I’ve changed, from how I look and feel to how I do the most ordinary things, like eating, sleeping, loving, parenting, spending, traveling, having fun.
Well, I guess it’s about the time that change happens. It’s not necessarily a bad thing; it doesn’t have to be a transmogrification from Jekyll to Hyde if we pay enough attention, because, while it may not happen drastically, it could surreptitiously.
For how else could nice old folks suddenly turn insufferable, intolerant, aggressive, loud, crass, crude, tactless, shocking and plain nasty? Surely not by choice. But it happens, one day at a time, it seems.
In the beginning, one is provoked to drop one little inhibition, then another, and another until, at the end of the strip tease, the bitch is revealed! And from there everything goes downhill; one says and does things without regard for others. Left unchecked, the process produces a stranger, a lonely, old stranger.
But again, one way or another and for perfectly natural reasons, if we live long enough, we lose friends. A very private but celebrated writer now in her ’90s is heard to lament, “All my friends are either dead or deaf.” She’s somehow lucky, her sense of humor and her wit have not deserted her, which is sometimes blessing enough.
Pact
Still, there’s nothing like having friends who stay willing enough to put up with us till the end. I have myself made a pact with some close cousins that we check one another at the first sign of us making old fools of ourselves.
But we should be able to help ourselves on our own. I try by, for instance, being conscious, thus, in control of dangerous tendencies before they run away. Only recently I was tested as a tourist in a group traveling to Palawan.
Obviously I was no longer the usual tourist and couldn’t be bothered with the usual touristy activities, for instance, to see the Underground River, especially with our tight schedule. As happened, the others had seen it (though not minding apparently a second look) and were nice to understand and let go uncorrected my lapsed reference to it as the “underwater river.” The same goes with the crocodile farm: You’ve seen one you’ve seen all, I thought. In fact I’ve seen more than enough crocodiles, if you include their human variety.
Still, somehow, it felt better when plans went my way without having to argue for or against it. Anyway, I’ve learned to keep my opinions to myself in these circumstances, and realized that the world continues to turn all the same with my mouth shut.
The four-hour drive between Puerto Princesa, the capital, and the Rio Tuba mines was interrupted each way by one bathroom stop at a gas station with no flushing water, but scouting alertness saved me: I had a pack of Wet Ones. But thanks, too, for the apparent considerateness of my fellow travelers: I got to use the toilet first.
Now on the verge of deafness myself, it feels, I don’t know if I should be thankful for having missed some of the animated conversation between my seatmates, Vergel and Nelson, although when Nelson, as sweet as he is, broke into song unprovoked, with all the lung power the aria required, my deafness proved no defense.
Anyway, feeling excluded or assaulted, I decided to take in the scenery, sans commentary, enjoying soothing comfort from the serenity of stately trees reaching up to the clear blue sky. There’s such innocence in nature that even for its most wrathful visitations it is not accountable. Indeed, in the imposing presence of nature, there’s nothing to say.
Forgiving
Which reminds me: I should be as forgiving of people who talk incessantly, even when they say nothing. Possibly retributively, as my old intolerance for it brought me my deafness.
Eating in out-of-the-way provincial places is enough travel adventure for me, like at the Badjao restaurant, where once Britain’s Prince Andrew himself enjoyed a meal. Built amid mangroves, with a long, panoramic view of sea and sky, Badjao must have blown his royal mind! There’s a picture of his visit on the wall. In such a setting, I was made blind to people who ate more than they should.
I no longer savor mornings lazing in my hotel bed; I now arise eagerly, preferring to squander time in an unhurried buffet breakfast, reading the papers and sipping at least two cups of brewed local coffee, with time to spare for my morning ablutions. Or so I thought, overdoing it once, thus keeping fellow travellers waiting—with not a murmur of complaint.
Going to public markets was once the thing to do; now I avoid them. A pity since vendors, I’ve belatedly learned, now expertly pack lobsters and crabs for tourists. One couple with us went at it as if it were the highlight of their trip. I held my tongue and chose not to warn them against heatstroke, pickpockets, flies. As a reward for my good sense, they brought me a bag of cashew nuts, which I can’t have enough of.
Shopping meant grabbing a few bags of roasted cashew nuts, a couple of souvenir T-shirts and some dried fish in air-conditioned tourist shops. I’m on a personal crusade against the burdensome culture of pasalubong and don’t expect any for myself, though I absolutely love it when it comes.
It could be a generational thing, but there’s nothing like a good hopia, and Puerto Princesa has it famously. I thought nothing of lining up with other tourists and locals, but some things are just worth queuing for still.
Halo-halo, too, is well worth the health risk; it’s my choice of poison. We had been warned at the restaurant that they had ran out of some ingredients—saba, langka, ube. There were negative peeps, but it was still delicious to me.
And I needn’t worry about turning myself into my own as well as other’s worst nightmare, I keep a resident cop, trusted to slay the beginning of a tendency toward any strange change.
Who watches him in turn? It’s a problem I’m only too glad to leave with him.