Unearthing chances

THIS WEEK’S WINNER

MANILA, Philippines - Deofelyn C. Ocayo, 23, is a broadcast journalism graduate and was editor of Prime, the publication of the University of Perpetual Help System-Laguna, and of Heraldo Filipino of the De La Salle University-Dasmariñas. Her current corporate work in MD Infoman Solutions Inc. in Alabang entails a lot of reading and writing, “two things that I can truly give my best to.” She dreams of writing a novel that Filipino children can relate to.

Who in this flickery world would not want to savor chocolates without bar codes or taxes (never mind diabetes, toothache, or the stain that would enrage our mothers), to be spoiled by the red-donned stout figure at Christmas with no godchildren to run from, and to soak your feet in the mud and build castles in the sand — or in the air — with a license from time?

To face the world clueless about day and night, in free spirit, unafraid. To simply be a child.

Perhaps those who have boldly fluttered in the Neverland sky with Peter Pan, jaunted in the Wonderland of Alice, got lost and wild in the Mississippi island with Tom Sawyer, sweetly swam with Ariel under the sea, or journeyed with Pilandok and ate fruit myths in our own land can empathize with me as I recall how I unearthed my own garden with Mary Lennox in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden as a child…and as the person that I am today.

I may be confusing luck with fate when I ponder upon the homelessness of Lennox, who was conscious of being an orphan and of the emptiness she was breathing. I, on the other hand, inhaled a different air at 10. I was never orphaned by my parents, but my ignorance suffered the unanswered why’s and how’s while seeing myself blunt and unwilling to move about the unkind forces and words that eventually scraped the bond of my parents. Even if our family stayed under one roof, it felt like the old Misselthwaite Manor where Lennox was sent to stay with her Uncle Archibald Craven and cousin Colin, with lonely leaves barely touching the arid air, little creatures liberated but avoiding to meet your eyes, and the nothingness in rainbows and pouring of mist.

I would wake up in this manor, where a family moved from room to room, performing their everyday lives like well-trained actors with a squabble of alcoholism, unnecessary evils, and half-baked forgiveness as the afterpiece, just before my much- awaited good-night conversation with God who saw my gloom for years. The manor was never really a home, like that of my playmates then. That is all it was, a family in a house.

Without a lullaby to soothe her solitude, Lennox pulled through the fate that befell her after following a robin and unlocking a garden. There, where the memory of her uncle’s wife still tarried and the flora gaspingly called for the heavens and rainfall, sprouted the girl’s friendship with Dickon, Colin, and with nature. With herself.

But the garden remained a secret especially to Lennox’ uncle as it flourished together with the young growers who faced storms in their circle. Lennox turned the forbidden, lifeless paradise to a home where every pinch of soil matters, where robins and butterflies are cradled, where each rose is loved despite its thorns, where the marriage of life and love comes illimitable.

A part of me says I betrayed what is human instinct when deprived of a “normal” family life. I could have put rings all over my nose, gotten a tattoo of a popular atheist on my back, worn black shirts and complex undies, tortured my lungs with cigar and my liver with alcohol, jumped over of the school fence, and led my life to damnation; but the escapist in me went to the less complicated side. I brought my parents with me to the stage every year to receive honors, gave all my heart and time to different endeavors especially as a herald of truth in paper, almost thought of entering the convent — to find peace maybe, and planted my ambitions like a faultless gardener. I denied living in my Misselthwaite Manor before the world. In this denial I found the “me,” but ironically, not a garden where truth ripens and melancholy is not possible.

Myriad daybreaks passed, I finally allowed the sun to see me and left the room where Colin curbed his fears. Above all the memories I loathed about this room was it witnessed how an important person in my life succumbed to things she did not deserve. She, who would not wait for the blink of an eye to sacrifice herself for her loved ones. She, whom I almost neglected when I was so lured to becoming somebody and being everywhere but beside my mother, who had heart stroke twice. So I took her away from the sad manor and went to another land carrying our seeds of hope.

In our new secret garden, seeing Mama regain her strength and smile — or even laugh — more often like Colin did in his recovery freed me from hoggish wishes made me say that I could give up every little and big dream I have to take care of her. Just when I thought I knew everything, it is now that I learned the meaning of patience and responsibility. I pray that it is not too late to nurture a kindling friendship between myself and my mother, who is into horticulture by the way — what a coincidence.

In this classic children’s literary piece, I was able to dig up my past and tend my values. Today, when a garden seems like another fairy tale after typhoons hollowed the realms of dreams, amid the political quandary, and in broken homes, it is also the time to reflect on our inner child values because, as writer John Connolly said, “in every adult there dwells the child that was, and in every child there lies the adult that will be.”

So I thank Burnett and all other authors of children’s books for helping to shape the child in every person seeking the meaning of life in all seasons, as well as the real Marthas and Dickons in my life for staying around my garden despite holes in the apples. And to Mama, my life’s ultimate horticulturist, this one’s for you.