A Stranger Named Aina

She came without a warning.

I was taking a break from what I called an alienating work in Ayala sometime in 1994. A few months back, I left the seminary with a bitter mind, a rationalizing heart and an agnostic spirit.
I thought that making myself busy in the Philippine prime financial district will distract me from the growing indifference--I used to call it my forlorn existence in an otherwise meaningless world. But I was mistaken. I found the wealth of Paseo de Roxas nauseating. Makati, while I was within its bosom for seven years was now strange and overwhelming. I just need to get out from her. At least for a while.

So I decided to take a break and went home to Balete. A vacation of two months would do, so I thought. I need her freshness and silence to sort out things. I need her shade as I rethink my perspectives and values in life. I while the days and they became months. Fr. Tito (my parish priest and mentor) was concerned and so he suggested that I volunteer myself in some people's organization. I heeded his advice and found myself in Our Lady of Providence, a community of women in an isolated Sitio Anao, Aranas. As they were into handmade paper making, I brought with me my watercolor and some old Chinese brushes. Just in case. It turned out that they proved to be handy.

For some ten months, I was their resident artist. What I failed to notice though was that gently, the Spirit of God exorcised that existentialist pretense out of my mind. Quietly, I found myself leading the community's Panimbahon (quasi-mass) on Sundays and teaching catechisms to children on Saturdays. The thought of going back to Manila was now remote. I was planning to take on another route.

Then she came. She belonged to a peer group of Assumptionistas on immersion program. I learned that she and her friends had just concluded their month long immersion in some depressed communities in Luzon (or was it in Iloilo?). They came to cap their experience with a week of spiritual retreat in Anao. In themselves, they were joy to behold. Their smiles and animated interactions attracted me most. I wonder what they got that they exuded an aura of freshness and hope. But of them, she stood out the most. There was something in her that made her special. She was such a special lady that I was inspired to sketch her enamoring smile in one of the pages of my journal. As I got to know her better (from third party), I scribbled atop my drawing my impressions of her. To me, her existence is indeed a miracle of God.

Who is Aina by the way? Why is she special?

For a start, Aina had a cancer. One of her limbs was ravaged by skin cancer. Every now and then she would undergo chemotherapy. I learned too that her parents got separated and that she and her younger brother had to schedule their time with them especially during vacations.

Amidst these defined evil, Aina affirms life and goodness. Not a trace of bitterness in her pretty face or a hint of it in her laughter I did notice during our brief encounters. She considered going back in Anao to help the women raise the quality of their produce. She got talents too in drawing--and she made use of it to advance the cause of others, the poor and the marginalized sectors most especially. But she failed to come back.

I later learned that she was doing cartoons in the Lifestyle section of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. I heard too that she was a cancer survivor and continued to affirm life by doing volunteer works with cancer victims in Migi's Corner and other centers.

I'd left Anao more than ten years ago. Much of the personal events that took place in that solitary place (the Frenchmen who visited it called it paradise) were hidden from my conscious mind and are kept in several notebooks which either now attracting silverfishes or gaining dusts in my attic. What lingers though in my heart is the memory of that stranger named Aina whom God so love unconditionally and whom he has made into his instrument of love for others to meet.

Happy Valentine's Day, Aina, wherever you may be!