A Question of Gift to Give

My inaanak (goddaughter) sent me an invitation to her debut last Friday. I never realized then that she's already that old. I always regard my godchildren as peter pans with wings. The failure of counting the years is a manifestation of my almost unconscious desire of living forever young. The invitation thus was not only a call to live life to its fullest, but a disruption of my daydreaming of living in the past.

I haven't gotten of my fixation of the Jal-o River that was pristine clear and filled with life. I remember so well diving in its warm water searching for clams (we called it then bebe). My father used to erect artificial corrals (gango) in it which after a month or so, we would enclose with fishpens (taba) to help us out in the harvesting. A couple of gango would yield about a pail (about 5-6 kilograms) of freshwater shrimps (oeang, bueok and paye) some ubog, bagtis and bae-a (varieties of freshwater fishes of the goby [gobiidae] and sleepers family [eleotridae] in the Jal-o) and at times, tilapia (blue tilapia) and kilo (spotted scat).

During summer, my friends and I would go into a day of fishing by its banks (our rods were made up of bamboo poles and the hooks we bought at La Tali's store and at La Elbie's or in the market during the market day every Saturday morning). Bagtis was an easy catch. The proudest of us were those who manage to hook a tilapia or kilo. I remember the moment when I finally hooked a small kilo somewhere near the Pulahan mouth. I was so happy about the catch not because of its worth but because I knew for a fact that my patience and endurance of sitting all day long with nothing in my hand had finally bought me a prize.

Joanie's invitation has opened my mind to recall those moments of the past. The flood of memories rushed into me as I was wondering what gift to give my inaanak on her 18th birthday. It has also let me recall one favorite poet of mine, Rainer Maria Rilke whose excerpt from his letters to a young poet I had made into my daily mantra as a youth and a struggling artist whose mind was full of questions.

In giving my inaanak a copy of Rilke's piece, I am hoping that it would serve her well just as it had helped me deal with the questions that hounded my youth some 18 years ago. As for the stories of Jal-o, I hope that they will be retold henceforth more often than the usual.