Sunlight restored

Written Saturday of last week a.ka. week of the monsoons

“Heaven is the smell of clothes dried under golden sunlight”  I thought as I took down hangers of a shirt and a pair of  shorts off the metal grillwork of my left-door neighbor today.

I missed sunlight which I hardly saw and felt this week what with the heavy rains.  It takes the absence of brightness sky-about for some days for me to realize how important it is to my daily life and how much I have taken it for granted.

Last night my brother in North Carolina called to “what’s up” with me on the recent flooding of Metro Manila.  My brother in New Zealand this early afternoon also rang.  My brother in Iloilo City and I update each other on our situation more regularly but today my phone also rang soon as I sent a wala-lang text to him.

Yes, the water level of the creek in front of our house here in Roxas District rose and subsided, rose and fell…but only went as high as the level of the street, almost.

“Wala naglapaw pakadto sa karsada” (The water didn’t spill over to the street) unlike during Ondoy.  Then, the madly rushing creekwaters swiftly rose, reached street level and went up some more until it lapped on the lowest rung of the three-stepped concrete stairs just inside our gate.  The front of our houselot has turned virtually into sea.

Daw dagat (Like the sea).  Strange I thought that for across this “sea” is a row of mainly concrete houses of “squatters” (some of whom are seemingly more better-off economically compared with those on our side of the creek).

The drama in our neighborhood, in our street here in Roxas District these recent days of heavy monsoon rains, I learned about only second-hand, mainly through text messages from my cousin Cristy.  Ate Lina, my beloved former-neighbor’s sister who lives with her family to my right related that “Nakakatakot” (it was scary) how the creekwaters rose dangerously high, almost overflowed, rising then subsiding, then rising again and fell, and then once more.

So this time around there’s suspense thrown in. About three years ago during Typhoon Ondoy, I got paralyzed at its onset.  I could not quite believe that indeed the water is rising with so much speed, I had to be roused by a knock on my door by the son of my dear neighbor (who had at that time not yet transferred her whole family to Cainta) calling upon me to do something about my cousin’s car down on the street.  (My cousins who live in the house behind mine had gone home to Negros to bury their eldest brother.)

Not at home.  Where was I?

I have for the first time in my life a boarding house near my present workplace in the foothills of Antipolo.  It is owned by a former officemate who agreed to give me a room where I could crash during workdays.

Last Monday after work, I chose not to proceed to visit a friend at UP Diliman as I had planned because my body felt a bit heavy.  Heavy as the rain then slanting against the light grayish sky.  I turned left from the gate of the school and headed towards my boarding house within the village.

And stayed there till Thursday mid-morning when the water on the street in front of my boarding house has subsided enough I could tread on the sidewalk without getting my feet wet.

For by then I have had enough of wet.

Wet I didn’t like first came Tuesday night when about an inch of, in fairness, clear water, covered the floor of the boarding house.  Weird.  But we (my landlady and I) had reserves of unshockability and hope plus strength from lots of rest time (unexpected and a joy for feeling tired me on a work day with no work!).  We took this development in stride.  After all, during Ondoy the floodwater rose so high my landlady and her kasama sa bahay (housekeeper) had to perch on top of her huge narra cabinet for hours on end to keep dry as some of her things and appliances sashayed on the water below).

That wet that we met strongly somehow drained us.  Late afternoon of Wednesday found us muttering, “It is not yet evening, for Chrissakes!”  We both awoke from our nap (my landlady from her couch in front of the TV in the dining-kitchen area, me from my bed in a room beside a garden with well-tended plants), put our foot down towards the floor and shrieked at the cold water which greeted it.

Aaaagh! OmiGahd! Me.

Panic mode.  My landlady.

We talked a bit calmly about the water in the house this afternoon pa lang.  She shot me a question which was odd coming from her, a staunch advocate of never-leave-thy-house-even-if-it-is-flooded, “Lipat na tayo?”  (Should we transfer?)  More a plea with a hint of insistence than a question.

“Saan?”  (Where?)  I shot back meaning “Why leave now?”

She mumbled a vague answer I didn’t pursue.  I went to get water to drink and when I turned my eyes were greeted by the various activities my landlady was undertaking which can only be described as panicking big time. 

With opened umbrella shielding her from the rain, she was outside her front door hoisting small pots of plants submerged in water and hanging these through the wire on to the grillwork of her front window.  Then with a bit of frenzy to it, she kept dialing on the phone but seemed to never get through to whoever she is calling.  Next scene: with strength, she fiddled with the screen of her glass front window and succeeded in dislodging it altogether.

I mentioned the obvious to her.  She did not reply. Soon enough she sloshed in her crocs from the front part of her house to her favorite place, the couch, upon my encouragement “to keep our feet out of the water because it feels reassuring that way.”  I myself have sequestered my usual hardwood chair during meal-times and placed my rubber-slippered feet on the wooden footrest about half a foot from the floor.  (The floodwater was ankle-high at its highest.)

At one point earlier, also panicking a bit inwardly but trying not to show it, I, as calmly as I could muster, replied to another mention to leave the house, “We don’t have to leave because the weather forecast for tomorrow, a Thursday, is that there’ll be so much less rain.”  She subsided.

In my feet-out-of-the-water pose by the table, I had stacked days-old Inquirer newspapers to read.  Might as well pleasurably or at least fruitfully pass the time.

Soon I came across the column with Lotus on its logo and it has quotes on floods.  I avidly read it and found a gem which I felt I had to share on Facebook at that instant while many are suffering from the widespread flooding.  I posted through my phone: “We must build dikes of courage to turn back a flood of fear” which the columnist attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr.

I shared the quote with my landlady.  Right away she admitted “Nagpanic ako kanina,” and talked at some length, relief in her voice.  I felt honored by her expression of honesty.

It rained again.  Hard.  Then just a pattering or quiet.  Then heavy downpour yet again.

But my landlady and I have by then come to a center of quiet and reassurance.  After the evening news we faced her altar of images of deities, a big photo of Our Lady of Fatima foremost, as well as the two urns of her parents’ ashes, one giant lighted candle on the rightmost side of the cloth-covered old sewing machine, and prayed the rosary.  We offered it for our safety and strength, for the same for my co-teacher and her family then in an evacuation center, for divine blessings for all those affected by the heavy rains and flooding of Metro Manila and Luzon provinces.

That very evening, when I noticed that the waters in the front and back yards have gone down I swept the floodwaters out of the house.

It was midnight when I turned in.  I slept well although I half-awoke a few times to note raining.  But I know it is going to be better tomorrow.

I woke up to quiet save for the swishing of brooms coming from the house across the street.  No rain.  The floors drier than last night.

After coffee with my landlady and washing up and learning her relatives in upper Antipolo are visiting her, I bade her bye.  I bought groceries (mainly my vegetables) at SM Masinag to buy time for the flooded part of Marcos Highway to become passable to public vehicles.  It was about noon-time when I headed for Roxas District in Quezon City.

The weekend before the heavy rains I, like a fiend, cleaned the whole house and rearranged things to my liking.  Except for a small puddle and splotches of rainwater in a room, all’s as well, clean and beautiful as when I was last in my home.

Laking pasasalamat!