Gentle on my mind
Albert Einstein theorized that there is nothing in the universe that is faster than light which is said to travel at up to 300,000 kilometers per second. I beg to disagree. There is something that’s faster than light — memories. In an instant, our memories can travel through space and time and bring us decades back into our past. Obviously, however, I’m no physicist. Nor am I also trying to be a philosopher. I’m just someone who’s reminiscing about an old friend and marveling at all the bright warm feelings that thoughts about him bring.
If my relationship with my late father can be loosely described as that of a sacristan and priest, then my father-in-law and I would be more like Batman and Robin: partners in drink, partners in watching movies, partners in petty mischief, and partners in crime. Even when I was not yet married to his daughter and would go to see her at their house, there were times when it felt more like I was visiting him. I normally dropped in before lunch or dinner and by the time I arrived, he would already be waiting for me with our apéritif of the day all set up. “Cocktails!” he would beam at me. Of course, we drank just barely enough to keep our lips moist and often ended up ingesting about three times more chips and cold cuts than the assorted poison we sampled. After meals, it would then be, as he called it, “Showtime!” We must have watched close to a hundred flicks in their bedroom during the heydays of VHS, Betamax, and Laser discs. If that was not enough, there were even occasions when I played hooky from work to go with him to the cinema. We continued this routine even after we lived abroad for some time as he and my mother-in-law would take long vacations with us. Over the years, however, we gradually watched less and less movies as he found it harder to follow and enjoy the storylines (especially when they had flashback sequences). We ribbed him that the films had become too “Parental Guidance.” Our cocktails were also increasingly replaced by coffee dates. Eventually, we alternatively settled for lazing in cafes, sipping on mugs of java as we harmlessly rated the pretty women that passed us by.
I guess it is but natural for our faculties and strength to deteriorate as we get older; except that in my father-in-law’s case, things are sort of happening one at a time and in slow motion. In a way, that makes it more manageable. At the same time, however, it also makes things more bittersweet. As the number of movies and beers we enjoyed together slowly declined, so too did his eyesight and hearing progressively suffer. The long walks that he liked to take steadily grew shorter as did his attention span. “Satellite Delay” was soon added to “Parental Guidance” when it started to take longer for things that we said to him to register in his mind, similar to the split-second lag of live satellite television feeds from abroad. But now, the signal has become even weaker. And while there is still a picture, there is no sound. I want to bonk myself in the head as I type in these words because I can’t seem to stop making jokes even as I write about his condition. But I’ve hardly ever had a truly sad moment with him and I’m determined not to start having any. Besides, he is, after all, receiving “business class” type care from his family. He would laugh at that analogy, too, because it was the two of us who often sat together in the business class section of the plane (unlimited supply of movies-on-demand and Bailey’s liqueur, among other things) when we got free upgrades and not my wife and mother-in-law who both languished in Economy.
And so, when I visit him nowadays, I try my best to treat him no differently from before. I whisper conspiratoriously that I’m scheming to sneak in a few drops of whisky in his feeding tube. I also remind him about all the happy memories we have shared. I don’t know, however, if he can still remember the first time we discovered Japanese-style gindara fish in Hong Kong; the tiny ponkan oranges we tossed inside our mouths like popcorn in Guangzhou; the steaming ramen we slurped in the middle of the street one winter in Kobe; the time we had “naked communion” with a giant sumo wrestler in a Japanese Onsen (traditional hot spring bath); and the long walks we took amid the cherry blossoms in Rokko Island. I also wonder if he still recalls unexpectedly seeing me for the first time with his daughter; toasting with Erap’s favorite Blue Label at the birth of my daughter; and once granting me the ultimate compliment a father could give to a son-in-law when he told me that his daughter had not chosen too badly (must have been the effects of the alcohol). In his current state, maybe he remembers, maybe he doesn’t. But I surely do. And as long as I can, I will continue to have Cocktails and Showtime with him, as that song goes, at the back roads by the rivers of my memory, where he’ll be ever smiling, ever gentle on my mind.
* * *
The International British Academy in Cavite will be staging the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Time Rice musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the Insular Life Corporate Centre Auditorium in Alabang, Muntinlupa on Feb. 4 at 7 p.m. and Feb 5 at 6:30 p.m. For tickets, please call 046-4715922 or 046-4715924 or e-mail info@iba.edu.ph.
* * *
Please e-mail your reactions to kindergartendad@yahoo.com.
