By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

 

THERE are many things I have learned, skills that I can command to this day. However, like my friends Teresita de Venecia (Tess) and Armi Bangsal, I haven’t learned how to drive. I tried but ended up confusing left and right, and ended up driving over a friend’s foot who was trying to give me instructions on the side.

 I have one thing in common with Tess. Both of us couldn’t swim. Not that we didn’t try. I enrolled twice at a swimming lesson with my nephews and nieces at the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). They passed, I didn’t. I watched them receive their certificates, from the gutter of the pool. Not entirely giving up, I enrolled with a swimming instructor at the Sulo Hotel, not knowing that swimming students can be viewed on a glass mounted inside the basement, where people also dine and drink. A friend who was dining with her friends intimated to me:

“Hey, you have to lose some of that baby fat on your belly!”

 All that amateur movement and desperate wading in the water was witnessed by my friends from whom I was hiding the fact that at a mature age, I was still learning how to swim! I quit immediately after, and have not tried again since.

 However, I can remember being with a scientist who coaxed me into the sea to see the growth of the giant seashells in Bolinao using a snorkel. Fascinated by the colors underwater and the swaying seagrasses, I forgot that I didn’t know how to swim, and for once, I stayed deeper underwater with the seashells, until I was dragged to shore.

 My uneasiness with swimming had a traumatic beginning. In college, our class visited La Union and decided to pass by the beach. Everyone gathered farther from the shore and formed a circle, where each of us will have to do a trick or a “talent” at the center. When it was my turn, I declined and told them, I could not be at the center because I didn’t know how to swim.

 “Of course, you’re kidding! You’re from Pangasinan, you should know how to swim!”

 I was pushed to the center, and tried to reason with them until I sank. They were still laughing, thinking I was joking. Underwater, all I could see was a circle of feet. My arms were flailing wildly and helplessly until everything turned dark. When I opened my eyes, I was already ashore. I saw the shock in their faces, and heard the lifeguard’s sigh of relief. I must have heard a thousand apologies, repeated again and again, even after the incident.

 About Tess, I only learned she didn’t know how to swim when we were working together as volunteers for the Women in Development (WID) Foundation. We came from Pugaro, Manaoag where we donated several artesian wells, facilitated by the Community Water Supply and Sanitation Project of the Tulungan sa Tubigan Foundation, managed by another friend, Mediatrix (Peanuts) Valera. We agreed to meet at Matutina’s (Dagupan City), because she had an errand to deliver some goods to the residents living in another community where she had to take a banca. I waited for two hours. When she appeared at the doorway, she was dripping wet, but very composed, narrating in between her boisterous laughter:

 “The banca capsized, it was good that the “bankero” was quick enough to grab my skirt, which floated above me like a spread-out umbrella. The fishes were shocked at the sudden onslaught to their peaceful existence and ran away from me. I couldn’t shout, I sank immediately. Hahahaha.”

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