Down the memory aisle

THE bride, radiant in a white gown, was busy talking with friends when I reached the lobby of the second floor of Casino Español. It was almost a couple of hours after her 3:30 p.m. Friday wedding that I missed badly at the Pardo parish church. She and her husband were outside the main function hall preparing to enter in style for the reception.

Bong O. Wenceslao

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Some of our high school batch mates who were invited to the activity were already seated around one table inside, except for one who tried to put order to the entrance ritual. When the ceremony started, I was again reminded of how far we have traveled through time.

Ener and Freddie were no longer the irrepressible youngsters who married early but were merely renewing their vows after 30 years of union.

I liked the way Ener and Freddie were introduced as old photos were shown on screen. Daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother.

Son, brother, husband, father, grandfather. Each word summed up the stage they went through. Our batch mate Ener has been married for three decades. But to us who shared memories with her in high school, she remains the pretty girl that attracted millions of glances.

As I watched the couple’s old photographs, I was reminded of the truism that the path one is being led through in life can never be predicted. Who knew that their marriage would last this long, or that their union would survive the constant separation required by Freddie’s job as a seaman?

Who knew that the two, who would quarrel often when they were still sweethearts and until the early years of their marriage would become the “old” love birds that vowed once more to strengthen their bond?

I was tempted to ask them for the secret of their longevity but I like this one answer supposedly by the world’s oldest couple alive: they fix the problems they encounter in marriage instead of thinking of severing their union every time problems crop up.

***

“Got to believe in magic,” David Pomeranz sang when he opened his “Never Too Late” post-Valentine concert Saturday night at the Waterfront Hotel. I was with my wife, who had acquired the determination to drag me to a concert by procuring the tickets herself.

My wife is younger than me but our musical tastes intersect at times.

The American singer and composer has been a familiar fixture in the Philippines for a decade now, returning to the country and touring ever so often. That doesn’t diminish my appreciation for him and his work, which spans that period in my life when I began to love, lost, loved again, lost, loved again, married and built a family.

“We’re the king and queen of hearts, only when the music starts,” he sang after asking when students in the Philippines hold their JS proms. “The Old Songs” is another favorite, one that Pomeranz composed for another great artist of the ‘70s, Barry Manilow.

“Maybe the old songs, will bring back the old times/ Maybe the old lines will sound new./ Maybe she’ll lay her head on my shoulders…”

Pomeranz has come out with another album with him singing compositions by other artists. But his own songs will continue to resonate in many a romantic among us. And there were many of us at the Waterfront who felt good being serenaded by him only because his songs reminded us of the days when life was untainted by the pragmatism that colors our efforts to make our family survive the harshness of existence.

(twitter: @khanwens)