CEBU, Philippines - Through all my days and works, as far back as at least fifty years, coffee has been my most companionable steady.
My parents who were neither rich nor poor were always trying, as Mama put it, “to make both ends meet.” So, taking my studies to heart, first in UP Los Baños, and later, in UP Diliman, I needed most nights to keep still at my desk, relax, and focus on the next day’s academic task. This was how my life-long affair with coffee began.
UP Los Baños was my first experience of living away from my parents. In the solitary occupation of serious study, I found a kind of steadying solace in my steaming cup of coffee that I would bring up to my dormitory room from the cafeteria.
Between classes during the day, my friends and I would relax exchanging notes and conversing (and yes, gossiping) over cups of coffee in the school canteen; sometimes, young members of the faculty would join us, and then our coffee would seem to stir up the verve and cheer of the exchange. From solitude to multitude, as it were, from the isolation of intellectual engagement to the easy camaraderie of one’s own fellows, coffee seemed like a bridge one crosses lightsomely from day to day.
I had wanted to be a farmer-poet like Robert Frost. But in our class in poultry one day. I killed my first capon, for I took out from my poor captive more than was needful. It was a most telling omen. It so happened though that I had also read Gerard Manley Hopkins. Again, a poet decided my course.
When I enrolled as an English major in UP Diliman, I continued my affair with coffee. In our family’s cottage on the Diliman campus, I would study late into the night, my books spread on the dining table, a typewriter on one side, and of course, a constant supply of Nescafé. The English teachers then were quite exacting. We would have to read all of Dante’s Divine Comedy, for example, or Cervantes’s Don Quixote or Dostoyevski’s The Brothers Karamazov – and even the Bible, yes, both Old and New Testament, as literature.
A most cherished memory of my college days in UP Diliman is visiting my girl friend in Cubao on a Saturday evening with my modest offering of chocolates to which I would have already attached some silly verses addressed to “my Geisha.” I can still see her now, so young, so pretty, and often irrepressible with her piquant wit. O, how traitorous is Time!
My heart still leaps remembering how she would carry a tray to a low table by the sofa in their living room and then, on her knees, she would offer me a slice of cake or some other pastry that she had herself baked, accompanied by a steaming cup of coffee with just the amount of sugar that she knew I would myself put in. This image has defined for me the meaning of nostalgia that from its Greek etymology signifies the longing ache for home: how did I ever deserve such sweet charm and delight in love?
Looking back now, I find that each day in my life is a gift of light and cheer – though of course at times there be confusion and travail – but always, I try to begin the day right with a little prayer and a hot cup of Nescafé with just a little sugar. Its zesty aroma and full-bodied flavor rouse me to a kind of bright wakefulness which makes me feel eager to engage with the day’s round of duties and pleasures – and surprises, too.
There may be a party, a wedding, or a wake; or my wife Mercy and I may go with friends to our regular dance session or a trip to Batanes or Siargao; or I may have to drive her to some morning appointment when her driver Sonny brings our grandchildren to school; or I may have to go to my class in UP or Ateneo, or attend a meeting with colleagues, or keep some appointment with friends, at neither one of which, as a matter of pride, am I ever late – unless, of course (but fortunately, rarely), Herr Alzheimer pays me a visit.
Or if I have time for myself, then happily I turn to a book I have set aside, or a poem or story whose secret a recalcitrant Muse refuses to divulge, or an ongoing research project whose self-imposed deadline I try my best to keep in rein.
Such is any day in my life, with family, colleagues, and friends, and through its course from dawn to moonset, through the usual routine and whatever rout, I give myself respite from time to time and enjoy a private reward – a steaming cup of Nescafé with a smidgen of brown sugar.