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HONORING MY MOTHER | Road trips and look where they’ve gotten me

By Icoy San Pedro

INASMUCH as I have become easily tired with each added year, the call of the road has never been louder and more clear. Wearier legs notwithstanding, I could never really imagine myself as being one to be rooted to one spot. A rolling stone gathers no moss, as the old song goes. 

That same persistent call, although now constantly contradicted by the ones desperately urging for self-isolation or social distancing because of covid, has indeed been equally-strong in other people as well. One has only to look at the thousands of brave souls who have dared to face the Siberian winds and omicron no less just to pretend to exercise at the city’s newly opened coastal road. With sincere apologies to those true-blue health nuts out there of course, but do you count among you those who tag along just for the selfies?

In all, this is no sour-pussed excuse for my sleepy, lazy feel of Monday mornings, mind you. Must have woken up on the wrong side of the road, I guess.

Itchy feet, and lazy bones will get you nowhere, as my late mom, God bless her soul, always used to tell me in my youth. Although I thought it didn’t add up at the time, I now say it to be true. However, while it is just so unfortunate to have one or the other; it is really a great tragedy to have both. Especially at this time when the call of the road rings so clear in my soon to be 67-year old set of ears.

I don’t know but I read somewhere that during the teen years up till early 30s, the frontal lobe of the brain will not have yet fully-reached its potential. This being the seat where derring-do and adventurousness reside, people in this age group tend to be more maverick at life. Beyond that range and especially among us of the golden age, with limitations now acting as add-ons, the maxim “the spirit is willing but the body is not” now sadly applies. 

There’s the tragic tale of a fellow tennister who in his youth used to be a top player. He tried to inculcate the same exercise regimen one day and nearly ended up at Forest Hills, not the tournament but the memorial park.

Such a lengthy segue when I only wished to express my Valentine’s greetings to my love of road trips but at least, pardon the rant if you may. Lucidity permitting, the mind though scratchy at times with so many memories, tend to go full throttle once in a while. 

Davao in those early years, may have provided the likes of us oldies with plenty of beautiful places to visit. But at the present time, who needs to be reminded that those places have doubled and tripled even. As I lay in my bed during the early cold mornings of Uraya and imagine that the street dogs making a ruckus are actually wolves in the wilderness, the inner voice that insists that I take to the road once again to visit these new places, slowly rises to a scream. And my feet itch up to go once again.

 

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