Nevertheless, I was nervous. I am always nervous before a speech. My computer had given up on me the day before, had developed another glitch. It was temporarily unusable. I had made handwritten notes but didn’t know if the speech would be alive, if it would make any sense at all, but there was nothing more I could do about it. I let myself be transported by the moment, the scenery, whatever. Please, just don’t make me think about the speech.
The North Expressway is now better than the South. It is smoother, sleeker, and so new. When was the last time I was here? Fiesta at Sulipan, many years ago. We turned right into a small street whose sky was covered with thick rows of fiesta banners. I have memories of old houses with narra doors and ballrooms once grand and of pink depression glass leftover from past balls. There was a fluvial parade in the river that divides Sulipan and Apalit.
I was very touched by everything I saw at the fiesta that I returned with my daughter to show her the place. I brought her to the old property of my great-grandfather, a corner lot full of tenants’ shacks, but somewhere in the center stood what remained – stairs leading up nowhere now covered with vines and somewhere to the back were ruins of a once majestic fort-like wall. This is all that’s left. Once, it must have been a grand life. I remember feeling like a doughnut whose center was a hole, a personality developed around the emptiness of her father’s early death. I had not known my father’s extended family well. In my ears, I still hear my Lolo Bindo talking to my mother, "Gonzalez, doble zeta, we are all related," he said, but I did not get to know them well.
Today, San Fernando and Angeles are bustling again. There are so many new buildings, mostly three stories with ornate grills, mostly newly constructed or just going up. I remember being here when it was all covered with Pinatubo’s white ash, which looked like snow but did not feel like snow. It was heavy. It fell with a thud. It got into your nose. It turned coconut trees upside down, like umbrellas blown over by an ill wind. It knocked down bridges, forcing people to cross them on foot, or be carried on chairs, or drawn by carabaos. It was desolate then. Rivers appeared to have changed their course. There were floods. I was then chairman and president of the Coca-Cola Foundation Philippines, Inc. Ray Punongbayan and I were friends. Now he has returned to ashes. How time goes by!
But there was a time before Pinatubo when I used to come here frequently to catch up with Aida, Melvyn, and what was the name of the girl with the snake story? Those were the years I worked at Avon and this was a trial market to see if the Avon way of doing things in the USA could be done here. I used to come here often then to visit and check and train and then to stop off and buy clothes or whatever at the PX stores. Pampanga, you are such a part of me. You touch my heart. You stir it well.
We go to San Fernando, to the home and restaurant of Rene Romero. The restaurant, I think, is called Herbs and Greens. It is organic and romantic, an air-conditioned greenhouse. There we sit – Tom, Frankie, Rene, Terry Carlos of the Rural Bank of Florida, and I. At 6:30, we leave for Spencer’s, the restaurant that is the venue for the speech. I eat again to quell my anxiety. I give the speech. Is it successful? Yes, I think so. I leave accompanied by an invitation to return to conduct my Joy of Writing class there.
"You may go to sleep, ma’am," Tom says as the car takes off for Manila.
"I am not sleepy, thank you," I say. "I am relieved. It’s all over. I am beginning to be happy." Yes, I think, I would love to see Pampanga again and to teach something here. Yes, I would love to return here weekly and revisit my fond memories of the place. Yes, that would be fabulous.