Where and when change really happens

Years later, the burst of magnolias as huge as my face fails to arrest my steps. I haven’t even noticed when the blue irises, which seemed to block me to revel in a few seconds of bliss, have shriveled into brown scraps of yesterday’s beauties. And while I had bemoaned the loss of the redolent briar rose, it took me all spring to finally realize it still exists, though shorn of its twigs, humbled among the towering hydrangeas. When did all these happen? 

“Every season and subtly every day as decreed from creation,” I imagine Jan castigating me as usual, for wasting my emotions on what’s mere brain-exercise to her. We’ve talked about ennui and emotional disconnect quite often, but she has dropped me since to take up courses in Anthropology, which she later discontinued when the expected “perks” in schooling caused stress. Not since three years ago did we venture into other river walks or another mountain to climb—somehow we’ve been feeling weary. Or maybe, more truthfully, just changed with aging.

“You’re in the wrong company,” Betty, who I last met at Staples—still chirpy at 82, even if propped by a cane these days—quipped, as we swapped recent life details wherein I had mentioned Jan. A volunteer at the Seniors’ Center thrift store sometime ago, she used to critique my choices of vintage books, especially on the British royalty, which I once thought I should cram to learn about, with Queen Elizabeth, being the real head of my new country.

Intimidated by the computer then, apparently Betty had since conquered her fears; that day at Staples, she had an appointment with a techie for advice on which computer would be “elderly friendly.”

“We’ve got to hook up soon,” she had gushed as she asked for my e-mail address.

Still, bogged down in thought at the train station last week about changes swirling around the globe, I got dodged off by Ariel’s familiar call in Iluko, “Naggapuanyo?” (Where have you been?) My answer really had no bearing on how our conversation often would take this trail—how changed his life has been; in the many times we’ve reviewed his separation from his now ex-wife, who petitioned for him and their son, he would never fail to beam, when recalling how he’s finally freed of their fights over her debts from supporting her family back in Pangasinan and not their own right here. Today, dreams of his son’s future and retirement back home in his barrio, buoy him up as he trudges daily to a hotel, cleaning washrooms, a job he thinks, but does not mind, will be a for a lifetime.

Invisible as a worm in the heart, change could really sunder a world like Linda’s and Dante’s. Envied by neighbors in Iloilo, who perceived them as sun-blessed when with their children, they immigrated here, nightmares gripped them instead, dispersing their dream: care of the children, one birthed here, a demeaning low-level job for Dante, who had worked in Saudi Arabia as senior engineer, and Linda, a contract-cleaner of homes, who once taught in private schools. She met an old friend one day, whose offer of an alternative life, perhaps, melted her defenses. Dante apparently returned to Saudi Arabia, working toward custody of the children.

When and where does change really happen? Constantly, as we know, creeping unseen into the flowers, for one, but more so stealthily in various guises into our lives, physical change being the most obvious, with inner change often devastating, though at times uplifting. But why change often seems more focused on what’s bleak does mirror nature in us, how it destroys and restores—with brightness being commonplace and predictable as the sun, moon and stars, and all the universal constancies that hold us in motion. Yet, we do cause change like when we choose who to marry or who to rule us.