Perfect Love from a Perfect Stranger

What better day to resume writing in this long-neglected but still beloved blog but on the day of hearts?

Today I remember a gesture of love I witnessed when I was seven-turning-eight years old (Sophie's age, I realize) and during the great San Francisco earthquake of 1989. My family and I were on our way home to Manila after having lived in the United States for 7 years. From New York, we were to stop over at San Francisco and stay with my dad's brother, Tito Manny, for a few days, before taking our final connecting flight to a home I had often heard about but had never really known, for I was a mere one year old when we had left it.

On our last day in San Francisco, my Tito Manny took us to a nearby mall to shop for what I would eventually understand as pasalubong - gifts to family and friends from one's trip abroad. After buying us a few gifts as well as his own pasalubong for our relatives in the Philippines, my Tito Manny went his own way, as did my mom, so that she could accomplish more without her brood slowing her down. The brood - me, my older brother Ramon, and my younger brother Regis (one year old at the time) - was left with my father, who humored us and took us into stores that captured our fancy.

As we were walking through the hallway of the mall, I suddenly heard a frightening, deafening, pounding sound. It then felt as if the building had been ripped from its very foundation and was literally jumping up and down. The noise grew louder and louder, the pounding stronger, and as I squeezed my eyes shut, I imagined stone slamming against stone. The sound quickly grew unbearable. Ramon screamed, and I whimpered into my father's trench coat. We both panicked and shouted at my dad to make it stop. He rushed us into a shoe store, with a table we could hide under in case the ceiling collapsed. We clung to him tightly.

The Gift of Faith (A Tribute to My Dad)

I will now make an attempt to reconstruct an essay I wrote more than a decade ago for my college English class under the amazing and inspiring Doreen Fernandez. It was about my father, and it was one her favorites out of all the pieces I had written for her class. (She had us write an essay a week for an entire year, as she believed that practice, practice, and even more practice was key for all budding writers.) So here goes:

Nights at the dinner table are always filled with my father's stories, his witty remarks, and his boisterous laughter. He would preside over the table (as heads of families are wont to do), and regale us with anecdotes of his adventures and misadventures as a young boy, his outwitting of would-be muggers he would encounter in Central Park or on the subway on his way home from work, his close brush with death when my brother and I were mere babies. I listened to him in rapt attention, oftentimes with my mouth gaping open in amazement, oftentimes giggling till my sides hurt, and always, always thinking that my dad was the coolest, funniest, most awesome guy on the planet.

But that night was different. The atmosphere at the dinner table was solemn and quiet. And as my dad began to speak, his entire demeanor changed. His face was aglow with a serene light. His eyes were bright, clear, and deep. He had transformed into a sage, wise and philosophical.