THE BEGINNING OF A LIFE

THE BEGINNING OF A LIFE- AND A LIFE THAT HAS NOT YET ENDED
July 23, 2007

Who knows about Sicpao except the ones that have hailed from there and the ones who have visited the place. Back in 1953 when I was born, Sicpao was a cogon grass-decorated-meadow which the afternoon mild wind loved to visit, transforming the view like a wavy ocean of green and the trees nearby rustled up with tremolo noises as if to applaud either the power of the weak wind or the artful dances of the cogon. Our house, quite big, oftentimes a sanctuary of mass of people who could not cross the overflowing river, which was a part of my father's large property, when the big rains took place, was situated underneath seven gigantic mango trees encircling the brownish edifice. My father planted these trees when they first moved to Sicpao right immediately after the war, a very secure hiding place for him who was running from the law as he was known to be one of the leading manufacturer of dynamites in Misamis Oriental. Since then my father was never located by the authorities.

I was born on June 24,1953, the same day my father was born, and I was named after him, Juan. June 24, by the way, is St. John the Baptist day, and people born on this day were usually named John, or Juan in Spanish. My sister busily preparing "pintos," which is up to now a special food for the Visayans, made out of green corns ripe enough for cooking, wrapped by the corn skin, heard my cry at the early morning hour and she knew that another Ayudtud was added to the family. My sister was fourteen years old at the time. The day when I was born my family had two celebrations: my coming into the world and the birthday of my dad.

I was a very special child, since my older sister I was next to had died, and then when my mother conceived again that baby girl also died. I was the baby for a long time in my family. And because my father had five families working in his land they would come to our house and pamper me as a very special kid. I recall some people teasing my older brother Ramon telling him that they would take me home with them and he would get a big bolo (a machete) and would weld it up on the air to hack them all. I felt so protected and secure.

I fell ill when I was only months old with a very high fever with the same illness that killed my older sister and the sister born after me. My mother always told the story, especially when I was already in the ministry, that she raised me up by her hands and lifted me up toward heaven to dare God to heal me and promised Him that I would be dedicated into the ministry as a church worker. Miraculously I got well, bathed thoroughly by the reddened spits of a quack doctor who was there to cure me from the evil spirits which possessed the mango trees around the house. And not too long after that my dad built another house so that we could get away from the haunted house but still very adjacent to the first one. We then transported ourselves back and forth from the new house to the old, because the bodega of my dad of his corn harvest was still in the old one.

Talking about huge spaces for us to run around and play, there was much of them. Growing up to be three and four years old, I learned to climb the mango trees, not only to pick the fruits but also to get engaged in a play of tug and it, it's a play where one boy became an it and then he would run after the others to also make them an it. This game that we played on the branches was dangerous as we could fall to the ground and the fall could possibly kill us. Thankfully, the other kids did fall but not me. But they did not die, they only got maimed for a while.

I grew up to become seven years old and already in Grade 2 when my feet experience to wear my first pair of shoes. It was an Elpo shoes, which was red in color, which my Ninong gave me as a gift and it was huge. But I was proud of my new shoes, and my siblings were happy for me that finally I experienced to wear shoes, although quite awkwardly. Up to that time, I had not yet seen a car or a jeepney, and when I did see it for the first time it did get out of me a wonderment that only a child can give out. At this time I had my younger brother, Teofilo, named by the priest after the King Theophilus in the Bible, and was already three years old at the time, and both of us, seeing the big bus, pretty much wondered about it. And so the next day after we came home we mimicked what the driver and the conductor of the bus did. At times, I posed as the driver and my brother Titing, his nickname, posed as the conductor.

Sicpao was yet uncivilized, although we had already an elementary school. To see our first motor driven vehicle in Mahayag, the township of Sicpao, we had to journey for eight hours on foot, crossing three huge rivers. It was in Sicpao that I had my first schooling, that was when I was only six years old. My mother took me to school, not knowing herself what school was like, since she had not had any experience of being in school herself in her life. The teacher, quite a lanky but a round-faced woman, asked me how old I was and I told her that I was six. "Oh, no, you cannot yet go to school, because you have to be seven to enter school, " she said. Whereupon my mother interjected: "But he can already reach his other ear!" And then I had my arm reached out to the other side of my head in order to reach my ear and I did. And so, the teacher let me in.