By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
I just turned 70 yesterday, August 27. Yes, putang ina! 70 years passed just like that? It was like a dream. So, curse, I did, but the fact remains.
Putang ina became trending worldwide when Alex Eala rushed towards the net of a tennis court to return the power serve of her big and condescending Dane opponent during her first game in the ongoing US Open. When she got it, dropping the ball near her, too far from her opponent to run to, she won the game. And she loudly said, putang ina!
Then somebody asked that half Filipino star in the NBA, Jordan Clarkson, what putang ina meant. The answer, those are magic words in the Philippines.
Well, it was my 70th birthday yesterday, so please allow me to be silly, taking stock of the past 70 years. My father died due to TB when I was 10 years old leaving me to grow up in the care of a mother who never saw the enlightening effects of the four walls of a classroom.
Yet, as good as God was, I remember my father in his dying days always reading the politically progressive Philippines Free Press. He was one of only 2 or 3 subscribers in our end-of-the -road village in the middle of nowhere.
I have seen his two rice mills, the junk remains of his bus, the first vehicle in the town in the ‘30s or 40’s. In the edge of the world he was somebody. Many years later when I was already a lawyer I found out he was once a vice-mayor and mayor during the Japanese time. All his children finished college including the black sheep. Was that me?
So it bugs me now how things could have been for me had he not died that early.
Disciplinarian that my father was, or the few things I came to know about him, perhaps I would have been prevented from gallivanting my way through college. Or perhaps I would not have explored my real nature of learning from experience—failures or almost becoming a drop out. With all its negative implications, it was actually positive as it was nature’s way for me to realize the full extent of my potentials as I finally realized I was going nowhere. That to get somewhere was to get serious about things. Not to just dilly dally with academics, always just hanging around as one of the parking lot boys.
Yes, I could have been a little bit more disciplined but life would have been boring.
So here I am after 70 years having only a small business, a law practice that have to be revived and quite a number of good cars in various stages of restoration that got stalled by my kidney and heart failures a few years back—whose effects sent me back again to the hospital early this year. Now I am on dialysis.
Luckily, I have my meditation and yoga practices including being a vegetarian which are giving me a fair shot of bouncing back. Am on my way. Let’s go.
Are what I have and my small family the only things a person can achieve in 70 years? Putang ina! You can say it again, Alex Eala.**
