OF NONOY, MY BROTHER Some Random Pieces of Remembrance in Celebration of his Birthday In my family, there’s only one called Nonoy, my elder brother Antonio. For those at the Eastern Samar State University in Borongan, he’s Dr. Antonio “Tony” Mendoza, their former president. And surely many there will remember that today, April 5, is his birthday. He’s “one of the April Fools in the family” according to my elder sister Nena, herself a member of the group, as well as Baba, the brother immediately next to me. But being a Taurus, I am not one of them. And the reason I have written about Nonoy now is not only because it is his birthday, but also because I miss him so. This I must unabashedly admit. For among my three brothers, Manuel, Antonio, and Marcelino, it is Antonio or Nonoy I’ve felt closest to. Even up to now. And random pieces of remembrance simply float vividly in my mind’s eye, enabling me to easily put them down in writing. There he was in Manicani crafting for me wood toy boats with outriggers and sails from scraps of cloth filched from those kept by our dressmaker eldest sister Rosario and sewn on her sewing machine. How we would spend those summer vacation days racing our sailboats in the shallows fronting our house! “Could those days of play have been the seed of a dream which I have been lucky to fulfill and sail away to other shores?” I can’t help but wonder now. Sailing away from our island home must have also been his dream which his eldest son, Arturo, and one of his grandsons, Ian, whom I call Chiz, have also shared and made true. And there he was also carving with his pocket knife a hard guava branch to make for me a top which he would further smooth out with a shard of glass. With a length of thick thread, again filched from our dressmaker sister’s sewing box, he would spend time teaching me to spin my top in the shade of the big breadfruit tree beside our house. Whenever he went to the center of Hamor-awon, or to Lo-ok (now San Jose) and Canmat-an, to see a school friend or for an errand, he would always have me tag along. These I remember vividly, though I was just in Grade I or so then. When he started high school in Guiuan and I was left behind in Hamor-awon, I would always await his return for he would not fail to bring me new fish hooks which again with some thread filched from our sister’s sewing box, I would dangle with hermit-crab bait from our seaside outhouse to catch fish which I would char-grill for our dogs and cats. Or he would dig out for me with his bare hands fiddle crabs from the soft sand along the shore in front of our house, and he would make small carts of coconut leaves and midribs which he would then tie to our caught fiddle crabs that would be made to drag the carts up and down the piles of sand and through tunnels we made with our hands. But his hands were different from mine, his fingers, I mean. His were long and tapering, the fingers of a pianist, I would later tell him. “Too bad, you haven’t learned to play the piano or strum even only a few guitar chords,” I would often tease him. “I’ll just let my children do that for me,” he once said. And, indeed, one of them, Issa, plays the organ, and has even taught herself to play the guitar and violin. Once when he was already the President of the Eastern Samar State University and I was in his office, I looked over his shoulders as he signed some papers. “Don’t you find it rather ironic that with such beautiful fingers, you have a horrible signature?” I could not help but teasingly quip. “Don’t you find it rather ironic that with your elegant penmanship you didn’t end up as a state university president?” he laughed to tease me in return. Yes, we loved the exchange of teasing banter. And I will always remember this scene when at table with him in his Borongan home during my yearly vacation, the conversation turned to his taking my place during the college graduations of two of my daughters who got top academic honors. “I saw the graduation pictures. You were really basking in the limelight which ought to have been mine,” I said. “Couldn’t you, at least, have told them about me?” I further asked in mock seriousness. “And why would I spoil the moment by telling those congratulating me that I am not the father?” he shot back. Then, in a conciliatory tone, he said, “Your children are brighter than mine.” “Then we had better exchange children,” I replied, still in the same serious tone. “And why?” he asked surprised. “With your handsome and beautiful children, I would be more believable as their father,” I replied. “Why? Would they have turned out that way if I was ugly?” quick on the draw, he shot back. One facial feature I share with Nonoy is my left eyebrow. Mine turns upward at its end as his did. We both got this from our father who had an upraised left eyebrow, too. When my second son was born, my first daughter, Ivy, innocently quipped: “It kan Otoy kiray pareho hit kan Tatay Tony!” “Waray ka lugod sisiring nga pareho hit kanan im Amay,” I told her. When later I told Nonoy of this exchange, he said, “For your small daughter to remember my eyebrow instead of yours simply shows that I am more handsome than you.” On this aspect, he didnt ever give me an inch. Aside from the distinctive eyebrow, I likewise share with him the equally distinctive high Balboa forehead. And from the Balboa side, we also got our singing voice. Nonoy was a tenor while I am a baritone. Of the two voices, however, surely, he didn’t know the difference, for he didn’t bother to learn what, to him, was just a petty thing. He just sang, and that was it. He could not even tell the accompanist in what key he was to sing. “Why should I have to know that? It’s the job of the accompanist to find my key,” he replied, brushing aside my suggestion that he, at least, learn in what key to sing a particular song. Before I gradually ballooned to my present build, my brother and I were more or less of the same figure and height. He had a mole on his upper left eyebrow, while I have it on my left cheek. However, it was as far as the similarity went. He had smoother and lighter skin while mine is darker and hirsute. Also, if I tend to be rather vain in my choice of shirts, ties, trousers, belts, socks and shoes which need to be color-coordinated. My brother was the opposite, and I would often chide him for his seeming lack of fashion and sartorial sense. Hence, I would bring him shirts to sort of enliven his wardrobe. Once, I even brought him a tuxedo suit, and to go with it was a white shirt with lace ruffles at the front, a red cummerbund, and a matching red butterfly tie, similar to what I wore when I sang solo during a Christmas concert. Though they surely fit him, I don’t know if he ever wore them at all. I also brought him a shirt, identical to mine, made of the same attractive Indian sari cloth with ornate embroidery. And I would have forgotten about it had his daughter Cyra, now a doctor, not sent me a picture of him wearing it, adding that her father would often wear it during special functions at the university. When I was at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, doing my master’s degree on a joint-UP-BVE scholarship grant, Nonoy was also at the University of the Philippines, but in Los Baños, doing his doctoral degree on a SEARCA scholarship grant. Being already married with two children and with another on the way, I had to leave my whole salary for my family whom I left behind at the Southern Samar Agricultural College, and subsisted only on my scholarship stipend which was negligible if compared with the one he and his family got from the Southeast Asia Research Center for Agriculture. For this reason, during weekends, I would take the bus to Los Baños to ask for some financial dole out from him, in addition to the good meals I was sure to have. And we would oftentimes have Tanduay in the evening to wash down the fresh milk-fish kinilaw he would prepare. Most mornings while there, I would wake up to the smell of fresh fruit on my bed side table from the windfalls his children, particularly Lynlyn, would gather from beneath the fruit trees behind their two-story accommodation at UP Forestry. Once while there, Nonoy asked me to read three books and write for him a reaction paper on the three which I had to do in two days for he had to have it submitted the following Monday to his Vietnamese professor. Afraid that he would not give me the usual dole out if I refused, I acceded. When I returned the following weekend, I immediately asked him how my work fared. “You got 70,” he said. “But in Diliman, I always get a grade of 1 or 1.5,” I replied, irked and flabbergasted. “My paper got the highest mark, though,” he countered with a laugh, to soothe my ruffled feelings. Upon finishing my degree, I bragged to him of my having been inducted as member of an international honor society because of my graduating as a College Scholar. “Almost a University Scholar!” I said. “Just a difference of less than a pesky couple of points,” I added, warming to my story. “I’m also a member of an international honor society,” he simply said before proceeding to prick my rising balloon with, “I finished as a University Scholar.” The other day, when I saw on Facebook one of his grandchildren with two medals hanging from her neck, I wrote to comment that I would just ask Jun-Jun, her father, and Nonoy’s namesake, that I would just get my share of the lechon when I get home. Writing about it now, I got to thinking that surely my saying so was a throwback to the times when I would just phone Nonoy before the Guiuan Santo Rosario to invite him and his family over and to ask for a lechon which he would bring me without fail. And without fail, due to my having been mostly away from home, he would be there to step in for me during family problems, or when I was home, to stand by me, particularly during family affairs such as the weddings of my children. In many ways, with our father gone, Nonoy assumed the role not only as a big brother, but also as head of our extended family. Hence, it’s no wonder that, out of the blue, memories would just come flooding back, like last night when I got Nonoy’s picture from Issa, his youngest daughter, the picture that I have decided to post here. With the random pieces of remembrance such as these that I have written, invariably comes the lump in my throat this big. And . . . the tears . . . despite the intervening years. -0-0-0-
Posted on: Mon, 07 Apr 2014 11:25:11 +0000
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