I met Pat at the campus of the MSU when I was on my fourth year in college. Lily Damonsong, a common friend of the occupants of Cottage No. 3 at the Aggie Village, introduced Pat to me. She was Lily’s classmate at St. Mary’s High School in downtown Dansalan, the capital town of the then undivided Lanao and the old name of Marawi City. They were neighbors in Barrio Green. Pat became a frequent guest in our cottage but I did not take special notice of her. She was just a regular acquaintance, tagged along by Lily. Then in my final year in the university, we started our regular Saturday jam sessions in Barrio Green with Lily as our host. Her stern father, a Philippine Constabulary technical sergeant, welcomed our presence, so we felt at ease and at home in their house. The socialization had added color and taste to my rather drab and bland existence. The jovial atmosphere of our gatherings enabled me to cope better with the stress of studies. I had taken hundreds of decongestant tablets but my bouts of chronic sinusitis continued. Yet after a few weeks of socializing, I found I was no longer decongestant-dependent. My sinusitis was gone for good. Pat was a regular participant in our “Saturday Night Fever” (if I may call it although it was a far cry from John Travolta’s sizzling disco sessions a decade later). She was a good dancer. A two-left feet, I would not dance but enjoyed watching her slim and supple body as she danced tango and chacha.
As a new addition to our clique, Pat’s presence in our cottage became more frequent. I continued to be a nice friend and gracious host until one day, Pat, sitting cross-legged in seeming abandon with the hem of her miniskirt way above the ankles, I found her quite sexy. Her dark hair cascaded down her shoulders. Her skin was fair and flawless, a legacy from her half-Chinese mother. I surveyed her from head to foot and noted her oval face, full lips, well-endowed body, long and tapering fingers, and shapely legs. Like a bolt of lightning, it dawned on me that she was something special.
The party at Lily’s residence was warming in the cool night. Sick with flu I retired in an adjoining bedroom. In the living room, feet shuffled as the stereo phonograph played rock music – A Hard Day’s Night, Are You Lonesome Tonight, Diana and other songs by the Beatles, Elvis Presley and Paul Anka. The animated conversations and laughter were muted but not totally lost (thanks, hip hop music was still decades away). I strained my ears to single out Pat’s voice but heard none. I expected her response to the long love letters. After a light year, she entered the room and without uttering a word handed me an envelope. She promptly rejoined the party. I understood since Pat was not very expressive of her feelings. I opened the hand-made envelope. The card-size stationery inside bore her watercolor drawing of a cub lion in red cap and shirt blowing a trumpet. Get well soon was written on the first quadrant on the level of the lion’s head. On the opposite page of the folded card was her terse message:
Nov. 30, 1966
Ter,
You win the “game.”
Pat
At age 21, I had my first sweetheart and I realized that my love life was akin to that of the “self-centered swine” in Ogden Nash’s poem, “To My Valentine.”
Christmas was just a few weeks away at the time we were engaged. We become closer as our group conducted our nightly Christmas carol to raise money for our Christmas party. She was a good singer and her soprano voice would blend harmoniously with the other voices.
We started petting soon after our engagement. Our first earnest kisses took us so long our damp clothes had dried when we finally let go. We did it at the foot of the ladder of their elevated house. It was already midnight when I escorted her home after the caroling.
We were separated for five months on the third year of our engagement. In April, 1969, I reported for the six-month pre-service training for community development worker at the Community Development Center, Los Baños, Laguna. Our copious letters kept us in touch during the long separation.
Pat and I were married on March 18, 1970, after three years and three months of engagement. It was a marriage between a Pisces and an Aries in the Year of the Dog. Our marriage on the 77th day of the year was a milestone in our lives.
About fifty people (sponsors, family members and friends) participated in the offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass at St. Michael’s Church, Iligan City when Pat and I were united in the Holy Sacrament of Matrimony. Savings from my salary for my first four months of work paid for the reception that followed at Canton Restaurant. My parents sponsored the wedding party in Maigo, attended by the people in the neighborhood.
Pat wanted to be near her parents on her first childbirth so our eldest, a daughter, was born in a small clinic in Marawi City. Pat insisted that I should be at her side, so I witnessed the whole business of childbirth. I saw the flash of white flesh as the doctor performed a snappy incision to widen the child’s exit. Pat suddenly collapsed of traumatic pain and I saw the alarm on the doctor’s face when her blood pressure plummeted to zero. But she rallied and recovered. The lady physician, Dr. P. de los Cientos, sutured back the laceration of the tactile muscle that mattered much in marriage. That night I watched over the first fruit of our love’s labor – a lovely, tiny and fragile bundle of delight – sleeping soundly at her mother’s side. There was an unmistakable trace of contentment on Pat’s exhausted countenance as she drifted into her restful slumber. The first night was also a reality check on parenting. For unknown reasons our child woke up and cried. We were at a lost on what to do. I pacified the child by cuddling her in my arms but I was tired and my eyelids were loaded with heavy leads and our baby, barely six hours old, would resume wailing as soon as I doze off. I would stand up for the nth time and execute some sort of a dance that my wife would find funny if she was not as tired and scared as myself. I wished our parents or people with experience on this matter were around to enlighten us on what to do or come to our rescue. But there were only three of us in the Dansalan Clinic – an exhausted mother, a scared father and a child who might be sick of something. When daylight came at last, I felt like a condemned person about to be hanged, when someone announced that there was a mistake and I was free to go.
