What has love got to do with it?
In the midst of too much troubles besetting the nation, how can one write about love? Perhaps, I'm just one old-fashioned sentimental fool. Some four scores ago, I met a young nurse from Nueva Ecija, in my boarding house in Sta. Mesa, Manila. I was late arriving in Manila to review for the bar exams in 1974. And I was not supposed to fall in love. I had a long-time girlfriend in Cebu, and I was supposed to focus on my rather belated bar review. But destiny changed my life and four years after becoming a lawyer, I married that girl in 1978.
Today, we are still together. Our five children are all professionals, have stable lives, jobs, and relationships with their respective loved ones. I have one married son and we have one wonderful grandson. And we are all doing well. How amazing is God's love for me and for my family. My 89-year-old papa is still doing good with my 87-year-old mama, the love of his life. They have been married for 64 years now and they still hold hands in the park and hug each other when in bed. Well, it is cold in Seattle where they have been residing for more than ten years now, after living in Hawaii for 20 years.
The irony of it all, we are not really very expressive in the family. We do not say "I love you" as often as others do. We seldom hug each other although I do kiss my wife every time I leave and arrive home. And I did not realize that I have been doing that for the last 37 years of our married life. For 37 times, I have sent her three dozens of red roses, or tulips every St. Valentine's Day, every birthday of hers, and every wedding anniversary. I have never failed doing all those even when we lived in Taiwan, in Kuwait, and in Kuala Lumpur where I served as a diplomat. That means 999 dozens or 11,988 roses or tulips. We celebrated our silver wedding cruising in the Rhine River and spent many summers in Europe and the Americas.
Today, I see my son JP and his girlfriend Ayen and they are very romantic. They are engaged to tie the knot this yearend. My daughter Joyce Mae got married last year, and my third son Josef Rey was the first to get hitched in 2013. That means that next year, we will be left with my youngest son, the artist Jeremiah, (he is in a very loving relationship with his foreign flight stewardess/sweetheart Llara) and my youngest, the social worker Jiza Mari (with boyfriend Dino). All my children have long and steady relationships that last for seven to ten years. Our parents and grandparents started this tradition. Nobody has had any divorce or separation.
And as for me, I really cannot imagine how families are broken and marriages shattered. Although I have served the migrant workers as labor attaché and I witnessed how relationships are broken, I cannot, for the life of me, ever imagine the trauma that children have to suffer because parents decide to part ways. Men and women today are more career-focused and business-oriented than being fixated to the family. I do not know about you. As for me, love is not just a feeling. It is a decision. My credo is: "Work hard in your job, but put God in the center of your life, and your family as your first priority. There is no success in career that can make up for failure in the family."
And I do not call it love. I call it the right and proper thing to do. I don't call my wife ''sweetheart'' or say "I love you." I just do it, and do it very consistently. Perhaps, I'm not really an old-fashioned romantic fool, after all.
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