What a difference a day makes

What a difference a day makes. Now I know that phrase is true. Sept. 8 was someone’s birthday and it made me feel cleansed and light. I had cause to celebrate for one day and to put aside thoughts, like where were the On-Scene Command Post (OSCP) and televisions, LCDs computers, fax machine, radio equipment, cameras, blackboard, chalk, maps, sketches to calculate the given threats? Where was that one commander the citizenry could trust to put an end to fear? 

I was told a command post is established in a crime scene during a crime scene emergency.  Would you believe an acceptable post can even be in a vehicle, picnic table, hotel room or a tent? Tent? Yes, if your command post is the remote field that includes access within communication range of observation platforms that each provide information relating to the crisis scene. The access node communicates with a main transfer module. Sounds like the American Civil war with a bugle.

Thank God for Blessed Mary’s birthday. Gen. Emelito Sarmiento reminded me to look upwards to the heavens. He organized a thanksgiving Mass in Mama Mary’s honor at Camp Vicente Lim in an old American Quonset hut, built at the end of the late ‘40s and converted from a war room into a chapel in 2009. It metamorphosed into a classroom in the ‘80s and then a barracks in 2005. It was also the founding of the Police National Training Institute. 

Gen. Emelito Sarmiento and I handle nationwide regional education and training of all mandatory courses for Basic Recruits 20 to 30 years old, all college graduates who would be policemen and non-commissioned officers. We’re distinct and separate from the specialized Police Training School under the Human Resource Development.

Going back to the consolation of our lives, we sang “Hail, Holy Queen Enthroned Above, O Maria, Hail Mother of mercy and of love, O Maria.” “Triumph, all ye Cherubim, sing with us, ye Seraphim… Salve, Salve, Salve Regina!” That song! I sang it when I was in grade school in Maryknoll College, my alma mater. First Friday Mass was in a tiny chapel in a “fortified” stone American structure devout of adequate ventilation. We wore our beanies on our heads for prayers. It was color beige with four green stripes to cover the stitches of the joints that made the small cap sit securely in our scalps, taking the place of veils. 

Our principal, an American nun, reprimanded us. “Don’t kneel and sit on your behind. When it’s time to kneel use your knees.” 

It was common seeing girls go into a swoon during our Latin Mass, which lasted an hour and a half. We knelt through every ritual. After a while, the long benches on the school’s porch by the chapel sat students in lime green uniform, white socks and black boy’s shoes, very pale and paper white because they hadn’t eaten breakfast since we had to fast a day before communion, not an hour before communion like we do now.

We were taught to raise our sweet voices, praising Mary with Gregorian chants and Latin creations of the Middle Ages like Regina Caelorum and “Salve Regina, Mater misericordiae, Vita dulcedo et spes nostra salve. Ad te clamamus exsules filii Hevae... Eja ergo advocata nostra… clemens, o pia, o dulcis Virgo Maria.”

Blessed Mary is still ever intent in making us know of her divine love and grace that flows from her Son to her, for us. At that birthday Mass of Mama Mary numerous memories rushed through my mind like swift floods and were unstoppable!

The recessional over in that tiny hut that accommodated just 70 of us — what depressing days they had been, with a few even comical. How could that ever have happened with resources available, money, men and management? What went awry? Again, thank God that for an hour we felt liberated from the lack of national pride and concentrated on a woman who has made scholars see women not as Eve but as inspirations and vessels of Christ.

I voiced out another perplexity during a cinnamon and croissant breakfast under a wooden cover filled with vines to shield us from the heat. Why didn’t anyone call Department of Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo to inform the Chinese Ambassador about the emergency measures employed for their nationals or a reassurance of abiding by any joint bilateral agreements? The chain of command? That’s the principle that defines the manner in which people are arranged into a hierarchical order of authority and responsibility in the uniformed service. If everyone performed his tasks independently, chaos would be the result of police work, being vastly complicated. The “workers” at the end of the chain of command have not one task but many different tasks to perform at different times. Some tasks can be performed by individual workers while other tasks require the joint efforts of several people, not all of whom are necessarily accountable to the same supervisor. The tasks themselves are not always routine.

No one speaks about a chain of command before God and Mary. If everyone obeys the commandments and performs his tasks the best he can, the entire universe will rotate ever smoothly in his favor with Mary quite pleased. 

We’d better pray.