Happy birthday Kuya Vicente & Kuya Onie

 By Al S. Mendoza

IT is not always nice to see all your children grow up as intelligent and big-time professionals.

Not also advisable to see them all leading a non-normal life when they’ve become adults.

Better that one or two of them wind up as simply normal.

Not very rich.

Not very poor.

Just your man in the street. Everyday man.

No frills. No mansions. No big business to run.

Let me explain.

Don’t  be shocked, but it’s better  for  parents to see one child or two ending up as not smart than to see all the children growing up too smart and too wise to the ways of the world.

Know why?

The intelligent will, most often than not, leave.

He will live overseas, in America or Canada or Australia maybe, if not stay in another house he will build for his family.

When he leaves, his parents will therefore be left behind.

And, when the parents are finally left to tend the abandoned fort, they struggle coping with the so-called “empty nest.”

It helps that a son or a daughter would send money every month to Erpat and Ermat.

But to a parent, nothing compares with the warmth of the company of a child – no matter if that child had become as wealthy as Henry Sy or as poor as Mang Pandoy.

To a parent, the child is a child is a child. In a mother’s eyes, the child never proceeds to become an adult.

I’ve seen this first hand. And I’m sure you’ve seen it yourself but you might have been too busy making money to have even noticed it.

My own parents are gone and, in my book, they are now living happily in the Great Beyond.

They produced 9 children – 7 boys, 2 girls.

Two of the three that earned college degrees live in Manila; the other one has migrated to Canada. He came home when Papang died; he didn’t when Mamang passed away – stranded in a freeway by a cruel nighttime blizzard on his way to the airport.

Of the four that didn’t complete their university education, two elected to come home and live with our parents – building their own families in the same house where they were born.

They were joined by another brother, who brought home a wife after dropping a course in TV and stereo at Samson.

He is Kuya Vicente, whose own two of four children, now work and live in Manila; the other two are with him in our ancestral home in Mangatarem.

Kuya Vicente turned a new leaf on November 7 but his wife, Manang Rose, will prepare pancit and puto today (Sunday) for friends and neighbors at our humble home on General Luna St. near the presidencia in a joint celebration with my Kuya Onie.

An autistic and, therefore, a bachelor for life, Kuya Onie turns 66 tomorrow, November 10.

Brothers and sisters near and far will chip in for the party.

Kuya Pepito, the one in Canada and naturally the most well-off in the brood, has sent in some extra cash for Kuya Vicente and Kuya Onie.

One is gone – Efren, the birthday mate of Paul McCartney (June 18), who died of alcoholism.

We are not as closely-knit as one can imagine, but we try to as much as we can.

The important thing is, we don’t fight.

Simple life. Small pleasures. Peace.

Yes, we all need money, but one need not be rich to be happy.

If Manang Rose’s pancit and puto today isn’t heaven, what is?

It’s not in the eating, but in the remembering.

 

(Readers may reach columnist at alsol47@yahoo.com. For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/general-admission/ For reactions to this column, click “Send MESSAGES, OPINIONS, COMMENTS” on default page.)

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