Resurrection in a tub of butter

My Grade 3 teacher unexpectedly sent me a tub of butter at the onset of summer and my heart, so to speak, melted under the sun. It was a creamy gesture of love. With that kindness, the memory lane was all lit up — clear, clean, unsullied. Resurrected in the process was my recollection of how my nine-year-old mind was shaped to be inquisitive, determined, yearning, always in awe.

Mrs. Virginia C. Alviar, whom I call Tita Inyang now, was my class adviser in the third grade at Gulod Elementary School in Cabuyao, Laguna. Recently, she happened to view my FB MyDay where I was looking for a hard-to-find Lurpak butter in the sari-sari store in Gulod. It was in the middle of the night and my hankering for butter was only fulfilled in my dreams.

Then one Sunday morning, a knock came to the door of our house. Tita Inyang sent me the big tub of butter I was craving for. She and her husband Rolando just arrived from Australia, where they now reside, and she made sure to bring home a gift for her former student.

“Ganyan kita kamahal (That’s how much I love you),” she said when I thanked her and told her it was the first time I got hold of a big tub of butter.

I looked at the tub of butter with all its letters in big font and remembered the marker suspended atop the steel door of our classroom that bore my teacher’s name — bold, emblazoned, embossed on a slab of hardwood, with each letter of her name painted in white. Under her name was the grade level and section: Grade 3-Pampanga.

Inside our classroom, standing before the blackboard, was a tall, stocky woman, her presence was commanding. She was both strict and tender. Her penchant for holding colored chalk was evident from the first subject at 7 a.m.: English. Followed by Science after 45 minutes. Recess ensued next. Succeeded by Mathematics. Then Physical Education.

Our English class was devoted to mastery of subject and predicate, pronouns and antecedents, spelling and vocabulary. Readings from the textbook were short but Mrs. Alviar always had a way of explaining them lengthily. Those who misbehaved in class only got a long, piercing stare from her — and everything would be peace and quiet. She had a slender wooden stick ready on her table. When the class became unruly again, she whacked the stick on the table. Peace and quiet reigned anew.

In our P.E. class, she had a meter stick to compute the reach of each of her students in a long jump. Her green record book was in hand to jot down our scores in three attempts. She reminded the students to come clean and tidy for the afternoon session after we took our lunch at home. The hygiene of her students was important to Mrs. Alviar. Most of us in school were poor but we were clean. There was always a ready pink hand soap in the sink inside the classroom. She also taught about the importance of always washing the hands.

In our Mathematics class was where I learned to be competitive — with myself. She would ask two pupils to stand at the back and they could only move forward with one step each time he or she gave the correct answer to the multiplication card flashed before the competing students. Early on, I realized Math was not for me. But I competed against myself by poring over more time to understand everything that had to deal with digits.

It was in our Science class where she opened my wide-eyed wanderings. In an experiment that proved that light travels in a straight line, she presented a long box with a small hole on each end. There was darkness inside the hollowed box. With a flashlight in hand, she demonstrated how light travels in a straight line inside the box. That day, we learned about light and darkness — and how the absence of one becomes the fulfillment of the other.

Just like in life, light and darkness are forever present. There’s peace and goodness, even prosperity, in an illuminated life. There’s gloom in darkness. But darkness embraced and befriended can possibly give birth to power and authority. In that sense, darkness is also the light of life if only for the lessons learned from it.

***

How a tub of butter can make me grow poetic or philosophical is beyond me. There’s more to that butter than what its soft, creamy and rich taste could offer my tastebuds.

In that tub of butter — or the kindness that went with it — I remembered Renato Alviar, the eldest child of Tita Inyang. There was a quiet friendship that existed between him and me when we were classmates in Grade 6.

Renato, despite his mischievousness in school, was always kind to me. He would treat me to a piping hot serving of elbow macaroni chicken soup at the canteen during recess. It was not unknown to him that I came to school with barely any allowance.

He always had allowance because aside from his mother being a teacher, his father was an OFW in the Middle East. When in an art class and I did not have an bond paper, he would produce one for me. No words said; he would just hand it to me — complete with crayons, which he always had an extra box. Once, he jumped out of the school fence — even if it was not allowed — just so he could get me my light pink Mambo juice with coconut milk and rice crisps from a stand across the gate of the school.

One school day, Renato, who had a gift for numbers and arts, was reprimanded by his mother for defacing his brand-new brown leather satchel with pentel-pen doodles. It was a gift from his father and the playful Renato just drew on it.

The next day, he came to school sporting a new bag. And his brown satchel he silently handed to me — with most of the markings gone. That was the only time I retired the school bag I had been using since I was in Grade 3.

Renato died early. I never got to return the favor of treating him to a piping hot elbow macaroni chicken soup. But his kindness to me was resurrected in my heart with the generosity of his mother, Mrs. Virginia Alviar.

Resurrection is all about kindness and chances and dreams. All of them I found in a tub of butter.

(For your new beginnings, e-mail me at [email protected]. I’m also on Twitter @bum_tenorio and Instagram @bumtenorio. Have a blessed weekend.)