So February is done and over. She took Hunter with her. I read a tribute of Mr. Thompson on the internet. The author quoted a proposal by Sterling Greenwood, the publisher of The Aspen Free Press (self-proclaimed “Aspen's Worst Newspaper”) “"Twisted," for example, Mr. Greenwood said, is a classic Hunter word - combining elements of fatigue, inebriation and a hint of the bizarre - that should be retired like a slugger's old number.”
I am not sure if I agree words should be retired, but I do have a confession to make. When I read “Generation of Swine, Gonzo Papers Vol. 2: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the ‘80s” last year, I enjoyed an entire phrase so much I lifted it right here to this very website. I hope I haven’t caused anybody harm or disgust. But no, I won’t disclose what that phrase was, cuz I might have the occasion to use it again, without inciting the wrath of Mr. Greenwood. However, a free box of Peanut Kisses, Bohol’s finest junk food, is forthcoming for the first person to identify the phrase that pays.
(Some restrictions apply. This contest off limits to employees of dbs.com and US Peace Corps, and most residents of Colorado. Sorry I used the word I so much in previous paragraph. It’s not really about me. “Winner” must shoulder shipping costs from the Philippines. Contest sponsor not liable for any ill effects brought on by Peanut Kisses. Not that there would be any. For a complete list of the “winner,” should there be any, please send a SASE to dbs.)
Next on my agenda: I invited my brother and lola (grandma) to contribute a guest commentary on their visits to the Philippines. Neither even bothered to respond to my kind invitation. Instead, they took off to Honduras and returned to the daily grind of bridge, tennis, and yoga respectively. That figures.
So I will tell a story instead. A wise man told me once there ain’t such a thing called “coincidence.”
Lola and I were chillin’ on the beach in Panglao, late on a Sunday afternoon, and I decided that wasn’t good enough. I wanted to show her another beach. But instead of hiking there on the road, I figured it would be a nice idea to wade through the low tide to the other beach. I told her it would be about a kilometer (62% of a mile.) She was in!
We started wading and quickly the white-sand coast disappeared. We were hugging the volcanic rock wall, the tide was rising, and we could not see any beachy land. I told Lola we’d reach our destination shortly. But suddenly, I was not so sure myself. (After all, I’d only ever passed this way in a kayak, and that was at night.) Lola told me she was less than thrilled to be in said situation, now completely soaked and headed in the opposite direction from her suitcase. And then she slipped, and scraped her leg on a sharp rock.
What you have to understand at this point in my relation of events about Grandma Lili is that she is one of the most laidback, easy-going persons in the history of womankind. I have never seen her angry and or strung-out, (even when I was eight and dumped all her cigarettes in the toilet bowl, waiting for her to discover them on her next trip to the comfort room.) But all of a sudden, Lola freaked out. She recalled vividly a time more than thirty years ago when a minor leg wound on a tropical adventure almost led to amputation.
I tried to get her to calm down, but she could not be reasoned with. (Lest you think she was having a nicotine fit, she quit smoking shortly after her smokes ended up swimming in porcelain.) I told her we were still just around the corner, even though I knew it was a lie. I was hoping for a miracle. For example, it would have been nice if somebody I knew passed us in a small banka (outrigger boat) and offered us a ride to shore.
We finally reached a small area of beach in between the super-sized rocks. A few gentlemen were drinking beer and barely acknowledged our presence. I asked if the stairs behind them led anywhere, and they responded with some fancy facial gestures, as if to say “duh, why would they be here if they didn’t?” So we started up the weed-covered concrete stairs, and a big black barking retriever followed behind us. If there’s anything my grandma doesn’t appreciate, it is a dog. But the dog liked Lola, and wanted to show us the way. We tromped through huge fallen palm leaves, and surprise, surprise, ended up facing barbed wire. Then I noticed more stairs, going down. And so, we were back on the pint-sized beach. The drunk men looked at us funny.
Fortuitously, there was a 3rd staircase. when we reached the top, we encountered an old bearded man sitting in a little hut, shellacking a piece of bamboo. In my best Cebuano, I asked him whether we were anywhere near Alona Beach. He stared at me blankly. (sometimes, Filipinos are so astonished to hear a foreigner speaking their language that they go into shock.) So I used English. Still no answer. I gave him the “what drugs are you on?” look, and he said “I, Japanese.” So I used the three words of Japanese I remembered to ask him once more how to get to where we needed to go. He pointed to a little path, and told me “1 kilometer.”
Lola didn't like the sound of 1 kilometer, especially with the big dog still following us, and to be honest, neither did I. But we both realized we were up a certain kind of stinking creek, and at least we were out of the rising tide. And then it happened. We stumbled upon a barkada of jovial Filipinos, and said hello.
There was a van beside their table, so my grandma asked if they could give a us a ride, but they ignored the request. Then, she asked if any of them had a band-aid for her barely bloody leg, and one of the women went into her house and came out with a handful of first-aid items. Turned out the lady was a nurse, freshly back from Europe. She cleaned up Lola, and assured her that getting scraped in the salty sea is nothing to worry about. Grandma finally seemed to come to the realization that her leg would not need to be sawed off. And then, the woman’s husband said that since we were wet, he would give us a ride, as long as we were willing to sit on trash bags (so as not to get the seats salty.)
In utter desperation, a nurse and a driver in one shot! That was the last time Lola complained until I dragged her on a hike in a slippery virgin forest at Lake Danao, but that’s a story for another day.
Posted by dbs at March 4, 2005 05:24 PM