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Tuesday, February 14, 2006
V-Day Memories
The Valentine Memory Lane is strewn with yellowing, corny love cards, stale champagne, crushed roses, half-eaten bittersweet chocolates, and lots of humor.
Pray tell, for how else can you deal with the memories tied up, like the marital knot, with that very someone special—you?
Here’s a sampler of stories much like a box of Godivas, yours for the picking.
Caper
Single and teased, that’s what a woman puts up with in those years of freedom they call Blessed Singlehood. Just for kicks, a female officemate and I plotted a Valentine caper sure to make everyone an April Fool victim.
We’d send each other a box of solo pizza that came with a heart-shaped balloon.
Deal! I outdid myself by giving her a card, too. A day or two later, she told me that our hoax created quite a stir among her newsroom colleagues who kept trying to guess who the mystery admirer was.
I don’t know how my stroke of genius strengthened her sweet romantic life, but it certainly made my day.
-Leticia Suarez-Orendain
Real deal
Me? Write about Valentine? Puleeze! I think it is a lot of hooey! You can keep your cards and candy drool over hearts and flowers. All that hype, sweetie, Ersatz sentimentality! I’ll stick to the real thing: love that is deep and constant, love that knows no bounds, love that is God-given, love that is forgiving, love that grows and bears fruit, love that cares and shares, love that smiles and laughs, love that is forever….
-Jo Magsaysay
Campus valentine capers
February 2000, five months away from the acquaintance party our batch was about to host, we decided to ride on with a university tradition. We took part in a Valentine's Day fair inside the campus as a means of raising funds for our upcoming event. You see, every time V-Day comes, the campus transforms itself into a bloody red bazaar with a fiesta atmosphere.
There would be various booths selling flowers and gifts. There would also be guitar-wielding harana masters to serenade for lovestruck souls.
During our breaks from class, we would either man our batch's booth or play “delivery boys”. Others sometimes thought that the flowers we delivered actually came from us.
Mostly, what I enjoyed most about that was the “madness” that went on around us. We dealt with guys dressed up like executives (in long sleeved polos with ties and slacks), who bought flowers and finally got an excuse to impress big time the girl of their dreams. It was also amusing to see others simply buying roses or chocolates for themselves and pretending that these were given by a special someone.
One well-known tale during that time was about a guy who had trouble in one of his classes. There was a huge possibility that he’d fail that class, handled by a young and cute lady teacher. This guy, apparently trying to win his teacher over into letting him pass, dressed up in his best and gave the teacher flowers and chocolates. He even treated her to lunch at one of the restaurants across the campus. Yet, amidst all his “sucking up”, he still failed that subject.
-Karl Aries Emerson F. Cabilao
Yesteryear romance
February. Love Month. Heart Month.
Yes, you know it’s gonna be Valentine's soon as malls are again bedecked with cut-outs of red hearts in all sizes and styles and other things relevant to the Love Season. And yes, the 1001 love songs are filling the air with their haunting melodies that would make Romeo and Juliet fall in love again and again, till death do they part.
We’ll be hearing again the song:
“My funny valentine, sweet comic valentine, you make me smile with my heart/ Your lips are laughable, unphotographable, yet you’re my favorite work of art/ Is your figure less than Greek, is your mouth a little weak?/ When you open it to speak, are you smart?/ Don’t change a hair for me/ Not if you care for me/ Stay little valentine, stay/ Each day is Valentine’s Day.”
Yes, we’ve been hearing this same old familiar song time and again, long before our uncles’ and aunties’ era when they used to sing or hum it, with that look of love in their eyes.
We remember how we would peep silently when uncle would visit auntie in the house and they would converse in the sala with some background music from Frank Sinatra or Nat King Cole emanating from our RCA hi-fi stereo.
Oh, the memories of yesteryears when we were that young and the world was more peaceful and simpler in more ways than one. Yes, “those were the days, my friend, we thought would never end.”
-Dr. Henry Lim Yu
First Valentine Card
I was an impressionable “fifteen going-on-sixteen” when I received my first Valentine card. The young suitor was the same age and had been following me around for three months. In this day and age he would have been dubbed a stalker because as early as 6 a.m. he would already be in church waiting for me to arrive for the daily mass at 6:30 a.m. It soon became a family joke that “maybe he will end up becoming a priest with all the daily masses he is attending.”
On Valentine’s day right after mass, he solemnly handed me a single pink rose with an accompanying card. I was flattered but quite embarrassed because there were so many oldies around and they gave me a curious glance. I blushed like anything. Looking back, I suppose they must have thought ...Ah, young love!
Anyway, I was thrilled to get that pretty pink card with dainty little hearts all over, and to this day I have memorized that Valentine missive which goes....
This Valentine you’re reading
has a light and happy touch,
Because you’re very special
and I love you very much!
P.S. No, nothing came out of that "puppy love."
-Nelia G. Neri
Angkong's tale
In the early 1900s, a young man had made a habit of stopping by a roadside hut to ask for water to drink. He struck friendship with a farmer from Moalboal who had relocated his family to the island of Negros. The young man was himself a newcomer to the place and could barely speak the dialect. He came from a village in faraway Fookien, China.
The young man made a living as an itinerant vendor of various merchandise. He packed his stuff inside two oversized rattan baskets tied at both ends of a bamboo pole which he carried by himself as he travelled on foot. He was immensely grateful of the hospitable offer of free water to drink.
During his regular stopover, he noticed through the gaps of the bamboo floor the silhouette of a woman weaving at the second level of the hut. The woman hummed a sweet lullaby while working.
One day, the young man asked the farmer who this woman was. The farmer said it was her single daughter. Without much ado, the young guy asked permission to marry the farmer’s daughter.
The farmer couldn’t believe the young man was serious with his proposal. The two had neither exchanged pleasantries nor met face-to-face. But the guy managed to convince the farmer so the father told his daughter about the impending marriage. The daughter declined to be wed to a stranger but this was the early 1900s.
This was how my angkong and amah got hitched. Let me greet them Happy Valentine’s!
-Bob Lim
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (February 14, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here.
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