Through 3 of my 9 lives (Part 1 of 2)

Assuming one ‘life’ is equivalent to a decade, and assuming further that I live to be at least ninety years old (which I seriously doubt), I could say I’ve successfully lived through (though not totally unscathed) my first three lives. Well, almost, since as of today, officially, I’m somewhere in the middle of ‘quarter life’ (a misnomer since very few actually live to be a hundred) and being 30.

In case you ask why the 9 lives mumbo-jumbo: I’ve always answered “the cat” to the question “if you were an animal, what would you be and why?” Cats land on their feet when they fall, they hiss when they’re pissed, scratch when they’re harmed. They’re never helpless, always independent. They could be sweet and cuddly or snooty, depending on their mood.

Unlike dogs, they don’t always need your attention; they can be well on their own, seeking their next adventure. They know how to groom and pamper themselves—and even cover their own shit! They’re smart, fast (lazy when they want to), graceful, classy, and even stealthy. They’re sensual and honest about how they feel, making no qualms in communicating to the world their emotions (notice how they vocalize/shriek when they need to mate?) through an entire gamut of purrs and meows. For the feline, each jump, skip or hop is a leap of faith.

Thus, the aforementioned descriptions of the cat are things that I might also use to describe myself. Hence, as I celebrate the anniversary of my birth today, I look back at my life with a cat and its nine lives as my theme, and with a reflection on the first three lives I’ve lived so far:

First Life (ages 1 to 10)

Born in Manila to parents whose ancestry come from all over the place—Cebu, Tacloban, Nueva Ecija, Pampanga, Surigao, Bulacan, Spain, China, Portugal, Italy—this stage in my life is characterized largely by the joys of play and make-believe, when care for the world at large was few and far between.

 Dinosaurs, GI Joe, Matchbox, trolls, stuffed toys, King Kong, Jaws and Godzilla, Mickey and Donald, and so many more, accompanied me in a parallel universe I would visit every day through a portal I hid behind my bed. When I was two or three, I would go down to the living room at 2 AM, look out through the window, and sing songs from the Sound of Music. During some of those nights, I distinctly remember, I would see a beautiful woman garbed in gleaming white, accented around her waist by a sash as blue as the sky, the fabric flowing all the way to her feet resting securely upon a breach on the trunk of a kulis tree that grew mightily three meters outside our window. Her hands were clasped, as if in prayer. Maybe it was only my imagination, maybe it wasn’t.

At age 3, Manang Pelang, our nanny and second mother to us siblings, was sent to Manila from Cebu. She was a cook at a pension house my grandfather had owned. The only child then, I was hopelessly spoiled, feeling entitled to everything. One time I came home from school and Manang was excited to show me that she had washed my ‘baby unan’ (a pillow that stunk of my dried urine, one I can’t sleep without). I went ballistic, and there and then, threw the pillow onto the floor and started pissing on it (Talk about Damien from Omen). When I got to my senses, I felt an overwhelming feeling of guilt knowing how excited Manang was to show me what she had done for me. Her intentions were good and I didn’t even appreciate it. To this day, Manang cares for all of us, as I said, like the second mother she is to us. And to this day, I still have that overriding feeling of guilty when I remember what I did then to reciprocate her act of kindness. 

At age 5, while my mom was in the States exploring the prospects of migrating there, I got lost in Kalentong Market in Mandaluyong on New Year’s Eve, while buying fireworks with my dad. I was playing with a retractable toy knife (I had seen something like it at a Christmas day party at the home of my cousin, the actor and artist, Ian Lopez Veneracion) when I realized that my dad was nowhere in sight. With all those people and in a strange place (I’ve never been to the market before), I found myself crying, thinking I would never see my family again. Then I stopped crying and started to pray to my guardian angel as I had been taught while trying to recall the route we had took to get there. Then I started walking. Suffice it to say, I found my way back home.   

(To be continued next Saturday..)

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Tonight on The Bottomline with Boy Abunda: Veteran American independent filmmaker John Sayles—screenwriter for popular 70’s horror/sci-fi movies like Piranha and the Howling and director/writer/editor of critically-acclaimed indie movies such as Casa de los Babys, Lone Star, and Sunshine State—takes the hot seat to answer the most intriguing questions on his decades-long career in film, his Philippine-American war epic, ‘Amigo,’ and many more. 

Watch it after Banana Split on ABS-CBN. Encore telecast on the ABS-CBN News Channel (ANC), Sunday, 1:00 pm.

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