THE Greeks have thought about it and Aristotle is correct when he said to be friends is quick but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit.
We tested how the fruit has slowly ripened a few days ago when, after some 40 years, we met again, or decided to see each other again. “We” is composed of Lulu, Adelfa, Ligaya, Emmie, Caloy and this writer. If anyone of these persons had said in 1977 or 1978 or even in the 1980s that we would meet when most of us had hit late-1950s or 1960s, I would have not believed it. But we did.
Martial law was in its early inception when we all saw each other. Except for those close to the dictators’ family, very few individuals got to travel out of the country then. The activists hiding in the mountains had to take the south backdoor, the Mindanao area, just to be able to leave the Philippines. We were not activists, I believe. We participated in demos and teach-ins but who did not. Slowly, as young individuals, we were part of the generation trying to make sense of the dictatorship and the cultures being introduced then: curfews, censorship and a notion of freedom that was odd because there was an unreal element in it. The government said we could talk but we knew what happened to those who did
express their mind.
Travel—an act that was viewed with suspicion by the government—was the same movement that brought us together. A young organization called YSTAPHIL (short for Youth and Students Travel Association of the Philippines) was behind this program that connected the youths of the country with those from foreign lands. There were two exchange programs: the Canada-World Youth Exchange and the International Christian Youth Exchange (ICYE)—the former between Canada and the Philippines in particular and with other countries, in general; the latter was an exchange program that covered practically all nations.
ICYE was initiated after the Second World War when the German youths were isolated from the rest of the world. The program was then extended to other parts of the globe. I do not remember now whether the program was conscious of one fact, that martial law with the disappearance and disillusionment of the Filipino youths was almost like the situation of the German youths suffering with the stigma of Nazism. We, too, were cut off from the rest of the world. It would take years before the world outside would supply us with the truths about our country and the government that was ruining it.
Getting the visa during those years was difficult. I almost missed my exchange program to Japan. By the time I was given the visa, I was halfway through the year. One exchangee to Sweden never came back.
Most of us did come back but we never heard from each other again. The one year abroad had changed us, I believe. We all grew older.
Every now and then, we would hear snippets of news about each other. There was no attempt to come up with a grand reunion. It was like we did not want to talk about what we saw on that other side of the moon.
One night, while I was on vacation in Naga, I got a call. I did not even know how she got my number but there was Lulu at the other end of the line. Lulu was one of the senior coordinators at YSTAPHIL. For us boys from the province, she was our grand introduction to woman sophisticated. With one hand always holding a cigarette, Lulu was a trenchant presence. Gentle but with acerbic tongue spared only by her capacity to make fun of herself, Lulu was now telling me through static that Caloy was getting married. “Getting married!” was my shocked response.
Caloy was the gregarious student. Brimming with confidence even at a young age, Caloy was the kind of friend who could take you to an empty building, unafraid of being caught, so that he could smoke, drink beer and look at the city below loving itself. He could write like hell and compose confessionals that only few would dare read or listen to. Caloy went to Canada and to many other places that his heart and not his legs would take him.
Caloy was cousin of Ligaya but the relationship ended there. Ligaya was a person unto herself. It was not surprising that while exchange scholars were all eager to go to the United States or Europe, she was happy to be in India. Except for a brief visit, the second time I saw her she was married to an American and sporting a family name difficult to recognize—Sukke. The next time I saw her again, she had grown-up sons and she still looked like a virgin surrounded by tulips and peonies and mountain laurels. She is into flowers, events and growing old gracefully.
Adelfa and I were close to each other because our exchange year overlapped. My first night in Tokyo was spent in her host home. She invited me home without even formally asking her host mother about it. Years later, we would discover that was not done. But Adelfa was the brave one. The Facebook reconnected us, with Adelfa retaining her love for Japan by her outbursts of haiku every now and then. All these years, she made good her promise that she would reside in Japan.
Emmie is the revelation. She came back and worked at YSTAPHIL for awhile. She attracted someone who took her to far-off Switzerland. Presently, she still lives in Europe even as she maintains a resort in Palawan and continues her search for a good heart and the best salad. In our reunion, Emmie gathered all the herbs in the kitchen to make a veggie sandwich to the surprise of the old woman there who was charmed how those leaves for healing could be for eating.
I flew in from Manila to catch all of them in Bicol. They came by plane via Legaspi, caught the sight of a quiet Mayon Volcano, motored to Ligaya’s ancestral home in Guinobatan for a breakfast and drove to the Iriga home of Caloy and Telay. They would be together for some more days but I was with them only for an afternoon. Everyone was asleep except for Caloy and Ligaya when I arrived.
When Lulu came out, her first word was “Brujo! Thank God, you are here.” Except for strands of gray hair, which appeared to be more production design than nature, Lulu had not aged.
We had ripened, to follow what the Greek philosopher proposed. The metaphor about fruit and friendship stops there. We are not about to fall off some branches of life. Not yet.
That afternoon, we took photos in twos and threes and fours, rearranging the position of each other with each other, as if the permutation would cause magic. Briefly, names of those who passed on were mentioned but we did not dwell on them. Life is short and time is brief, they say. But for the six of us, life has been made longer and time to the fullest extended. There was so much food on the table: exotic jelly from Tokyo; chocolate from Switzerland and rice cakes from the towns around us; a colorful array of pastries that Caloy dubbed “Turkish Delight.” But we barely touched them. We were watching our diet, careful of the carbs and controlling of sugar. Life had made us wiser and yet—this is the lesson of good friends meeting after many years—we are now gifted with the certainty to refuse anything that claims to be sweeter than our friendship.