And you’d better believe it! Well, I’m just trying to catch your attention Dahlinks, as forest fires engulf Southern France and the Mediterranean. As I wind my way through life, enduring pandemic’s mental health issues and wars erupting around the world, economic ups and downs, betrayals and such, I go into my Carmelite mode to contemplate and count my blessings.
Who would believe Mamá as early as the 70’s telling the kitchen staff to stop wasting drops of water from the faucets because one day, we’ll end up paying for that precious commodity to quench our thirst. Nena Lacson Garcia was sent off to convent schools in Manila at the early age of 5 because her father Don Simon Conlu Lacson died at after founding the Philippine’s first private law school, the Philippine Law School.
Grandma Doña Sefit Tionko Vda. De Lacson had to stay in Silay to manage the family estates on her Montelibano side. Mamá would cringe as she’d hear the iron gates clang and that lock click, marking summers alone with the Scholastican nuns. Crying alone in her bed, she’d bawl at the day’s images of her friends’ parents picking them up for vacations in the province. Feeling unloved, she became a rebel, pulling the veil of a nun and getting expelled.
German nuns awaited her at the Holy Ghost College only to make Nena uncontrollable, taking the ringer of the bell to wake up the boarders in the morning. She graduated high school in Assumption, thanks to the distressed pleas of her aunt Doña Balbinit Lacson. Marrying Dr. Eduardo Garcia of the Jayme-Gamboa-Ledesma-Araneta branch, she accompanied Papá to New York right after World War 2 to take up Radiology as my father finished his Urology specialty in Medicine. Together they made a handsome dream couple of Bacolod, entertaining all sorts from visiting firemen to US Admirals and Philippine Presidents and running a clinic-home up Lacson Street.
All those easy times are gone and yes, I’m paying prime price for a bottle of water, just as Mamá predicted. But her vibrant soul and Papa’s fortitude rings clear in my ears as I follow my path through our world today. It may be a disaster film, but isn’t there always a hero in the end? God bless us all!
MY PRAYER
But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Thessalonians 5:8–9, NIV*
