It’s that time of the year when families and loved ones get together. Sadly, it’s not the time of the year I really relish. Christmas for me is the desolate feeling of isolation imposed on me. The distance between Manila and New York is desolation which I could have bridged with an 18-hour flight. But I’m not as young as I used to be. Long-distance plane travel has taken its toll on me. Then too, winter in New York this time of the year can be unbearable. Last year, I made the trip which was probably my last. I slipped on the sidewalk. It had snowed the night before and rained the next morning, turning the sidewalk into a dangerous sheet of ice. It was a horrific experience I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Falling forward, I hit my head on a stone fence. Blood gushed from a cut left eyebrow flowing from my face all the way down to my winter jacket. An ambulance rushed me to a hospital where the doctor stitched up my cut eyelid.
This is not all about me and it’s hardly the kind of story you want to share at Christmas. But my experience gives a glimpse of life and its harsh realities.
I have lived and worked a total of 16 years in America which includes, aside from New York, surviving the harshest of winters in Minneapolis-Saint Paul in Minnesota and Chicago. What was I doing in St. Paul, Minnesota? Never mind what year. I was a World Press Institute Fellow and that included an internship at the now-defunct Chicago Daily News. I also had two diplomatic postings in New York as press attaché with the Philippine Mission to the United Nations.
Winter is not at all unfamiliar season with me. More diplomatic assignments in London. Brussels, and finally as Philippine ambassador to Budapest, Warsaw, Belgrade and Sarajevo brought back memories of snow-covered landscape. This is preceded by a canvas of gold, brown tree leaves of autumn colors that Mother Nature paints in the changing of the season.
But going back to why I’m alone in Manila it’s because my wife is on an apostolic mission. Apostolic in this case is when the wife, now a doting grandma (probably the most loved Lola on the planet), is taking care of her three lovely granddaughters. I don’t blame her to find it more fulfilling than taking care of cranky old coot like me. But there is no recrimination nor regret when I see the happy faces of her wards—Dylan, Cami and Elle. Their pictures transmitted through e-mail brings a smile to my face.
Christmas Eve wasn’t so bad. I was supposed to spend noche buena with long time friend, Pocholo Romualdez, the editor of Malaya. I begged off and sent him my regrets as I could not get a driver to bring me from Makati to Singalong in Malate. I was resigned to spending the evening alone but thank God for a live telecast of the singer Adele in London. I watched and listened to Adele sing “Hello.” I may have been home alone on Christmas Eve but I still felt fortunate that here I am high and dry on the 24th floor of my condo unit while thousands of our kababayans are stranded at airports and ferry crossings trying to make it home for Christmas. Back to back storms “Urduja” and “Vinta” wrought havoc on travel, canceling flights and sea crossing. Many of the marooned passengers were overseas Filipino workers who came back to the country to spend Christmas with family and loved ones in the provinces. They wondered whether they still have a place to come home to. News reports flashed on the TV screens at the airport showed widespread devastation of houses in the provinces of Biliran, Leyte and Samar as a result of heavy rain, flooding and landslides. We are often visited by the forces of nature and yet in this day and age of technology, are still helpless against it. Even as I write this, CNN was reporting a winter alert of snow, ice and rain in many parts of the US.
Every now and then I look out from the window of my 24th floor apartment. In the distance the towering buildings of Makati all lit up, seem like Christmas trees and multicolored giant gift boxes.
Knowing how to live life is a gift one give one’s self. This, amid the suffering of our people in typhoon-hit provinces. A prayer and a generous contribution in church during Mass is all one can do to reach out. This was the column which should have appeared in the Christmas day issue of the Standard. But I regret the thought of it only came to me during my solitude on Christmas Eve.