Rebirth stories

As in past years during Easter, I’ve asked my son Roel, a literature/writing teacher, to share some reflections: Back then, in the days leading up to Easter Sunday, I remember walking along the eerily deserted streets of the relatively small commercial area outside the gated community in which I grew up. I’d imagine tumbleweed languidly rolling alongside me, and Mr. Weng on horseback in 1982’s D’Wild Wild Weng, about to take on a gang of bandits and sinister ninjas in 18th century California. Back in the day, RPN 9 was not only a handy reminder of literal time, but a priceless repository of local cinema to enliven one’s otherwise lackluster afternoon. But that, too, would be inaccessible in the days leading up to Easter Sunday, forcing one to ruminate on the nature of rebirth and reinvention. Transformation. Second chances.

Back then, I could’ve very well been one of those unwitting nomads entering a continent through a narrow pass, as an isolated father finds salvation while listening to static on the radio, at the end of Dilip Chitre’s poem Father Returning Home.

I’d allow Dame Tori Amos’ piano to describe how little earthquakes can, instead, become tiny rhythmic heartbeats, or Sir Thom Yorke painstakingly reveal, in the acoustic version of Fake Plastic Trees, that in the eye of the storm of estrangement, broken souls can find new thread needed for re-stitching. More aptly, I’ve lost count how many times a student, deadened by the zombification of Shakespeare essays which ChatGPT could write in milliseconds, is maniacally resuscitated after I query about the latest Taylor Swift album or their recently-attended Blackpink concert.

If one prefers, the end of Casablanca timelessly asserts the beginning of a beautiful friendship between Rick and Louis, as a small plane departing ends another. Or more ambiguously, how the survivors of Lost’s Oceanic Flight 815 were not (NOT) merely dead along, but waddling in a personal purgatory, each struggling to make peace with their torrid pasts before moving on. In one way or another, aren’t we all?

Even as my lovely wife nods silently, but aghast internally, at how I’ve recently woken up at ungodly hours to catch the culmination of March Madness (which the 1848 Vienna protestors should’ve trademarked) – the semifinal/championship games of US college basketball – and witness Iowa’s Caitlin Clark and LSU’s Angel Reese reinvent possibilities for women’s hoops, garnering higher viewership than the recent NBA Finals. It’ll inevitably turn personal, given my love for this sport, fondly remembering UAAP Season 76, as I penned exceedingly optimistic postgame articles for a team no one believed in, all the way to a championship – poet-coach Juno Sauler, the Russell Hammond to my young (-at-heart) WiIliam in Almost Famous, restoring pride to a rabid community while I rediscovered my voice and writing hand. Or how, after a devastating loss to a then-rival (non-ornithological) school in the early 90s, I witnessed up in the Big Dome rafters a hideous display of (lack of) sportsmanship, leading me to redefine my understanding of classism and the true values of my alma mater.

Only a few know this is why I feel an immeasurable sense of urgency, and joy, whenever I meet my 12th Grade 21 st Century Literature classes in the Adult Night HS/Alternative Education Department of La Salle Green Hills, a manifestation of the Lasallian mission to provide education to the marginalized. A school of second chances, no doubt, in the same manner the anonymous rooms housing NA/AA support group meetings I used to frequent would reverberate with tales of revival. As such, Fridays are now most sacred to me, with my current class comprised of persons deprived of liberty (PDLs) from Mandaluyong City Jail. As they recently dealt up their own personal metaphors, after deftly taking to heart Maya Angelou’s (on-the-nose) Caged Bird, their reaffirmed voices deafeningly carried familiar tunes of regeneration.

I have seen, and continue to see, heroic people start over countless times.

Whether it be a perennially-embattled population taking its country back at the tail-end of a still-unmatched February revolt, or my cousin and best man, Chris, about to embark on his own (outdated yet persistently relevant) Hero’s Journey, to seek a new life in Toronto with his own unflinching Ilsa Lund in hand. Both proving a journey can only start when a threshold is crossed, and that we can perhaps begin to alleviate deep personal loss by looking within, to make sure the movement has not stagnated. To make sure it keeps creating a wave that freely flows outwards, before again tuning back in.

This cannot end without recalling how my younger sister Aina used to play one of the angels during Easter dawn Salubong in our childhood neighborhood, while I would stay home feigning yet another incurable illness in order to skip the show. Her laughter at this memory is what will truly bring it back to life.

We need rekindled memories, art, stories, to reinvent and transform our lives, our sorrows and the lessons they entail, even our triumphs. Only then can we genuinely share it with others, over raucous Sunday family lunches or intimate conversations past midnight with a soulmate rediscovered after a 23-year absence.

Ensuring the movement does not stall, that it continues to be completed over and over, one story of rebirth at a time.