Birthday typhoon

It rained hard the night before.  My students, who had treated me to a marvelous lunch at an Indian restaurant, had left leaving me with leftover treats and even washing my dishes.  It was quite a hilarious lunch we had.  We ate food most of us had not eaten before.  We dressed in Indian costumes.  One of us distributed those things you paste in the middle of your forehead.  We all pasted them on.  Then we went to my home for their last class before graduation.  After class we opened wine and little Spanish treats and enjoyed a lot of laughter.  We had become very good friends.

Outside, the rain kept falling, harder and harder.  I looked out of my windows at the sheets of rain.  This must be the first typhoon of the season, I thought.  Before going to bed I tucked my computer into my chair and wheeled it well under my desk.  Then I finally went to sleep thinking:  This is the first typhoon of the season.  It comes promptly on the eve my 63rd birthday.

I woke up the next day wondering why I had not received any cell calls.  When I looked at my cell it was overloaded.  I would have to delete almost everything, something I preferred to do individually to retain all sorts of addresses stored in there.  It took a bit of time but then it would not stop ringing.  Neither would my land line.  I was supposed to have lunch with old friends, we decided to postpone because of the storm.

Well, not quite.  My driver showed up and my cleaning man, too.  Late in the morning, when the weather seemed to be clearing, my dear old friend Tessie Tomas called and said, “Come on. We’re neighbors.  I’ll take you to lunch.”  We met at Sugi.  She looked marvelously fashionable and I looked like a double-decker London bus, but we had fun.  Then rain began to fall in torrents again.  I dropped her home and came home to a clean apartment, where I stared out of the window and watched the sheets of rain falling.

How wonderful to have this weather on my birthday, I thought, noticing a wistful smile that would not leave my face.  I remembered my birthday parties when I was a child in our old house in Sta. Mesa.  My friend Belle was there.  It must have been my 10th birthday party.  We made bags of gifts for the St. Anthony orphans and brought them over after lunch.   She and my cousin Toto had a fight.  He said, “You look like a safe.”  I thought that was funny because, in fact, she did.  Belle is dead now, gone to heaven, like many of my friends.  It rained like this too but after the party, after my guests had gone.  The eggs Mommy sent to the nuns had worked.  Otherwise, we would all have been soaking wet.

I am looking out of my window, enjoying the rain that has come and soaked everything.  My cell phone beeps.  I remember the big party we had on August 8, 1988.  We dubbed it Twee’s 8-8-88!  Oh yes, I remember it well.  The weather was exactly like this.  We had it on the Sampaguita Studio grounds.  Everyone arrived wet.  There was a band and I sang badly, off-key, but I didn’t care.  I was 44 then and enchanted by the magic of my birthday in numbers.  How, every 11 years, my age would be double-numbered too.  I was born in 1944, turned 11 in 1955, 22 in 1966, 33 in 1977.  That was also the year my major relationship smashed to the ground.  I was 44 in 1988, 55 in 1999.  Then the new millennium came and I thought things would change. 

In a way they have.  Next year my birthday will be 08-08-08.  That is when I will have my biggest birthday bash.  It will be my last.  I am emerging from seven years of the worst luck I have ever had in my life.  Next year my life will be fully new again.  I just know it.

Until then I thank God profoundly and profusely for the full life He has given me, its ups and downs, its sideways motions, the unexpected major swoops.  It has been a colorful life, worth living, wonderful to remember, wonderful to live still. 

This year in this typhoon I am happy. I am 63.  I break into a grin.   I can’t help it but the Beatles song runs in my head: Will you still need me?  Will you still feed me, when I’m 64?

Anyway, to all of you who remembered, thanks for the texts!

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