Growing Up and Cory Aquino

I think everyone who blogs and was technically capable of reproduction when Cory became president is obliged to post about her passing. Here’s mine.

Fresh out of high school and into the frying pan, I was forced to audition for a role in the play “Alay sa Sigwa ng Unang Kwarto (In Honor of the First Quarter Storm). I was actually holding hands with my talent scout all the way to audition not because we were an item but because I think that was his way of making sure I wouldn’t run away. On hindsight, I think that was a moment for him but I knew nothing back then. He grew up in Tondo and graduated from Torres so I think he must have been self-aware already. Me? I was fresh meat from the farm.

“Sigwa” is quintessential “tibak” theatre -- spare sets, and lines that will never ring false no matter what era spoken. “Ang lipunang Pilipino’y sakmal ng malalang krisis. And sambayanan ay naduduhagi sa pagdarahop.” How we’ll ever escape being sakmaled by one krisis or the other I don’t know. There will always be naduduhagi people living in abject pagdarahop.

For the record, my roots will always be working class. I am just one generation removed from my farmer granddads – honest-to-goodness Mindanao homesteaders who owned as much land as they could clear and I think they cleared a lot. And because they knew how difficult the farming life could be, they made sure the generation of my parents all had college education. And so the parents and aunts and uncles became teachers and professors and dentists and all that. I, therefore, had a sub-privileged childhood. In Grade 3 I could bake a chiffon cake all by myself (whisking eggs whites to a stiff included) and eat it all by myself, too! You could count with your fingers and toes the households in our town that had an oven. We were one of the toes.

In elementary and high school, Martial Law proved to be both a stabilizing and destabilizing force. We were lulled into prolonged periods of quiet punctuated very infrequently by the percussive staccato of gunfire. Often it was far away, but one time it was near enough to punch multiple punctuations on our tin roof.

Meanwhile, the aunts and uncles were developing their own political preferences. One went the military way and eventually became a colonel in the Philippine Constabulary. One dropped out of UP and became a councilor before dropping out again to go up the mountains. One stayed in UP and became a professor and then a director of one government agency. My Mom was the moving force behind the local chapter of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers. We were not an apolitical family.

Because a steady diet of Tom Swift, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys and Bobsey Twins can do this to you, I grew up an avowed capitalist. You are what you eat. So I went to the “Sigwa” auditions mainly because my scout was persistent. Plus he was holding my hand, I had no choice. Fast forward to after the auditions when it was announced that I was to play Kinatawan ng Proletraryado and those naduduhagi and pagdarahop lines were mine plus five more pages in long bond paper back to back.

What?

I never knew if my rendition of “bangon sa pagkakabusabos, bangon alipin ng gutom” ever came across as convincing. Maybe not because I was wearing Levi’s on stage. But I did acquire beefcake status because I wore nothing else the whole time. I was half naked on stage for almost two hours. And for myself I acquired a whole new way of looking at things. In other words, caught between Ayn Rand and Marx, I was a blabbering mess.

As I was busy being a blabbering mess, Ninoy happened. I remember that day very clearly. The TV was on in the cafeteria, a hushed crowd in front of it. I knew something life-changing was going on. I didn’t know all that much about the history between Ninoy and Macoy, except that Ninoy was the last best chance for change. I had no great sympathy for Ninoy prior to that day, nor did I have great love or hate for Marcos. But boy did I cry. I must be extra-wired to the social psyche because I felt a very strong surge of emotion right there and then for something I didn’t quite understand.

That void would soon be filled in trickles by the mosquito (some are now full-grown elephants, but that’s another story) press. I read. I listened. I watched a let’s-tusok-the-fishballs friend cry on the bus as she struggled for words to express her outrage. I think I remember saying that we should be happy for the changes his death will bring about (or words to that effect). Shocked, she could do nothing except stab me in the face with dagger stares.

And as the country spiraled into chaos in the years that followed, so did my life.

Cory was my foothold to hope. Her voice cheered me up. The way she pronounced “support” will forever echo in my chamber of happy moments. People talk about missed opportunities and could’ve beens? C’mon. She was what we needed at the time, and she couldn’t have made those misses all by herself. She was ill-prepared to be President? Maybe we were unprepared to be without Marcos.

Like it or not, a president is the sum of all our aspirations and desperations. I believe that we always get the president that we deserve, and Lord knows we needed a break. We deserved to have one blazing yellow beacon in Cory Aquino in those darkest of times. We needed inspiration? We got it. That was all we were asking for. So now we tarnish her memory for what, not inspiring us enough? Enough!

She might not have been the greatest president, but her legacy extends far beyond her tenure in Malacanang. In fact, it extends right into our living rooms. Because, you see, the Kris is an embodiment of the nation – the sum of all our hopes and fears for the generation that comes after us. If Cory remained faithful to the public embarrassment that her daughter has become, there is a lesson to be learned. It provides stark contrast to the frenzied hand-washing and buck-passing of feckless public officials when caught in a bind. If Kris had been the daughter of some other president, she might have been exiled to Iligan to live with the Lola and let loose her wild horses in relative solitude.

Now, if Kris does her mother proud and transfigures from a Boy into a Ninoy, there is hope for our children yet. And Kris, in so doing, lays Cory's good soul to rest.