The boss also rules in America

By Al S. Mendoza

NEW YORK CITY—If truth be told, I don’t miss America anymore. 

Why I am here, it’s in obedience to my wife.

The boss is the boss.

I flew here on September 22 because I love my wife.

What reason more palatable than that?

“We go to America again,” she says to me.  “For two reasons.”

Did I say it already here?

If yes, let me say it again.  Nothing wrong with being repetitive if the situation merits it, right?

“I need to visit my brother in San Francisco,” she says.  “Bonnie isn’t getting any younger.”

Bonnie is 80-plus.  I love him. 

He built my aparador made of narra.  Mainly, it takes care of my shirts, shorts, socks.  Pajamas and sweaters, too.

Our dining table, he built, too.  Also made of narra. Sturdy as the Golden Gate.

Because Bonnie loves cockfighting, I gave him a Bates breed when he was still in Manila.

In San Francisco, he was homesick of his roosters but not of his friends, stretching to months after his arrival.

“He eventually outlived his love for cockfighting” says Dondon, Bonnie’s youngest of three sons now living in Lathrop, California, and working at Lexus Pleasanton.  “He went to Stockton several times for cockfights but would soon stop going there.”

Bonnie complained of “too much dollars spent travelling to Stockton from Hayward.”

After bonding with Bonnie, my better half hauled me off from here, the so-called Big Apple of America—it being shaped like an apple. 

Because it is solid rock, this city is virtually earthquake-free.

But there’s tremor here everyday—when the printing machines of the New York Times start rolling at dawn.

Now to the second reason why I am here.

The Gala Dinner of the so-called “Global Reunion” of Calauag, Quezon’s sons and daughters scattered around the globe—from England to Ireland, from Canada to Alaska, from Italy to Spain.

That’s scheduled tonight, October 6, at the Renaissance Hotel just a spitting distance away from the Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey.

About 250 of them will converge at the ballroom for a night of eating, dancing, bonding and, yes, drinking (my main dig).

To make sure everything will go kink-free, all the delegates have checked in at the hotel—many leaving their relatives for a night of revelry.

The occasion caps the American sojourn for the writer-journalist Sol F. Juvida, who is forced to attend it after she had chairmanned the biennial meet when it was held in Manila in 2017.

 As her ubiquitous shadow, I must adhere to my sworn duty of being by her side 24/7 a la Whitney Houston’s Kevin Kostner in “The Bodyguard.”

 So, will I go with her again in their next “Global Reunion” in Canada in 2021?

The last time I was in Vancouver, in 1992, the police nailed me for speeding.

Traumatic that was and it still lingers.  But then, do I have a choice?

What the boss says, it is what it is.

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