Brothers Alyosha and Alaric both made it through Ateneo de Manila High School; oh what a relief. For a while there, their mom and I were in tenterhooks, fearing that the last Math exam would consign them to another summer of extra work, a virtual "pass-out" in favor of a DECS high school diploma, or sheer ignominy and a life spent as a counter attendant in Jollibee or Starbucks.
Well, that prospect wouldn’t have been all that bad, come to think of it. Nothing like starting early to raise funds for their father’s long-delayed retirement in an Italian villa.
But thankfully, on March 14, eve of the imaginably dreadful Ides, at 10 a.m. the promotions lists went up on big boards past Big Boy’s place of honor by the H.S. Admi wing. And our boys took their nervous paces from the parking lot towards the long-awaited announcement on their antsy future.
They were stopped on their tracks by Tita Marilou, whose own boy Enzo had also made it. "Congratulations!" she chirped. She had obviously gone through those fateful boards a minute earlier. I can only imagine what our boys felt at that moment of cheery greetings. Was she pulling our leg? Was she only presuming glad fate? Briefly asking back, "Oh, we passed?" – maybe even with more than a tinge of disbelief – they rushed to the lists and saw for themselves that indeed they would be off to college in June.
That both had passed the ACET or Ateneo College Entrance Test weeks earlier may have given them stronger hopes, as much as that welcome bit of news had fortified Mom’s and Dad’s own. But everything still hung in the balance for the last few weeks of schoolyear 2005-06. The younger boy had to dig himself out of a deep hole after wasting the first term by intently sporting a hip-hopper’s attitude all around his small universe, including school – thus earning his dad frequent consultation hours with teachers and discipline honchos.
The text message from his Math teacher soon after the final exam wasn’t too heartening. After weeks of daily attendance at AHEAD for tutoring, just so he could be helped over the hump in Math, he had done well in the last long test, but only barely scraped through the exam. Should we then prepare our written appeal already, I texted back. Mr. Dizon was most gracious: The next process involved deliberations among the class teachers. He advised that we wait for the results.
I don’t know, but I believe they took our boy’s heroic effort, if at the last minute, into positive consideration, maybe his having passed the ACET, too. Then again, someone might have raised the dire scenario of having to listen to the boy’s father again while he raised existentialist hell and all sorts of arrogant assessments of their system. So maybe they just agreed: yeah, better give his boy the benefit of the doubt. Heh-heh.
Now, with the youngest child Mirava, there had never been any problem. As early as mid-year last she had already been invited, as a straight-A performer in her own graduating class at Reedley International School, to sample a day in the life of a college coed in Ateneo. She passed both the ACET and UPCAT, too, so that my only concern was how to convince her to enter the more appropriate institution. Oops. Smiley, folks.
I had spent all of six-seven years in UP Diliman, and only a semester in AdMU, way back in the ’60s. But for certain reasons I now prefer to send my kids to Loyola Heights, at least for their first years in a university. Maybe graduate work, if any, could eventually land them in Diliman, or they conduct an undergrad transfer – should they decide to eschew further Jesuit education in a relatively placid, rational environment in favor of the excitement of sit-ins and protest marches at the drop of a fig leaf. Why, that nude run and that lantern parade and those frat rumbles they can always savor as a visiting, neighborly spectator.
For Mirava, who’s only turned 16, I’m particularly concerned over her readiness to cope with the occasional disorder, make that randomness, of the university process. Oh, she’s a bright kid, and academically self-disciplined. She’ll likely do well anywhere, and eventually might have to go to UP if she stays on course towards her career goal, which is to become a veterinarian at the San Diego or Sydney zoo.
Why, in Diliman she can also officially join the archery team, as that’s where she trains under Mang Jun, well enough to have garnered a silver medal last year in her age-group category in a national open.
And yet… Okay, maybe the most personal of reasons has to do with my part-time faculty duties in AdMU. Every Monday for the past six years I’ve held classes in either Poetry or Fiction, workshop style, for three hours a week.
I meet with best buddy Dr. Jimmy Abad for coffee half-an-hour before our respective classes. Or I drop in at the English Department to pick up communication and make chicahan with chair Marlu Vilches or our prospective Ang Ladlad party-list Congressperson Danton Remoto. Or exchange hi’s atbp. with the fine young poets and writers Larry Ypil, Vince Serrano, Exie Abola, BJ Patiño, Gad Lim, Missy Maramara et al., while we wait for the academic return from Princeton of possibly the finest young poet of late to practice out of Loyola Heights: John Labella.
And so, add to that the possibility of running into any or all three kids in campus, perchance treat to fatherly merienda, or just exchange discreet low fives on our way to this class or that. Such heartwarming prospects. My UP buddies should understand.
Flashback. Forty-six years ago, Bedans of High School Class 1960 marched out of Mendiola to go our disparate ways.
Most of us had not only experienced being together in the Benedictine campus for four years, but all of 10, including six years of primary schooling, so that we’re also the Silver Jubilarians that comprise SBC Elementary Class of 1956. Wow, 50! Five decades past! (Of course some of us were precocious, and must’ve graduated at 12 or 13.)
In any case, we came together again for Homecoming Day on Feb. 18, inclusive of our batchmates who truly came home – from everywhere. We attended Mass at the finest chapel in the world, looked up at the grand domed ceiling where a splendid mural promised the glories of heaven and the perdition of hell, relived the years of grinding our knees on the hard wood in each pew, and listened to the thanksgiving prayers and remarks from abbot-chancellor Fr. Tarciso Ma. Narciso, rector-president Fr. Anscar Chupungco, Alumni Association moderator Fr. Pio Lomibao, and that old beloved battle-axe, our former rector who’s come back from Spain, the nearly century-old (no kidding!) Fr. Benigno Benabarre – all of them of the Order of St. Benedict or OSB.
After the Mass, we received gold medals, I guess for being loyal Jubilarians – and had a photo op before the altar, with most of us in our old school uniforms: white short-sleeved shirts with the red circular patch on the left breast pocket, and hey, khaki shorts and black shoes. Then we all trooped to the old familiar quadrangle (well, so many physical changes have taken place, exempt the secluded Roman Garden close by), where we joined the rest of the celebrators, led by the HS Class of 1956.
It’ll be our turn four years from now, as High School Silver Jubilarians, in 2010, by the time PGMA closes out her term (oh yeah!?). And Boy Tuico from Madrid will come around again with Turrones de Alicante, and Nito Abad from Connecticut with bottles of 18-year-old Glenlivet single malt whisky, and Ady Dalton and Jun Aspillera from California with golf clubs for everyone, and Delfin Wenceslao and Bobby Barretto, also from the West Coast, USA, with excellent titillating photos of umbrella girls and then some, to add to our burgeoning private collections.
For now I share heart-felt excerpts from balikbayan Nito Abad’s blog entry on our Bedan Homecoming, which climaxed in that Mendiola quadrangle with a youthening dance performance from Aubrey Miles. Animo San Beda!
"Class reunions – what a good reason to drink! Being away from the Philippines for almost 40 years made me forget about what we did when I was there. We always find a reason to drink. And if we cannot find a reason, we drink, anyway. The cityscape may have changed, I may have aged, some friends may have departed but one thing will never change – Filipinos drink. Before the trip, we were educated on the merits of single malt whisky. And of course, the story must end with a request for a bottle of Glenlivet 18-year-old. Hey, being the "rich boy" (local translation – mayabang) from America, I said I would bring a few.
"Well I had the bottles so we had to find a place to drink them. Ding Reyes, owner of Chocolat (Chocolate cakes? You gotta get them here!) obliged. I invited my former classmates. And they came, and Tuttie Vergel De Dios even brought a friend. Her name was Claire and she was nice.
"One of my invitees, Delfin Amorsolo (son of the famous painter), just could not keep his hands to himself. He managed to elude all of us and disappeared with her!
"With more bellies to fill but no more booze, Ady Dalton sensed the need and invited us to his palatial condominium at Rockwell. Of course, we all had to dress up for this occasion, except someone who came in shorts (sexy naman)…
"Going to school can be as much fun now as it was 50 years ago even if you have to wear your khaki shorts and white shirt. I had to bribe Guido "Boy" Tuico, who has never in his adult life worn shorts – ‘Just not done in Madrid,’ he said – with pretty ladies just for him to wear one.
"Our red patches came courtesy of Bong Obligacion. He really wanted us to look authentic so he had these patches made. We promised each other to keep the uniform and wear it again in 2010 when our high school class celebrates its 50th anniversary. When you think about it, it’s easier to keep the uniform ready; it is harder to keep yourself alive. More power to all of us guys – may we have many more years!
"We relived old times. For one whole night we were young again, classmates again and right in the quadrangle where we used to play. Gone were all the problems of the present. All that mattered was that we were all brought back to yesterday.
"However, all nice things must come to an end. Soon we had to depart and go our own ways. We started saying goodbyes. With a sorry walk, my classmates left one at a time. We had to go our own ways again and face the world we lived in.
"We had to leave, but not before we found and saw the red bricks on the Plaza Bedista that held our names. In the dark we went through all, one by one, until we found our own names. I found mine and managed to take a picture.
"I know now that something of me will be left behind for others to see and remember even when I am long gone. Hopefully those who are left behind will say a prayer and be reminded that this class of grade school 1956 was here and did not want to leave, wanted to freeze this moment in time."