Reconnections

 

Life is all the experiences lived through from birth, distilled in different memory chambers. Many memories of growing up are just stored, oftentimes undisturbed in one's passage through life. Some return because they trigger unforgettable events that refuse to pass into oblivion. There is no life I believe is uninteresting, wherever it is or in whatever time and space it occupied. They are just untold, and therefore uncherished and forgotten. Mine is a chain of living events.

I wrote not too long ago, how amazing Facebook had become in making reconnections with the past, with people and events that crossed one's life. I could never imagine how one midnight, while reading Facebook updates, someone from the very distant past just came up to say " Good evening! " This is so and so. I wonder if you still remember the last time we met."

The name rang a bell and catapulted me to the early 60s. I said: "Of course, it was in Baguio city. Was it not the Editors' Guild or was it the National Council Presidents' conference." He said: " You have a good memory. It was the College Editor's Guild conference." He was Editor of U.P Collegian. I was Editor of "The Mentor", the publication of Albay Normal School ( now Bicol University ) as well as Council President. Later in the 60s, I moved to Manila and started a family and studied for another degree in Lyceum University. I also became Editor of "The Lycean".

Being a student leader in the 6os was a very interesting time. From the narrow confines of a small town and college, I suddenly found myself in the national arena where politics and student participation were intimately woven. I needed to learn very fast how I could become part of this challenging time and to find my place as an active participant. The 60s saw students, labour, farmers, urban poor in a united front to oppose certain policies of the Marcos government, for instance involvement in the Vietnam war. It was too much " isms " to understand all at once.

Such memories rushed back one midnight just because a distant friend made the reconnection. He has gone a long way in the world of academe. I've also gone a long way from government service to journalism, and from a small town at the foot of Mayon Volcano, to places I have never thought existed.

As I reminisced the 60s, my FB chat box opened. It was someone I have not actually met, but who accidentally inherited some books I left during my one month's political detention in Camp Vicente Lim. She knew my family and Albay High School, where I finished my secondary education. She said: " You were the very first to wear the mini skirt on campus. A feminist!" And I added: "...and to wear heeled shoes that drove my Home Economics teacher insane." I refused to be a vendor of meriendas cooked in the H.E. building.

I had a flood of memories of my high school year- how I won in the regional oratorical contest, played a strict Mother Superior in a school play, got only First Honourable Mention on my graduation because I lacked residency. I moved to Albay from Camarines Sur after my father died. The Junior and Senior Proms, my aunt as watchdog against aspiring suitors, the Albay town fiestas and the multi-layered petticoats so much so that buses refused to stop as I took so much space.

All these flashbacks and reconnections in one midnight , from one based in the USA and the other in Albay, Philippines. Does that sound believable? It is on Facebook and I am making no commercials. On another FB session, someone opened my chat box. The flashback was not too long ago. Maybe 30 years or something. He asked me if I still remember Tipanan in Manila Peninsula. And that I used dance there. I don't remember this one but I know that there was a Tipanan and I had been there to eat. It was a disco? Manila Pen was a favourite hangout of media people and politicians, as much as Inter-Continental Hotel had its famous Coffee shop breakfasts presided over by the Lords of Philippine column writing like Doroy Valencia.

As my list of FB friends increase, so does my reconnections with the past become a regularity. Even after I've closed the chat box, I lean back in my chair and continue the travel back in time. Two weeks, my boss in the Financial Times of London where I was Philippine rep in the late 60s to early 70s, just materialised from nowhere and reminded me that it is only 33 years ago since I met him for a special supplement project on RP.

I sometimes laugh alone at funny incidents I remember, or become sad over the loss of close friends like Nelly Sindayen. Many things in the past that enriched my years of growing up, of becoming an adult, of taking risks and challenges along the way, of struggling for survival as "enemy of the state", of loving and being loved. They are beyond replacement. No matter how far I have travelled, I want to go back to certain places and times I have been before, even for some moments.#