By Rianne C. Tecson
“Fermina, I have waited for this opportunity for 51 years, nine months and four days… that is how long I have loved you, from the first moment I cast eyes on you…until now.”—Florentino Ariza to Fermina Urbino, Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Love, they say, knows no boundaries, not even age.
If one wants proof all that is no illusion, one needs to look at the eyes of Eduardo and Martina “Beling” Go Ching Hai.
After 55 years of marriage, their eyes still speak of love for each other and their gestures, when in each other’s company, show the kind of affection that has not waned through the years.
Their actions make you want to believe in love. Their union, after all, is built on a foundation strong enough to withstand whatever challenges that came their way.
But neither of the two would have had predicted their life together.
Go Ching Hai, as Eduardo is popularly known, was a fresh engineering graduate of the Mapua Institute of Technology when he first came to Cebu in 1950 to remodel a flour mill.
When he arrived at the Compania Maritima, he had no idea where to go and only had P25 left.
He later decided to stay with a relative when he found work. And work was all he did the whole time, spending at least 12 hours in the office or going home at midnight.
With the hours he was keeping, one would wonder how he managed to meet Beling. When asked how, says with a naughty smile, “Secret.”
Beling offers to go on with the story, smiling and touching her husband’s hand.
One day, a friend of Go Ching Hai’s mother wanted to see Beling’s mother so he asked the young engineer to drive them to Beling’s place.
Their first meeting was neither unpleasant nor promising—no sparks flew and Go Ching Hai thought it was very hard to court a woman like Beling.
“Suplada kaayo. Her (family) was not the hindrance, siya mismo,” said Go Ching Hai, making Beling laugh out loud.
After all, Go Ching Hai says, Beling seemed to him as a “very wise woman…(That trait) challenged me.”
“When I decided to court her, my friends told me ‘There are other pretty girls in Cebu. Don’t court that girl.’ I also thought it (courtship) was very, very hard,” he said.
Given this impression of Beling, Go Ching Hai admitted he did everything—even asking help to seek permission from her brothers to court her—to win her heart, “probably including praying.”
“God helped me catch her,” he said, beaming. Beling, seated beside him, lovingly looks at her husband, smiling.
The couple, however, didn’t get to see each other that much as Go Ching Hai was traveling most of the time.
“Rare kaayo siya mosuwat og letters. Tapulan,” Beling said.
During his visits to Beling, Go Ching Hai also didn’t get to stay long as he had to be up early for work the following day.
“When I visit, we don’t talk much. We’d play sungka (a traditional Filipino game). When she’s not paying attention, I touch her hand and I would be very happy already,” he said, grinning.
For a reserved man like her husband, Beling said the gesture was already something.
“He was never demonstrative. He only held my hand when we crossed the street,” Beling said.
Beling, on the other hand, said the visits, though seldom, made her feel the same way.
“I was happy that someone came to visit me,” she said.
After three years, Go Ching Hai popped the question, but the proposition seemed vague to Beling.
“He asked what I would do if there are two cars and only one is in running condition. I told him to use a rope, have the car that runs tow the one that doesn’t work. He didn’t say a thing then. Later, he told me that his mother will come to ask for my hand in marriage,” Beling said, adding that at this, he told Go Ching Hai to seek her brothers’ and mother’s permission.
On Christmas Day of 1962, Go Ching Hai formalized the proposal. The two then got married on April 12, 1953. The couple is blessed with three children and eight grandchildren.
Beling said making the marriage work is no easy task, but credits the success of her union to what her late mother-in-law taught her.
“Be patient…and always try not to get into a fight, much less arguments,” she shared.
This, she said, is the same lesson she has imparted on her children. (Sun.Star Cebu)
