Blessings

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Blessings
Posted:8:19 PM (Manila Time) | Dec. 11, 2003
By Conrado de Quiros



LAST Tuesday, I saw a sight where I live. It was just past 2 p.m. I was on my way to Makati to meet with somebody and was dreading the thought of driving all the way there. I normally just take the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) going to Makati, but decided to bring the car this time since I had to go to the Inquirer afterward (it was our anniversary). My dread proved well founded. Traffic was horrible, despite the hour, the odd day, and the fact that no accident had taken place along Edsa.

But before I got out of our compound, I saw an old man lugging a big ice cream chest on his back. He was an itinerant ice cream vendor, one of those who ply their trade our way. The others push along carts with carnival tunes tinkling after them, and only in the mornings and late afternoons when they have better chances of finding customers. And they have "runners," kids who knock on doors, or ring the doorbell like there was an emergency, and take orders from the upper floors. I don't know what kind of commission they make, but I've always been a sucker for their spirit of enterprise.

The old man was different. He was lugging the thing on his back, and his back was bent from the exertion. He was frail and ragged, his small thin body looking like a question mark when viewed from the side. He had the most mournful expression I had seen on a face. He was looking down at the pavement with vacant eyes, walking on a cloudy and tepid afternoon from inertia, one foot following another from the sheer remembrance of the motion. He wasn't shouting his ware, his mouth was agape and his breathing was labored. He probably knew there was little chance of finding anyone to buy ice cream at that hour, the compound looked deserted except for the workmen who were busy drilling into the cement. But still he walked, hoping a lightning bolt would issue from clear skies.

His face no longer wore the pained expression of someone who demanded to know from heaven why life was like this. It wore the blank expression of someone who took what he was doing at that very hour to be part of the order of the universe, as natural as the sighing of the wind and the silence of the stones. It wore the staggering weight of someone who lived in the present and for the present, someone who could see neither behind nor ahead, where he had come from and where he was going, where past and future lay. His life seemed to be governed by absolute need, and he met it with absolute instinct.

When I saw him, I remembered the old woman who to this day delivers our paper. She has been doing so for more than five years now. I am her favorite customer because when I was still writing editorials for this paper, I used to buy all the broadsheets from her, courtesy of this paper. Now I buy only one, guess what. But I have remained her favorite customer because I pay cash on the nail--something apparently her other customers in our compound do not do. They rack up a debt that keeps growing, without ever getting paid. That is why I subscribe to Nandy Pacheco's favorite cause and do not own a gun even at home: If I did, I would go out and shoot them.

I am this old woman's favorite customer for another reason. She does not only collect cash from me, she keeps mortgaging her future with me. I think I've paid her for the next several months (I don't know up to which month; I haven't counted). She needs the advance because of one thing and another, mostly the needs of her grandchildren. I have yet to hear her complain about her lot in life. Nothing we give her--sweater, umbrella, etc.--stays long with her. They are immediately passed on to kin.

I asked Manang (as we call her) once how old she was and was astounded to learn she was only in her late 60s. She looks far, far older. Her face is a map of hills and furrows, and well etched they are too. She has gotten bowlegged from the daily grind, and on mornings you can see her on the compound or out in the streets hobbling, or bobbing from side to side like an inverted pendulum. By rights she should be living the quiet life of someone who has paid her dues, with the steepest interest. By necessity, she has to climb stairs on arthritic legs, an affliction I have the most sympathy, or empathy, for. Yet wondrously, miraculously, she always manages a smile, sometimes a laugh.

After seeing the old man on our compound that warm afternoon and remembering Manang on her morning rounds, I fell into traffic in Edsa. The snarling, growling kind that sounds like dogs snapping at each other after being thrown scraps of meat. That is no exaggeration when you look at the way we drive, which is a dedicated subversion not just of basic courtesy but of rational thought. I have always wondered, having done my work from my home for more than a decade now, if I can ever work in an office again. But that is another story.

But somehow, that afternoon everything seemed like a walk in the park. Trying to extricate myself from the tangle of glass and metal that seemed to have fused like soldered iron on that spot of earth seemed like the easiest thing in the world, especially with the aid of newly restored air-conditioning. Tapping the wheel with fingers while furiously texting people to say I would be late, and wondering where on earth the cops were, they must be having beer in a neighborhood turo-turo (roadside eatery) to go with the free lunch, seemed almost like a benign pass. Enduring the slings and arrows of outrageous helplessness, hearing the minutes and seconds and microseconds ticking by while I stared at the world with vacant eyes, seemed like listening to Bach's suites for single cello and gazing at Van Gogh's sunflowers.

Count your blessings instead of sheep, the song says. Better still this Christmas, share them.
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