A student vandal goes back to her school as graduation speaker

I was honored to have been chosen as this year’s commencement speaker for Miriam High School Batch 2013. Below are the words I shared with the young graduates last March 24.

Dr. Rosario Lapus, president of Miriam College, Dr. Glenda Fortez, vice president for Academic Affairs, Dr. Ma. Corazon Reyes, basic education unit director, Dr. Edizon Fermin, high school principal (and my new best friend), Dr. Gail Reyes-Galang, grade school principal and lifelong friend, faculty members of Miriam High School, colleagues and allies in the teaching profession, parents of our wonderful graduates, and most of all to you young ladies, good afternoon. It’s good to be back home.

I’d like to begin by telling you a secret. I hope the administration will not come after me and give me a demerit! Is it still called a demerit? During my time, that’s what it was called. Will get to the idea of “my time” in a bit. But first, the promised secret.

I’ve committed graffiti twice in my lifetime. In college, I carved on a wall in the bathroom the words “I am in love.” But much earlier than that, in high school, on a tree I can no longer identify on this sprawling campus, I wrote, “Rica was here.”

When I walk your lovely campus, as a parent these days, how I remember that moment so clearly. It is the trees that dot the campus that help me remember my young self as a Maryknoller. The trees that traverse the grade school halls, at Grade 3 attempting to climb the kalachuchi, finding solace in the largest one that can be found on the field; the feeling of that smooth petal as I cried over some young pain of friendship. It seemed only fitting then to want to inscribe my young self on a tree, to proclaim to the world on a thing that would last forever that I existed.

I’d like to think that the impetus to carve something down, to commit to a truth, a feeling, a reality, was not fueled by some evil intent to destroy property. It was the impetus rather to document, to write, to make permanent. Truly, this need of mine to write would be the key to what I would become. I begin with this layered image: of remembering, of documenting, and of what it means to make a mark, or to want to make a mark or the desire to carve oneself on the epidermis of the world.

Writing was a gift of Miriam to me. I think in the beginning, not really writing, but more an appreciation and awareness of language as its most basic element. One memorable experience of mine, here, was learning grammar and knowing the intricacies of prefixes and suffixes. The memoirist in me can conjure the look of the handout, that gray sheaf of papers and the ink that would inevitably land on one’s fingers. On its pages, a chart outlining the difference between adding an “un” to a word (as in FB lingo “unlike”) versus the addition of “ness” to a word (as in “happiness”); the demarcation of things to achieve and the things to avoid whittled down to a simple combination of words.

Grammar lessons were tedious, are tedious, but to people in love with language, the feeling of learning about words so intimately felt like magic. Truth be told, there was joy in the exercise of diagramming sentences. How even more joyful the idea of tenses. I saw poetry there immediately: in the revelation that even language knew that time was a “tense” idea. For what is language but a way of managing time? We proclaim: this happened. This happens. This might happen. This will happen. This shall happen.

This is especially more nuanced as I stand here before you on the cusp of the rest of your lives. I was here, the tree proclaims. This happened to me, too. I graduated from Maryknoll High School in 1987. It was a momentous time, both personally and historically. We were but two years after the EDSA revolution, which I participated in, willingly. I was reborn a political person in second year high school. I did not understand the politics of my nation, being a martial law baby. But something shifted in me that year and I found myself convincing my parents to go to EDSA. I brought food and cigarettes for the soldiers, every day of the Revolution. I did not know how to make sense of the whole experience, just knowing that the heart was sifting chaff from grain and that it was not yet done with its work.

The first day back in the classroom, how grateful I was that my Araling Panlipunan teacher did not forge ahead into the lesson of the day. She looked at our young faces, must have felt the unease in the air. She put down her lesson plan notebook and asked with such gentleness: How are you, girls? And for an entire class hour, we processed EDSA, not with platitudes and political statements, not with a declaration of what side we were on, but with stories of what we did during those momentous days, down to me talking about the difficulty of cooking pancit for 50 people, having to buy a large kaldero at the market. My storytelling even included talking about the energy at the market — how hungry people were for news, how strange the idea of having to buy vegetables in the middle of life-altering history. 

But in the ‘80s, not only was I a political person, but I was also a teenager, like all of you. Just to illustrate the juxtaposition of the private Rica and the political Rica: in English class, in sophomore year, my teacher Mrs. Isidro singled out my essay titled “My Solace,” in which I had written that my most favorite place in all the world was, believe it or not, my bathroom. For it was here where I could be most myself, my most emo self, my most lonely self.  I was, like many of you, a social misfit. I did not know how to make friends easily although I wanted to, so much. I would bring this social ineptitude with me all the way to today and it has now become a way for me to test my honesty. You know that feeling, right? That strange mixture of knowing who you are and not being able to alter oneself to please another; that gift of knowledge that no amount of success at pretzel bending would be worth the sacrifice of the true self. I think this is Miriam’s best gift to me: the ability to live truthfully with myself. How did I discover this in Miriam? Truly, through the most surprising things. 

One was finding a club where I belonged. At the time, I did not know that joining this particular club would be metaphorical of finding myself, and discovering a vocation I would invest in with all my heart. I was a glee club member all my four years in high school, and in each year we were champions at competitions. Many of my lifelong friends were from this club, women I would continue to sing with in college and up to today. In this club, I finally found ease in being myself, knowing that others would accept me and even appreciate the special gifts I had to give. There was camaraderie and community but most especially, in hindsight, it would signal to me how important a creative life is. I think being in the glee club made it very clear the kind of person I would want to be — a person who is constantly creating and a person who finds a life in the arts.

The most momentous influences — and this you may appreciate, later on, when you least expect it — were really and truly my teachers. Every year that I felt a bit lost, a teacher would “find” me — would find me smart, would find me responsible, would find me worth challenging, would even find me lonely, would find me courageous. In senior year, for CAT, we were asked to climb the cafeteria wall, or as we say here, “cafetorium.” I felt like dying! But we all had to do it and finally it was my turn and, yes, it was close to impossible and it took two teachers to get me to the end of the climb. I was embarrassed, ashamed of my weakness but the teachers merely shrugged and gave me a small hug. I sat far away watching the other girls go up the wall with such ease when my CLE teacher, Mrs. Perez, came up to sit beside me and said: “I was so in awe of you, Rica, because you never gave up.”

What could have been a story of defeat was turned into a story of triumph because of the kindness of one teacher, and that has made all the difference in my life. As a teacher myself, I suspect that Miriam’s training is such a part of my person, and a part of my very soul, that I recognize some of my methods in the classroom as having come from being here; and so I salute your teachers, and your administrators, for being open to the grace of forming others. I truly believe that there is no greater vocation.

If we salute your teachers, it is to your parents that we bow. We bow in gratefulness and love. I would not know how I survived those tumultuous years of adolescence without the unconditional love of my parents. Your parents may not have the words to tell you many things because there is a lump in their throats; the lump consists of pride, but a big part of it is fear: they fear the future for you, they fear for your happiness, more than anything they want to bear everything for you. The lump also has all the unspoken: the apologies, the demands, everything they ever curbed and kept secret. I think the greatest secret that lump holds is the amazing love they have for you, a kind of love that is so overwhelming, no amount of words — no matter how perfectly diagrammed — could ever encompass this.

I think there is the expectation that I will tell you a bigger secret than the secret of being a “graffiti artist” and you would like me to reveal the secret of what you might need to succeed in the world. I’m not quite sure what the secret is but this narrative I have shared with you today might have revealed what I think the answer to be: I think it all boils down to the connections we make with family, with our community, and ultimately, our country. I may have proclaimed, “I exist,” but as I grew up and experienced more the question became larger than myself. The question became “I exist for what and for whom?” I think that if you continually ask that question, it will ground all your actions and you will understand that your actions have consequences on others and perhaps then, you will choose much more wisely. I am a teacher. What for? I am a CEO. What for? I am in government. What for? I am an artist. What for? 

For me, the answer has always been simple although I arrived at this answer with time — which is the ally of youth, so you have nothing to fear. For me, the answer is always: for God and for country. For God and for country. For God and for country. It is the rhythm that accompanies my every step; the north star of each decision; the compass of all of my travels. 

When I fetch my daughter, I always see the lovely kalachuchi trees that sit so quietly on campus. They have witnessed the lives of so many young women and I am certain that there are more carvings on her bark now. As you prepare to make your own mark on the epidermis of the world, let me end with the final words I use when I say goodbye to my students every single day. These are words my father would say to me before I went to school; they are words of encouragement, of admonition, of purpose, of mission, of encouragement and of love: Be good, be brave, be safe. My dear young graduates: “God’s blessings be yours from above.”