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Sunday, March 12, 2006
Keeping it together
By Leticia Suarez-Orendain
COIN stacking is the art of piling the legal tender, the loose change we use to buy dry bread or a piece of orange.
Ordinary coins—nothing special in how they were minted—are used in the exercise. In essence, it is done without any glue to hold down the slippery discs and therefore, it is a marvel of hand-skill and eye coordination.
The goal is to pile as many coins without endangering the work in progress.
What you see here are samples of the work, which makes you wonder how the coins can support each other.
You suspect it’s gravity, or some other scientific terms that you dare not use for fear of embarrassing yourself in print. Your ignorance might show, and besides, who really cares why they stay. It’s there for the pleasure of the eye.
Bridges, water wells, spirals and towers made of coins soar in your view and you can’t help but muse about something far more important.
Relationships are the coins that come your way, but you are ignorant of their value until you lose a father, a brother, a sister, a friend, a lover.
The clinking sound of a relationship hitting the concrete floor jars you into understanding that you have lost a valuable part of your life.
Real coins can be found again, but often by someone else and you would be a blessed soul if the old coin you lost 35 years ago comes back to you. Never mind if it’s tarnished. The joy of finding it again far outweighs how it looks now.
How could you have been so careless with your behavior? How could you not see that the invisible glue needed to keep a relationship going was something always new every day?
Time is the glue you need to keep together. You’ve seen mothers do it so well with the family. They spend so many hours with the children to do their mother thing.
They are gardeners who water their children with values and prune them with reproof. All these activities need time.
In the process, without pressure, they plant traditions within the hearts of the children so that wherever they go, they carry something from home always:
To love and care, to respect and obey, to be kind and generous—these are traditions that are not bound by culture or geographical differences.
These, in theory, would make any relationship healthy and thriving but then you forget the glue, and then you become careless and then the ensemble crashes down to the concrete floor. The clink seals the fate of the relationship, unless you are a blessed soul and then the picture could change.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (March 12, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here.
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