finishes, I still have coffee in my cup.
I tell him we can leave. He can order another cone to eat on the way back. He grins and shakes his head. “I’ve had enough. I like vanilla. We have vanilla ice cream at home too.”
“We did not have to come here then.”
“Oh, but it’s different,” he tells me.
Somehow I understand. We never had ice cream in the house when I was a boy. For one, we did not even have a refrigerator. During recess, I used to envy my classmates who had money. They would crowd around an ice cream cart with paintings of Mayon volcano and a harvest scene on the sides. The man who made the ice cream and sold it was a dark Batangueño. He parked his cart in the shade of the acacia tree across the school gate, called the pupils to the cart with a small bell. He had three flavors, colored white, yellow and violet. He scooped thin slices of the ice cream into cones. Two centavos for the small cone, five for the big one. I’d watch my classmates lick their cones and sometimes a friend would come and present me with one lick. It tasted so wonderful then, in contrast to the ear of corn or the boiled camote, which was all that Mother could give me for recess. I can now afford a better diet, of course, but I am now prohibited from having even just one tiny spoon of ice cream.
“We will take another way, Lolo,” Fred tells me as we step out into the night, not as cold anymore as when we have left the house. Cars cruising on the highway light up the greenery that surrounds us and Fred’s friendly face is bright with pleasure. I suppose that is what the vanilla did.
“You know the way?”
“Of course! Now we have to go through part of the town. “
We walk along the cemented sidewalk of the highway, the traffic slowing down at the approaches of the town, the headlights of cars lighting our way. Fred sees a tree branch on the sidewalk and he picks it up. It is unusually straight and leafless and can be made a walking cane. He swings it first like a baseball bat, then he hands it to me. “Do you need it, Lolo?”
“Not yet,” I tell him. “Maybe soon.”
I ponder what I have just said. I have not been feeling well lately, my blood sugar count has been erratic and there’s my blood pressure too which sometimes shoots up, making me dizzy. And then there is my arrhythmia which, when it occurs, makes it seem as though at any moment, I could collapse. And finally, there’s my angina. It would seem that if I moved when it struck I would simply die. I look at the pill box that I fill every week and the pills in it have increased through the years. I know that these very pills will someday clog up my kidneys but I cannot avoid taking them. Exercise, exercise! My own will demands this but somehow, all the calories I lose are so quickly refilled by my gourmand appetite.
These are very grave personal problems that pale into insignificance when I think of the more demanding challenges that I must face, the things I have yet to put down on paper, for the record as it were.
Fred now uses the walking stick, swinging it, jabbing it into the path, warding off an imaginary enemy, a dog perhaps, and he is intent at this game, snarling, charging, swinging away at the giants that stand in our way. He pauses and asks, “When you were a boy, Lolo, did you travel a lot?”
As a baby, Fred had visited Manila with his parents but of course he wouldn’t remember one bit of that visit. Since then, his parents have taken him on vacations to Mexico, Japan and Hong Kong. I never left the Philippines till I was in my thirties, and now my children and grandchildren are traveling all over the world. My youngest, for instance, had visited New York when he was barely out of grade school.
“I did a lot of traveling, yes, when I was very young — in grade school as a matter of fact. But it was all in the mind. I read a lot of books and went to a lot of faraway places. I walked in the snows of Russia, climbed the Himalayas, you know — all in the imagination. It was a lot of fun...”
Fred is silent. He does not swing the stick, or pretend it is a bat. He drags it instead. After some time, Fred speaks, “I know what you mean. I sometimes travel like you do, too, but without books.”
“That, too,” I concur. “It is the imagination, Fred, which takes us to so many interesting and distant, unreachable places — they can only exist in the mind.”
We turn right, away from the highway, into a neighborhood of middle-class American homes. All of DeKalb is middle class. Most of the picture windows of the houses are lighted, showing well-upholstered interiors, families watching TV or having dinner. The street lamps cast a blue sheen on everything, the well-trimmed lawns, the shiny cars in the driveways. No fences separate the houses from one another. We cross over the backyards of some houses.
Fred suddenly asks, “Lolo, did you and your grandfather ever go walking together?”
The question startles me. “Yes,” I say as, all of a sudden, my earliest memories come alive again. “But I was very young then and my grandfather did not live long enough to take me on long walks, certainly not to a place like Babba’s. I was about six years old, maybe younger. He carried me on his shoulder and I held on to his head. I remember he did not have much hair...”
“Where did you go?”
“I remember him taking me to the fields. It was harvest time, the fields were golden with ripening grain. He said all that land was his but it was stolen from him. I remember him crying.”
Again, Fred is silent. Then, “Lolo, how many books have you written?”
“About a dozen.”
“Did you write about your grandfather?”
“A little bit,” I say.
“What else did you write about?”
“Stories. Novels. People living, loving, fighting and dying. My own people, some Americans. Some very poor people...”
“You said fighting. War, you mean. Were you in a war?”
“ A little of that. Why do you ask?”
“Did you shoot anyone?”
“I wanted to very much,” I say. “Maybe a couple of Japanese. But I did not have a gun. I was a medic, you know, corpsman.” I don’t think he understands the term. “Someone who assists doctors. I did not kill, Fred. I helped people, the wounded. I wanted very much to be a doctor. But I flunked medical school so I became a writer instead.”
He holds my hand as if to stop me, to have me pause. I do and turn to him. In the light of the street lamp, I can see that he is smiling, as if in triumph.
“I told a boy in class that my grandfather has traveled all over the world, that he has written books. Many, many books. He didn’t believe me. He said you’re stupid — all old people are stupid.”
“Oh?”
“I hit him,” Fred says simply.
I let his statement sink in, then: “Thank you, Fred, for defending my honor.”
We continue the even pace, then we reach the backyard of my daughter’s house, the grass freshly trimmed, the pine tree dark and brooding in the night. We go in through the back door, the kitchen brightly lit. My older grandson is helping put away the dishes. “How was it?” my son-in-law asks. He is smoking one of the Manila cigars I brought as pasalubong.
“I was sorely tempted but I didn’t have ice cream.” I should have added that Fred’s company is pleasure enough but at that moment, a man of words like myself cannot find them.