Terrible, marvelous year

I write this in violation of William Wordsworth’s precept that writers should write of emotions only as recollected in tranquillity. At the moment, I am far from being tranquil, but I plead the joy and pain of writing in the middle of things.

2008 was the worst year of my life, but it was also the best. This year, I came face to face with mortality, with the fragility of human life, with the strengths and the weaknesses of human beings, with God. This year, I found out, as one friend of a friend put it, that I had friends I never knew I had.

2008 was the year my wife died and was born again. 2008 was the year I died inside and was born again.

2008 started like every other year in my life, with the previous year’s New Year’s resolutions largely unfulfilled, with a half-hearted intention that I would do better the coming year, with a vague hope that I would remain in enough good health to finish all the teaching, writing, organizing, and social commitments I had made.

Before 2008, I prided myself on not being absent a single day from class. Except for the rare times when I was too sick to get out of bed, I had taught every class day for the previous 40 years in various universities. I was a stickler for punctuality and attendance, as far as I myself was concerned, and had gained a reputation for starting class even if only one of the students was in the classroom when the opening bell rang and for starting a workshop even if there were only a handful of the participants in the room.

In 2008, I not only was often late for my classes, but was even absent so many times my students started complaining.

Before 2008, I prided myself on remembering names and faces and even approximating Brother Andrew Gonzales’ penchant for associating people with their research projects or academic studies, nagging them to get on with their professional careers. In 2008, I often found myself at a loss when greeted by former students who would say with a smile, “I was in your class, sir,” then walk away totally disappointed upon seeing my blank stare of unrecognition.

Before 2008, I prided myself on never missing my writing deadlines, whether those of this column or those of scholarly articles or books. I also always came to my public lectures prepared, not just with written papers that I could give to sponsors to be distributed to the audience, but with fancy PowerPoint presentations with animated clip art.

In 2008, I missed all sorts of deadlines, leading two of my publishers to partly replace me in two very large book projects. I found myself giving speeches off the cuff and seeing, on the faces of my listeners, that I was merely wasting their time. I had PowerPoint presentations that were full of text (a no-no for experienced presenters) or even just downloaded pages from the Web (an even bigger no-no).

Early in 2008 my wife Remedios “Medy,” my daughter Luna, and I bought plane tickets to spend Christmas with my daughter Emily, her husband Brett, and their son Carter in Silicon Valley.

Since I was going to be in that area anyway, I registered for the annual convention of the Modern Languages Association to be held in San Francisco during the Christmas holidays. I planned to give two books to my friends attending the same conference – one book (edited by my star student David Jonathan Y. Bayot) anthologizing many of the articles I published outside the Philippines, the second a festschrift in my honor (also edited by Bayot), containing articles by many of the biggest names in international literary theory (Gayatri Spivak, Marjorie Perloff, Catherine Belsey, Christopher Norris, among others).

That trip was cancelled, and the two books will be published only after this year.

The root cause of my total disorientation in 2008 was what happened to my wife Medy. This is the story of Medy and her battle with bile. (To be continued)

“WORDS OF THE DAY” (English/Filipino) for next week’s elementary school classes: Dec. 15 Monday: 1. chin/abiso, 2. slow/abet, 3. thread/abatek, 4. distance/abud, 5. vessel/abat, 6. medicine/abitug; Dec. 16 Tuesday: 1. head/abyas, 2. small/abenida, 3. thought/abentura, 4. angle/aberya, 5. oven/abono, 6. adjust/abogado; Dec. 17 Wednesday: 1. knee/abrakadabra, 2. smell/abhas, 3. throat/abin, 4. solid/abilidad, 5. normal/abstrak, 6. interest/abasia; Dec. 18 Thursday: 1. foot/abla, 2. smile/absent, 3. through/abusado, 4. event/abstain, 5. control/aburido, 6. connect/abacus; Dec. 19 Friday: 1. hair/abak, 2. rod/abaaw, 3. thumb/abalone, 4. fertile/abraso, 5. engine/abwang, 6. argue/abnormal. The numbers after the dates indicate grade level. The dates refer to the official calendar for public elementary schools. For definitions of the words in Filipino, consult UP Diksiyonaryong Filipino.