By Antonio P. Pekas
Lent just came and now already gone. Whenever the New Year comes, it means Lent is just around the corner. When Lent comes, the Christmas songs will be playing on radio before you knew it. And then the carolers would be around, then Christmas Day would pass. This means everybody would have aged another year. The older you get, time seems to pass a lot faster. Suddenly, you don’t like anymore to look at yourself in the mirror.
Yes, suddenly the thought of being old at 40 is now the opposite. No matter how much you deny the passage of time, unmistakable reminders would be “in your face” everywhere. An age mate who you
hear just suffered a stroke, a friend with whom you commiserate because he had to bury a son or a daughter instead of the kids burying the parents, a brother in the profession who have to go to the hospital for his 2x a week dialysis sessions, contemporaries who are practically walking pharmacies due to their many maintenance medicines—one for cholesterol, another for high blood pressure and still another for blood sugar, etc. Then there are the wrinkles that are getting deeper and longer or more in number whenever you meet a friend you have never met for a number of months. Yes, don’t you worry, the undeniable signs would be there and increasing—in/on your face.
Then there are the young relatives. You don’t recognize them until they tell you their names and their parents. They grew up like weeds. In your conversation you immediately notice their unseasoned ideas or untempered viewpoints. This is revealed by their cockiness, quite sure of themselves, less considerate of others. They still have to be pummeled by experience or mistakes and the difficulties behind every success or every tragedy surmounted.
In my case, the first signs were being voiced out many years ago. On my way to court, the younger lawyers would be greeting me “sir.” The judges in court would often be deferent no matter how stupid the things I was saying. This was in clear contrast to when I was just starting out, when many I met would ask me, “Are you a lawyer?” One time in Metro Manila, I was with my sister to see a car she might consider buying. The car was beautiful, a fully restored 1957 Mercedes Benz (with the original diesel engine that could run 17 kilometers per liter of fuel) which was once listed by the Guinness Book of Records in the 1980s as the most durable car. My sister did not buy it because it was so beautiful for a day-to-day car. It was more of a special occasion car. As we talked about the car with the owner, he went as far as to say, “You are so young and you are a lawyer?” Well, that was about 30 years ago.
At another time this year, I was in a mall with my wife and we met a young guy who said, “sir”, as he nodded. I smiled as I nodded also. Up the escalator, a young lady who looked every inch a lawyer greeted me the same way. And then another one. My wife then asked me, “Who are those? Why are they addressing you sir?”
I told her, when you look so old with white hair you are addressed as sir by almost everybody. Sure. As a lawyer, I lack perhaps a legal opus or a body of work that should merit my being addressed as sir. But as to age, I guess I have enough of it.
It used to be also that I was being addressed “manong.” Now I hear “tatang” or “uncle.”
Just the other week I had to attend a wake of a lady much younger than I am. While I had been missing funerals of late, including those of a first cousin and a nephew, this one could not have been missed as it was literally a few steps away. I met an older relative there and I told him, “people younger than us are going, do you know what that means?” He said, no.
I said, it just means that we are next.
I guess I am psychologically ready.**
