“Write something else,” said her friend. “Everyone knows your field is public governance. Must you continually write about it? Write about something else!”
“All right,” she answered. “I will write about happiness.” And so, while on the plane from Nagoya to Toronto, she wrote by hand on the back of the airline menu.
Happiness. What age is the happiest in one’s life? When she was 17, she was graduating magna cum laude from the university. She was the bunso of her indulgent barkada. She sang in the choir, led the College Quiz Bowl Team and nonchalantly collected straight “A’s.” As a church youth leader, she visited prisons, called on the sick and spoke in youth conferences.
She was bursting with life and promise. Old age was a far-away country. Oh, how distant and how old 20 years seemed to be! Standing on the edge of a glorious tomorrow, she asked herself, “Could I ever be happier than now?”
Then she discovered UP, nationalism and England. What freedom! Demonstrations. All-night discussion groups. And music, always music. This time she sang political songs in lieu of church anthems. Joan Baez, Simon and Garfunkel. “Bayan Ko.” “Bandilang Pula.” The transition to activism was effortless.
When she was 29, she fell rapturously in love. He had seen her pictures in newspapers when he was abroad. She was on top of a jeep, streaming hair longer than her micro miniskirt, waving a red flag while her companions rammed it against the gates of Malacañang. He looked for her when he returned to the Philippines. She took one look at him and asked herself, “Could I ever be happier than now?”
She had two sons. The eldest boy was born while she was hiding during martial law. They lived in a hut surrounded by toilets. Huge flies flitted around as she sang lullabies. For the first time, she fell very ill.
The second boy was born soon after she surfaced from hiding. It was December. Like Mary and Joseph, she and her husband walked to the nearest private hospital because there was no room in PGH. She fell sick again. Her colleagues from her home college raised money to bail her out of the hospital.
There she was, covered with coal tar and wrapped in plastic from head to toe.
The two sons were watching TV
when they caught sight of an impossibly beautiful blonde girl on screen. “Kamukhang-kamukha
ni Mama,” exclaimed the older to the younger boy. The latter nods in
agreement. Bloated, swollen, and in pain, she asked herself, “Could I ever be
happier than now?”
Now, she is 66. As they say, “Been there. Done that.” She still sings in the choir as first soprano. She rereads her favorite books and repeatedly watches movies she likes, to the amusement of her sons. She eats whatever she wants, to the despair of her doctors. She keeps her friends of 50 years, and goes around with former students who have become friends. She has not stopped discovering new challenges.
And she is still at it. Activism, that is. Only she can’t clamber on top of jeeps. In the middle of something new and exciting, she asks herself, “Could I ever be happier than now?”
It is bittersweet happiness. How much longer can she go on? How many more years before the singing voice falters? How much longer will her ears register the magnificence of a piano concerto, the soaring heights of a tenor’s voice or a lyric soprano’s high Cs? Yes, how much longer can the heart bear so much excitement, so many thrills, victories and defeats?
But what age can be better than 66? Many times she is so happy she feels she is breathlessly standing on the edge of more tomorrows, with life’s many wonderful secrets still awaiting to be revealed. Eighty years old is far, far away.
Happiness is one’s age. Now.