May 24, 2007
Love, barrio-style
I grew up in a rural community. I spent my pre-school years in a farm where, in the course of visiting my grandparents every now and then when I got older, I would accumulate some of my fondest memories. There was no electricity so our sole source of entertainment was a battery-operated phonograph. When I think of my late grandfather, I am reminded of those classical music-filled evenings when we, the apos (grandchildren), would gather in the living room and sit spellbound as our grandmother culls from memory stories from the last war.
My parents met at the same farm. I’m not sure if it was love at first sight, but apparently my father first saw my mother plowing the field and he was smitten. He was working at an electric plant not far from the farm and would purposely drop by my grandparents’ house in an attempt to talk to my mother. My father, a rebellious lad from the city, got his chance but conversations with my mother did not happen with idle hands – each time he visited, my grandparents laid out a basket of corn for him to decob. It was also unthinkable in those days to talk to your loved one without a parent sitting in between and listening in. When my father returned to the city, my mother followed him. They were promptly married. When both of them finally returned to my grandparents' farm, heads hung low and expecting the worst, they were married again.
My grandfather was the typical skirt-chaser. After countless affairs with women, and at least two children outside of marriage, it was grandmother who finally roped him in. In keeping with pre-marriage rituals in those days, he had to perform manual labor for his future bride’s family to prove his dedication and trustworthiness. Public display of affection was shunned and it was expected that the bride would offer herself only after the wedding. My grandparents, however, had conflicting versions of this part of the story. Simply put, my grandfather was not a very patient man.
The harana, the art of serenading a woman, used to be an integral part of courtship in the Philippines.
I have the most modern love story in our family. Lucky for the husband, he was spared from the servitude. But growing up in a small town, I experienced what, when I think of them now, were amusing, if not crude, expressions of affections. There was a deaf neighbor who seemed overly generous – he would bring freshly caught fish to the house almost everyday and then walk away. He was a good man, but I was too young to recognize those fishy – literally - overtures. Then there was a boy who handed me a soft drink crown cap at a store. On the inside he had scribbled “I love you” in sloppy handwriting and I ran home. My first kiss scared the crap out of me. I was in first grade. The suspect, a fair-skinned boy who was the grandson of a known photographer in town, chased me home with his bunch of little hooligan friends one rainy afternoon. When he caught up with me, he grabbed me by the shoulders and kissed me on one cheek. I ran home terrified and crying. I saw the same boy when I was in high school (he transferred to the city when we entered second grade) and embarrassed him to death when I jokingly reminded him how he “harassed” me when I was seven years old.
As I got older, though, I became smarter. I had polished my comebacks. Returning home from a semestral break in college, a cousin introduced a friend who was probably five years my junior that time. He wanted to play Mr. Smooth. I told him he still had to eat quite a few sacks of rice to catch up with me. To shake off his persistence, I offered I deal: if he could last through a bottle of Tanduay, we could talk. He passed out.
Posted by fleur at May 24, 2007 04:14 AM