A Call with Cotton Candy

I felt like I had plopped my head on my pillow for just a minute or so I when I heard my lolo singing. He was singing a rip-off of Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" in the vernacular and it went on and on and on. Forcing one eye open, I grabbed my phone off my desk which was cluttered with papers and a highlighter. The phone display window said "Sniper calling." Yup, it was my grandfather all right...as if the wailing were not enough to indicate the caller's identity. I have a customized ringtone for my mother, father, sister and grandparents which features each of them singing a tune of their choice. That way, just hearing the phone ring would tell me who wants/needs to chit-chat with me.
"Hello Lo..." I said, trying to mask my sleepy voice. I could tell it was still dark outside so I craned my neck just a bit to steal a glance at the wall clock. 6:00 AM, Friday morning. I had been asleep for 3 hours and I could feel my brain begging "You need more."
"Hello, Butra? You still asleep?"
My eyes flew wide open almost immediately. There was nothing different about what he said - the trademark singsong voice he uses when he wants to be treated like a big baby, punctuated by wheezing; the monicker had given me as a newborn baby which only he uses...
But there was something about the way he sounded. He sounded so happy and cheery my half-dead brain conjured thoughts of blueberry cheescake and strawberry-and-cream at 6 AM with a half-full stomach.
I told him I slept at 3 AM, having had to pore through cases and textbooks. He then sounded apologetic and tried to end the call but I told him to go ahead. "What's up?"
He said he just woke up that morning feeling "great," "strong," "healthy," "happy," "relaxed" and all other adjectives related to "wonderful." I asked him where he was. He told me he was sitting in the back of his house in our hometown, absorbing a good amount of vitamin D. He mentioned he had gone for a walk that morning and checked out his trees and vegetables in his little garden near the kitchen. He was alone, he said, but his terrier-dachshund Sam was there to keep him company. "Your lola is still asleep," he told me.
He just sounded so pleasant I felt like the pall that had been hovering over me since the week started had been lifted all of a sudden. School was fine but some of my classmates were not. There seemed to be an extra helping of sadness and a little bit more worry during the week. It did not help that my lolo himself had been down with the flu recently which left him sounding nasal, tired and spent over the phone. But now he sounded like Hercules with a dandelion tucked in his ear.
I listened to him as he talked about this and that, about how my cousin CJ was going to celebrate her birthday later that day, about many other things most of which I cannot remember. Twenty years from now, if someone were to ask me the first thing I would remember about my 6 AM Friday conversation with my lolo, I'd say - "his hearty laugh." He has always had that hearty laugh but never before did it sound more significant and more meaningful than that morning.
The second thing I would remember would be this - it was the first time in a long time that, without him knowing it, my lolo made me cry.

Lessons on Faith

For about five months, from June to October, I waltzed, ran, dragged, crawled, etc. in and out of classrooms and the library, lugging with me what has been labelled as the heaviest bag in the world along with an armload of books and papers.

For five months, I was harrassed, barraged with questions, hurled insults, rendered speechless, regarded as "tabula rasa" and a potential convert to one advocacy or another, astounded by genius teachers, floored by people who (according to a classmate) were "too bright for their own good" and, well, basically scared to the end of my wits.

For five months, I missed the Amazing Race, Korean telenovelas, SNES and Super Mario, SM Megamall, videoke, Terry Brooks, telebabad, nonsense and lengthier sleeping hours.

For five months, I accumulated a growing stack of fire hazards (aka papers).

For five months, from June to October, I had to learn, unlearn and learn once again.

But unknown to me, the best lessons were to come at the close of the semester - old lessons I had learned a long, long time ago when I was a little girl yet lessons I was still learning and perhaps, I still needed to learn somehow.

I still had much to learn about faith.

Lesson #1

I was home for two weeks for the semestral break. Naturally, I was ecstatic over the thought of seeing my family and two dogs again.

A few days before I was due to fly back to Manila, my lolo began bleeding again. It had been about six months since his last bleeding problem. My frightened lola called us to say that my lolo's urine was reddish and that naturally got my mother all nervous. She began crying and fresh waves of lolo's bladder problem which had plagued us during the summer began to hit us once again.

At 81, my grandfather has lived through a lot. To be honest about it, people are amazed that he has managed to live up to this age. He has more pills than Paris Hilton has makeup and he downs them like vitamins. So it is only natural that everyone gets jittery whenever he gets sick.

He underwent urinalysis immediately afterwards. We then took him to see his urologist, which was actually the day before my flight. As we sat on one of the hospital benches, all of us were as tense as strung wire. Lolo was not as goofy as usual and mom and lola were very quiet. Having left my book in the car, I could do nothing more fruitful than surmise about what the urologist would say. Twenty-four hours before the urinalysis, lolo's urine was still pinkish. The urinalysis results would almost definitely support that.

Then I found myself silently saying just one word - "Lord." It was nothing more than a word, four letters, one syllable. Yet it was a prayer in itself already. "Lord," I whispered silently again. It was the first thing I said to myself when we received that phone call, informing us that lolo was bleeding again. It was not only that I did not know what to say. I just had too much say I did not know where to start, how to start praying at that point in time. Prayer has always been our first recourse in anything. That is one lesson my mother had taught my sister and me when we were children. Pray for anything, she would tell us...even for a god parking slot in the mall.

"Lord." It was just a word but I knew the Lord understood me. He understands my incomprehensible utterances, my non-sensical ramblings, my groans, my sighs, my very silence. Everything makes perfect sense to him.

Yet there was fear in me - the fear that I might not get the answer I wanted to hear. I have learned that God is not like a vending machine. He does not always give what His children ask for. Vending machines don't care whether the caffeine or the sugar will eventually kill you, they just deliver according to which button is punched. But God is not like that. He may grant, but He may deny. He may give but He may withold. The tangible indicators around us seemed to indicate something we did not want to hear. Like a little child, I asked "Lord, how would you work now?"

Mom remembered that lola already had lolo's urinalysis result in her bag so she asked for it. I saw the hesitation in the way my mother took the yellow slip of paper, folded in half right in the middle. She did not open it immediately but fingered it for an instant. I have seen one too many urinalysis results to tell me that when she opened the slip and the results were in full view, I knew that the figures written were just what we wanted to see.

Approximately twenty-four hours after my grandfather discharged pinkish urine, his urinalysis was positively normal and absolutely ideal.

Lesson #2

This other entry is rather long overdue. I had decided to write about it at the end of the semester because, aside from the fact that it would be dramatic, I wanted to see how things would end up.

Something like that.

Actually, no. I should stop with the nonsense.

Nothing was written because the writer was afraid.

The writer was fearful.

The writer was simply "of little faith."

Backtrack to September 2006: I was in trouble, as usual, for Persons class (see related entry here). It was a week after our midterm exam which I felt I had butchered into a carcass. For one question, I had bungled up provisions in a concoction too absurd to stomach. A 40-point question was still giving me nightmares a week after the exam, especially because almost the entire class had given answers totally opposed to mine. I felt like a dead man walking.

Now my recitations seemed hopeful, not exactly skyscraper high but average...except for the glaring 5.0 on my recit card which I got a week into law school, thanks to Shields v. Gross.

When our midterm averages were handed in, I saw that I got a 3.0. I suddenly felt really queasy and I wanted to head to the bathroom and douse my head in cold water. I did not see how I could make up for that. I was in such a precarious situation. It was either a pass or a fail for the final grade and the finals exam was going to make all the difference. Just a tip of the scale, one move could spell the difference between a 3.0 and a 5.0. Uh-oh.

I went home feeling really down, the remnants of comfort food (which would be Jollibee mushroom-and-cheese burger) still between my teeth. And when I say down, I really mean down like deep-in-the-earth's-core down. I dragged my feet up the stairs to my little room/attic and sat on my easy chair. Without another word, I began to cry and pray. Everything just seemed impossible. I was working every bone, muscle, nerve to a breaking point but nothing seemed to make any difference. Stevie Wonder sang to me again - "Used to be that failure only meant you didn't try." After I had squeezed my tear ducts Sahara-dry, I curled up in the chair, hugged the Tigger pillow Ronald gave me for my birthday two years ago and, with composure regained, began to talk to my God. I needed to talk to someone but no one ever seemed to be right except Him. I poured out everything that was in my heart to Him like an F1 racer going downhill at top speed with no brakes.

"Answer me, Father," I implored. "I have done all I can. I do not know what else I should do. I am running on empty."

I reached for my devotional and opened it. I usually read it at night before going to sleep but I decided I needed to talk to God now more than ever. The reflection for that day had nothing to do with my turmoil but I checked out the Bible passage listed - Matthew 7:7-14.

Fresh tears flowed from my eyes the moment I read the first two verses:

"Ask and it shall be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened."

That night, as I read my books again, I took a piece of blue Post-It and wrote that I claimed God's promise in Matthew 7:7-8. I had asked and it shall be given, as He promised. Opposite that, I wrote the date which was September 13.

I went on to take the finals and proceeded with semestral break. The final exam was tough but I had given all I can. I could only do so much. The thought, though, still lingered in my head from time to time - would God really grant His promise? Or was it another lesson this time around (see related entry here)?

God fulfills his promises, even to those who find it difficult to believe that they are possible, especially to those who are still swayed by the stormy winds and the rocking boat, to those of little faith.

God was true to His word and to his promise. On Wednesday, I found out I passed Persons.

"Ask and it shall be given to you; seek and you will find."

Not only that. Passing does not simply mean a 3.0. It could go a bit higher too.

For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened."

Promised. Claimed. Fulfilled.