I recall a chance meeting with a fraternity brother whose family once had a grand ancestral house on the crest of a hill somewhere in Sasa. That portion of the city during them days still wasn’t filled with factories back then, so that their house stood prominently and could be admired from the highway.
When we were younger, I and other frat mates would hang around their family home during weekends for a time and on several occasions, even sampled his dad’s stash of drinks. One could say the length of us knowing each can forever be marked by the fact that I had my first taste of the San Miguel brew at their house sometime in high school. A memorable first.
When I met him again during our visit to a downtown mall, it had been after so many years. We happily reminisced a bit about those wilder days and talked about how young and foolish we had been. Now I guess a scenario like this, whereby one meets an old friend and harps about the good old days, may be a common occurrence for everyone. With social media now actually up to its ears when documenting such encounters, one would think that’s what all people ever do in real life. At least for some friends, this here’s a faithful calling of sorts; itching to meet several times a week over beers and peanuts and then meeting up again for coffee and ogling at passersby at Bo’s inside a shopping mall, to escape the day’s scorching heat. While our chance encounter didn’t really have all the necessary elements of such (especially the coffee and the ogling), it most certainly covered happy, wow, sad, and all the other emoticons of the day.
As I’ve said before, reunions are generally happy, but as always, they’re with a sprinkling of sad. He narrated that when his parents passed, they all had to relocate down to Obrero and sold the old ancestral house of our many drinks. Besides, because of my wheelchair, I wouldn’t be able to anymore navigate up its curbed and sloping driveway, he laughed heartily.
Before parting, he ribbed me one more time, to remind me about bringing me home by taxi to our house in Belisario one Sunday afternoon because on a dare, I had sipped beers through a straw and later couldn’t walk on my own anymore.
With that said, he was gone, only a frail hand waving behind as he glided past, partly-covered by the duster of his loyal wheelchair pusher. As I watched their forms disappear into the crowd, I remember one of his antics, where he’d translate into Tagalog some common English expressions. Once, he said “ Well, well, well…” then shifting in tone to the vernacular, “Balon, balon, balon…” and it would have us in fits. Well, well and well indeed, it’s just one of those times now.
Reminiscent of Dylan’s lyrics, ‘like a river flows…’ that’s how patches of our lives drift away. I thought, like so many other happier memories, I could never again slowly walk up that house on the hill to admire the road below.
