Sunday, October 12, 2008 Luab: One of these days By Evelyn R. Luab light sunday
“ONE of these days, I’ll give up smoking!”
“One of these days I’ll start my book.”
“One of these days I’ll start doing my exercises and really go on a diet!”
Familiar statements? You bet! We always shelve for another day resolutions that are hard to keep.
My late aunt, who never gave up smoking, would only snort at us and say: “What for? We all have to die!”
At least she was honest enough to admit that she wasn’t going to give up smoking. Actually, nicotine had nothing to do with her death.
My battle of the bulge has always remained a battle. Since I go out often, tempting dishes come my way. The usual excuse I give myself is “I’ll eat now and deny myself supper!” Do I follow my resolution? Of course not! I get hungry when suppertime comes.
One philandering husband was admonished by the wife of his best friend: “Juan (not real name) when are you going to stop your shenanigans? You have such a good wife!”
The answer of Juan is a classic: “Unya na sa dugay! Asawa bitaw na. Dili man na mawa!" (Later on, much later on. A wife is always there!)
What Juan did not reckon with was that his wife got fed up with his amoral antics and left him flat. Today, you still see him barhopping even on Christmas eve. What a sad life.
Our neighbor is very meticulous as far as fences are concerned. One time he saw a part of his barbed-wire fence cut and stolen. He was very angry.
His wife, though, was amused. I overheard her saying: “I told you to put a light in that part of our yard but you kept on saying ‘one of these days’.”
The glare she got from her husband did not stop her from winking at me. My teen-age grandson has a favorite answer to my “when are you going to come and visit me?” He answers, “Tomorrow.”
“When will I see you?” Again he says, “Tomorrow!” Because of the many outside interests he has, plus the fact that visiting grandma does not really have a lot of thrills, my “tomorrow” never comes. In the few times that we see each other, I am now allowed to tease him this way: “Aha! So my tomorrow has come today!”
I get a hug and a sheepish grin as he says, “My tomorrow, Lola, will always come. I can’t just promise the exact date!” Oh! The travails of grandparents!
My late father-in-law did not believe in attending holy mass or in going to confession but he was a prayerful man. He was a very honest government treasurer up to the day he died. When we would invite him to come to mass with us, he would say: “Go ahead; eventually I will go with you!”
One Sunday, we were surprised to see him at our doorstep ready to go with us. When we expressed surprised, he said “the word ‘eventually’ is now fulfilled.”
The following week, we found out that he was suffering from terminal tuberculosis. We tried everything to help him get well but I guess it was his time to go home.
In retrospect after his death, my mother-in-law commented: “It was a good thing that he made good his promise to eventually go to mass.”
Today, we hear people promising that eventually peace will reign in Mindanao. Or one of these days, poverty will be eradicated from the Philippines.
Some say that in the future we will discover a way to make our cars run on water. Will we live to see that day? Let us hope so.
In the meantime, can we try saying “today I will spend more time with my family," or “tonight I will bring home something nice to eat instead of work from the office.”
There really are so many acts, so many ways to make somebody else happy right now. Let’s get those snipping scissors and remove the phrase, “one of these days” from our vocabulary!
