My Christmas 2020 letter to my grandson, Trevor
I remember the year your Mom was born, little one. It was the year Mt. Pinatubo spewed so much ash, it reached your mom’s crib from a hundred kilometers away, rousing her from sleep as talcum-like cinders from the volcano’s fury settled on her face.
She was barely in her first year, with rosy-red cheeks like yours. Round and bulbous, smiling as I rushed to wash the now cold embers off her hair and forehead. I recall staring out the window and seeing our lovely garden bearing the face of a comely winter’s paradise, save that it wasn’t snow. As I sprayed the plants with water, the thin film of sandy-grey material weighing heavily on each leaf turned into mud.
Those directly beneath the path of the explosion weren’t as fortunate. Many were buried in lahar, their houses torn, those left in the aftermath forever scarred.
Your birth wasn’t, in the slightest, different. You were born in the middle of a viral pandemic which has led, as of this writing, to the deaths of close to two million people globally. Our struggling little nation wasn’t spared. The daily losses we incurred, which weigh heavily on our collective memory since the start of the year, have left many in the throes of grief, worse, lost in a maze of questions.
Where is God in all this?
I wish I knew, little one. The search for answers is never easy. The darkness of the past December nights returns without any hint of letting go this time. It’s going to be a long and arduous road to the development of a vaccine, that much is certain. Your mom and I and the rest of the family including your Tita Likha and Tita Lexi are bracing for the worst.
And yet, you’re here with us, proof undeniable that life will go on, that it will not succumb to the plague. That for all that the plague can heap on our heads, it cannot stop life from pushing back, from regaining ground. Thus, never think for one minute that God, who is Life, is nowhere to be found.
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I worry about your future and your Tita Likha’s and Tita Lexi’s. The world today is slowly being trapped in a shadow of its own making. Darkness looms and bad men have taken advantage of it. They use whatever power is in their hands to steal, kill and destroy. They think of themselves as indestructible, worse, that they have power over life and death.
But make no mistake, little one: these are cowards. Bullies of the lowest order, excrement for which even the earth has no use. They are scum, no less the moldy residue of a time when rape and corruption were fashionable and men of reckless bearing ruled with pride their little fiefdoms. They are nowhere near being human beings as a dead rock is human. They shame even the devil himself.
When they rear their ugly faces in the future, pay no attention to them. Rather, push back. As hard as you can.
Your future will be fraught with mountains and hills to climb, with abysses to cross, cliffs to mount. At the very hour you feel you want to give up, to throw all the hard work away, take a moment more. Just one measly second more. To breathe. Relax. Step back and look at the bigger picture. To weigh your options and take it from there.
In life, the choice is not between winning or losing. It’s about not going down without a fight. Wage a revolution they will never forget.
Take time for the reading of stories, for laughter, for play and music, for tending a flower garden. Learn the code of a warrior as you would the ways of the poet. Make room for other people in your life — friends, even total strangers. Never neglect family, no matter how irritating they can be sometimes.
And never do away with one of life’s greatest tenets: respect is earned. Never give it to anyone too easily or demand it for yourself if you’ve not earned it. Always have your heart and mind in the right place.
Keep a journal. I pays to keep your thoughts on paper. As long as you hide it from your mother.
Above all, never fail to say “Thank you” and “I love you” when the occasion calls for it. Never let your ego gobble down what’s left of the memory of a modest and faithful upbringing. Riches amount to nothing unless they are spent to make someone, all the more strangers, happy.
Your mom and you were born at a time of great upheaval, challenges less likely to be surmounted had it not been for the courage and compassion of human beings who daily bite the bullet and live to tell the tale.
I know you will grow up a responsible, brilliant and compassionate man. You have your mom and dad to look up to, and a whole slew of Filipinos who dared clash with the unspeakable, and rebuilt what they have lost. Read history.
I’ve always believed that compassion and love are the true measure of our triumph. Live freely. Play hard. Love exceedingly. Fight tyranny like tomorrow will never come. Leave the alibis and the shovel to grandpa.
Happy holidays, baby Trevor!
