So gentle, so calm, so Dad

During the Japanese occupation in 1943 my dad, Desi, 24, and mom, Maria de los Angeles (Lita), 19, were single and dating. Their chaperone was Ma. Theresa “Bebe” Lammoglia-Virata, mom’s dearest friend and classmate at St. Scholastica’s College, Manila.  

All three went to the halo-halo parlor across Sta. Clara Parish near Libertad, where dad invited the ladies to cool themselves. At 25 centavos a serving, the halo-halo was exorbitantly priced. As it turned out, dad had forgotten his wallet. The girls ended up treating him to halo-halo and the carretela ride driven by a cochero that loaded cargo, too. Manila hardly had cars during the occupation and gasoline was limited and Dad bought and sold horses. The gasoline depot in Pandacan was taken over by the Japanese and permission had to be asked from the energy office under the Japanese army. Horses were more practical to own.

“Que bruto,” Tita Bebe said. “Porque sale de casa sin dinero.” “What a brute! Why does he go out of the house without money?” And she asked, “Are we going to bring him home, too?” Dad never had money with him. 

On another courting expedition he visited mom in the Manzano residence on Dominga St. Mom’s father would say, “He must know what time to leave.” Dad always overstayed for dinner.

From their teen years, Dad and his brothers Benny and Ding used to assist their father, Geronimo de los Reyes, in the management of the G. de los Reyes Bldg. on Plaza Cervantes, Manila, until the building was sold to Andres Soriano in the late 1930s. While most other teens were preoccupied with the latest dances, movies and fashion, dad and his brothers were busy with studies, work and practical skills like basic carpentry and construction. Lolo Moy made sure that his sons, though city-bred, learned basic first aid, how to ride horses, shoot, fish and cook well from their mom Gloria Berenguer who, of course, was a Kapampangan.

Lolo Moy allowed him to take apart clocks, radios and machinery, and challenged him to put them back together. In my teens, Dad was making me do the same, teaching me how to disassemble and assemble plugs.

Dad was taught how to maintain and repair their guns and rifles. Such skills served them well throughout his adulthood to protect themselves, as they helped save lives from 1942 to 1945 when their friends fled to the provinces to become guerillas while Dad, Tito Benny and Tito Ding belonged to the Manila network.

As they bought medicines to the provinces, they wore tattered clothes and native hats, traveled through swamps, to bring bayongs with the medicines and supplies. They made bandages out of clothes, used guava leaves on inflamed wounds, gave buko juice to hydrate the ill and brought them to a hospital in Manila, while pretending to be drunk before the Japanese soldiers. 

By nature, Dad was reserved and quiet. If the house was quiet, he was reading. I became a voracious reader of crimes and suspense stories like him. He was a typical eldest son, given to too much introspection. First and foremost, he was a La Sallite. In his pocket, he always kept a rosary. He always devoted much time to prayer. One moonless night in 1941, at around midnight, my grandfather, Geronimo de los Reyes, awakened his family to alert them to the presence of an intruder on their property. From a second-story window, they peered into the darkness and saw a man seated on the garage roof. Before any shots were fired, they recognized the man to be daddy Desi. He explained that he had just come home from a date with mom Lita and, hoping not to wake up the family, headed for a cool perch where he could pray the rosary and make plans for his marriage to mom. He said that earlier that evening, during the date, the realization that he had fallen in love with her had hit him “like a ton of bricks” and that the only question was whether Lita, the vivacious only sister of dad’s friend, not a fellow football player but the basketball player Adi Manzano, would consent to Dad’s plans.

Then another day, Dad showed up a-courting again with his friend Vicente Hilario, carrying a bayong. He promised to give Mom mangoes from their garden but someone had gotten ahead of him. To prove his good intentions he showed her the empty bayong. “He could have bought mangoes in San Andres market,” Pappy said in Spanish. A white lie he wouldn’t have minded. “Shouldn’t you get another suitor?” he remarked.

One day in April, Dad and Mom went to the municipal judge who was Lolo Geronimo’s friend to get married secretly. They had eloped — and then went home to their respective homes. May had come and Mom told Pappy Manzano about their civil wedding. 

Pappy said, “Que diablo! (What a devil!)”

“Que bruto!” Tita Bebe said.

On their wedding day, their maid of honor was mom’s first cousin, Connie Manzano-Taylor. Their wedding was held at the Archbishop’s Palace’s on MH del Pilar near Cortabitarte in the vicinity of what is now Quirino Avenue and Adriatico St. 

Bebe Lammoglia-Virata, mom’s veil sponsor, had forgotten to bring the veil. The priest undid his cloak at the altar so that it could be placed over mom’s head and dad’s shoulders. It was an auspicious beginning. I am told that after the wedding, a reception was held at the Sky Room of the Jai Alai Bldg. It was truly unforgettable. For me, too, as I had my all girls’ birthday parties there at 18.

My parents’ first ride as a couple was on a dokar owned by my paternal grandfather. The dokar was a big horse-drawn carriage that could accommodate about eight persons. It was pulled by a remarkable horse, which Dad’s father had trained to negotiate Manila’s streets with the aid only of verbal cues, without reins. 

Dating stories are seldom told. Memories are forgotten until instigated or they are kept secret purposely, like Mom’s recipes and Dad’s pocket money, until that one Sunday afternoon when my mommy laughed at themselves and I laughed with them.

All too soon, yaya Delin suggests to Dad, “Señorito tulog na kayo.” It’s time for his nap and he gets up obediently. His brown dog follows him, keeping pace with his master of 90 years old. It’s a procession of three slowly moving along…so different from hyper me. My mother gets up from a chair and holds her cane to balance herself.

It’s difficult to write about one or the other or disassociate them from each other even if one is cool air the other raging fire, one is calm skies and the other firecrackers. Two always acting as one. When Dad ordered The National Geographic for us monthly it was Mom who kept them lined up on the shelves. When he couldn’t drive me to Maryknoll, she would. He’d get into hobbies like garden furniture. When the orders came in, he hired neighborhood carpenters and mom fed them. They continuously shared responsibilities. Always there was food for friends that dad brought home. Mom hovered around the cook, directing her, especially when it came to fabada, his favorite. 

Occasionally, when he pushed his luck — meaning dragging a sixth or seventh hungry soul home — without a half hour’s notice to prepare a meal, I saw dagger looks from her. Taking a glance at us he’d giggle and shrug his shoulders at his smiling children.

Only he could understand why I loved dogs and then suddenly I didn’t like them anymore. He bought me a loving puppy he named “Ishiban,” meaning beloved in Japanese. One day I came home from school to be told Ishiban had died. An autopsy was performed at Carlos veterinarian clinic on the way to Ayala Bridge (I wonder if it still exists) and the vet discovered that the dog’s heart had been choked by ring worms. 

Then Dad gave us a Dachsund, a chorizo-looking dog. If we were kind to a dog we should care better for people. But, another goodbye came along and I never liked anyone dying on me. I began to disassociate myself from the species.

How funny it was when he wanted me to learn to play the saxophone in high school just because he had, in the La Salle band. Then how about the clarinet? He had to sell his during the Japanese occupation for P300 while they lived in Binangonan. In exchange for cash, he also was given a pig by the local band member. Every time a man died he looked out the window and said to Mom, “There’s my clarinet!”

Mom remembers that in Binangonan, Dr. Perla Gutierrez David del Rosario was my pediatrician. They have lunch till today with Alicia de Dios, Alma Tañedo, Maring Feria, Lumen Tiaqui every Tuesday at Vanilla Beans — no men allowed. Lest I forget, I compromised with Dad on a guitar. He well got even with me for frustrating him. I inherited his fingers, but they could be Mom’s, too! Literally they seem to have become “one” as though bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh referred only to them.

Calm. It doesn’t make him less emotional and less demonstrative. That’s just the way he is… composed and gentle. I wonder how a robust man, easy to laugh, a patient analyst, an operations and marketing executive who encouraged me to go into trucking, can be helpless now. He’d say, “Be an entrepreneur.” I chose to be a researcher, a historian, an ethnographer. He allowed me to be a dreamer, living out epics, so he was happy, too. “No me digas,” meaning “Really? Don’t tell me, a doctorate degree?” 

I watch him on Sundays sing and hum his favorite 1940s tunes, and I sing with him while Nico, his grandson, holds his hand. In spite of his Alzheimer, he remembers the words to every song.   He must be very contented in the world with mom beside him.