They're not as grand as any orchard, his pomelos were severely late bloomers and his mangoes are not always very pretty, but he loves his trees none the less.
He visits his little patch of farmland in Balasan, Iloilo on weekends to inspect if the wind has blown away the blossoms that are to be our future Mango Float Confections. He even frequented the Chinese stores in downtown Isnart to buy fragrant incense to burn beneath his trees like offerings to an altar because he saw somewhere in National Geographic that cherry blossoms bloomed all year round in a monastery in China where the monks prayed beneath the Sakura branches. Come harvest season, he sells his mangoes at the cheapest price, which basically means he gives them away by the kilo, and revels in our yellow-stained faces when we relish the fruits to the heart with gusto more than any monetary income he ever gets from them...if he even gets any. When the typhoon Frank devastated Western Visayas and uprooted more than half of his Mango trees, he was heartbroken. But he mended them anyway and came the next harvest we stained our faces in yellow again and forgot all about Typhoon Frank.
He loves his trees almost as much as he loves his children, I would say. Perhaps because his own father was a tree in many ways and it was his land and legacy more than anything else.
When we were little we used to get confused.
In kindergarten when they asked what our father does for a living, I think the stories would say that it was Emil who answered: "FARMER!" and proudly, despite the puzzled faces that must have greeted him because everybody else knew our father was an orthopedic surgeon. In the same way that when we were asked, "Ano ang pangalan ng iyong 'nanay'?" and Allan would answer, NANAY KA. Emil would answer, NANAY RING, and I would answer, NANY SHON... because Dra. Amelita Robles was our "mommy", a rank presumably higher than "nanay."
A child's logic is flawless that way.
We didn't lack of maternal figures even when our blood mother was a career woman, so that when Johnny became a Reverend Father, Nanay Ka, Nanay Ring and Nanay Shon just had to be there...with Mommy, of course. :)
And we're not so little anymore anyway...
But, like I keep saying, July is here...
A reprieve and a reminisce...
Last year, July was a rainy day. It was the saddest July of my life. I don't ever wish to have another July such as that again. So it rained. The sky and my eyes... But I no longer wish to dwell on that because nowadays my eyes keep raining for reasons other than sadness...
Daddy turned sixty last year. Now it's July again after just a blink of an eye and he finds himself a father of a Reverend Father. :)
Mom was a faucet and nobody could turn off the tap. I don't think she'll ever cry at any of our weddings the way she cried at Johnny's ordination to priesthood.
It's a good thing he has sisters.
But I'm starting to get carried away. I was talking about trees.
Daddy has trees.
Trees and sons.
There is a connection there somewhere that I didn't quite see before, until this morning when Tope put on his green scrubs and I spotted a tree embroidered on the back, next to the logo of the hospital he worked in. It was a broken tree with a prop to keep it straight. I've seen it before but I've never given any mind to it.
It is the principle behind Orthopedics, he explained. We are like trees. A broken tree is not always a dead tree. Sometimes all it needs is a prop to lean onto so it knows which direction to grow, and so it can stand tall again. And we are like trees. Your father understands that. He understands his trees as much as he understands a broken femur.
...
Hehe, oonga no! :)
When I think about it, Allan has his own thing going. It may not be the life people expected of him, but it's definitely the life he ultimately chose for himself and I do believe he rocks it. If Emil followed the path people expected of him, he would be the Reverend Father and not the archeologist he is now, and Janine would have been a very lonely girl. Johnny is more complicated in his un-complication. I imagine he must have gone through a very long internal journey before he said his vows to celibacy at the beginning of this month, although people would believe he was headed that way all along. And Sonny is about to be a father himself. No, not another reverend father. Just a father (I wonder if he has any idea how much it will turn his entire world around the way Promise did mine?...) Amelie and April and Ben have a longer way to go, but I do believe we've all been "propped up" somehow. We've all had our lean-to's. We've all taken unexpected turns but there was always that principle of having somewhere to rest our backs; to show us which direction to grow...
The trees never noticed it. They just kept growing in the path of least resistance. Reaching for the sun. Yielding their fruit, thinking that it was all on their own, never realizing that a gentle hand who has held dirt and blood without flinching, has silently laid down a foundation, securing the strength of their branches to endure as much weight as the fruit they are destined to bear.
The trees never noticed it and I believe neither did we.
And suddenly I remember why I love them very, very much. My father, my brothers and my Christopher. He is the most broken of the men I just mentioned, I think. Somehow, daddy must have put up a prop for him somewhere too because he now seems to be growing in the right direction. :)
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