By Rex Catubig

 

IT’S celebrated and immortalized in Karen Carpenter’s song. “Rainy days and Mondays”, she sang, “always get me down”. On the contrary, the rains, be it on Monday or Tuesday or whenever they come, have an exhilarating effect on me. Not in any jubilant way, but in the bittersweet feeling of nostalgia. Petrichor evokes romantic reminiscence of days past, you can almost smell it. And it spins the mind to imagine kaleidoscopic images of happy times.

This particular Monday, the first Monday with copious rain, brought me back to that time when the disparate nation became one in the spirit of struggle and triumph. All at once, one became a happy patriot. In today’s language, “Nakaka proud maging Pinoy”.

I remember fondly how the post euphoria of the People Power hung heavily in the air. How exhilaration and giddiness were felt all over. It was especially exciting for the Namfrel babies, the young warriors no older than sixteen, whose vigilance in watching the ballot boxes paid off in an unprecedented way. They literally dodged the bullet and emerged as grown men.

Because You Tube and Spotify were still wild fancies waiting to germinate, the airwaves as we call the radio signals, were filled with FMs broadcasting songs that echoed the spirit of the times. The EDSA anthem Magkaisa composed by Tito Sotto and sung by Virna Lisi vied for airtime with Mike Francis’s lilting and singable Let Me In and Friends that defined “the sweetest love refrain”.

Like many others, we had been thrown into the whirlwind of history on the cusp of change and rebirth.

In this setting, our friends would reassemble not to protest but to party this time. And party till one dropped dead. One beloved venue was the penthouse studio of a friend, which on weekends transformed into party central.

In those bacchanalian nights, the signature drink was Gin mixed with Grenadine syrup, whose deep red color was symbolic of the vibrant mood. It flowed limitlessly from the vintage punch bowl where one just ladled his bottomless drink. Heightening the ambiance, the scent of highland grass wafted in all  corners of the studio and made one heady even without inhaling.

But the urban legend that fired the imagination was how at one time, eccentric prankster Eugene P, himself an institution of gay abandon, spiked the cocktail with some unknown elixir. After which, the party transformed from sophomoric fun and soared into stratified madness.

It’s been thirtysome years and the cast of characters of the parties have gone on to search for their authors.

Four or more of the free spirited souls had passed on; others have moved on from juvenile exuberance and settled to sedate life. Still others have retired, cast away the untamed spirit, and sought the warm comfort of remembrance.

There were no cell phone cameras then to document this wondrous phase of our lives.

But there are always reminders, like rainy days and Mondays, that capture the prismatic landscape of our memories and awaken the yearning for one’s carefree youth.

Rainy days and Mondays remind us that the freedom we take for granted, the sense of freedom that vigilance brought back, is the same unequivocal freedom that allowed us to party till kingdom come.

It seems a shallow thought, but the realization that we are still able to feel, remember, appreciate and hang on to the vestiges of life at our age, is a profundity that only rainy days and Mondays can lovingly and valiantly validate.

Rainy days and Mondays free the soul to frolic with the raindrops of remembrance.

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