Still Beautiful After All These Years

“You can go back to the place but not the time”
- from a song by Paul Williams, Waking Up Alone


After decades, and with the help of electronic gadgets, two friends & I were able to happily summon ten former classmates from Ateneo de Davao University to a wonderful powwow here in Davao City.

An important part of the preparations was what to show as the best places of Davao City to someone who used to live in the good old Davao City. It is easy to list the usual Davao city showcases if one is just a day or a two day visitor. We went to the Peoples Park with greens and with the monkey eating Eagle sculpture, which is a conspicuous icon in our park by Kublai. The EAGLE is also incidentally the symbol of Ateneo. Linda Altarejos, the Manila resident former classmate remarked to us, “Where else to find the best symbol of Ateneo if not in Davao?”

We capped our Davao City tour with songs by Popong Landero and group at Taboan. I must say that the Matina Town Square where the music literati congregate is also one of Davao’s best artistic sites.

We also spent time returning to Ateneo at Roxas St, and Agnes Miclat, the writer & my modern Babaylan recalled that the area where the Ateneo Finster building is located was a grassland swamp when we were students. Today, Ateneo students fear the expected flood at the slightest hint of rain. Pet shared an indigenous knowledge that Davao City was the rice fields of our Bagobos in recent history. Which is why, a major drift in the conversation during the reunion proper was about the recent floods of Davao City & for this, realtors (represented by Genette Ledesma in our group) can play a crucial role in advocating for proper land use regulation.
Father Finster, SJ, was our teacher in Theology and we burst into laughter recalling how our dear classmate, the late Bernadette “Benjie” Ledesma, would act out in coaching a classmate during class recitation and the Father Finster could read the sign being acted out and instead of getting mad would equally & quickly respond in profound humor by urging the coaching student to belt it out. “Say it, Bernadette,” the late Father Finster, would say. Benjie, of course, before she died, became active at PETA as a stage and movie actress. Even now, that scene could draw heaps of laughter from us that draw the attention of diners at Bistro Rosario where we held the pocket powwow over the weekend.

Someone commented on Facebook when we posted the picture that painted a “thousand” words that our Ateneo freshmen honors’ class turned out powerful & beautiful people : Ivy Abella, businesswoman & proud mother of three children & one of them is a vice consul in Madrid, Linda Altarejos, a finance expert who flew in from Manila, Dina de los Reyes, an Obstetrician-Gynecologist who had to excuse during the powwow to do a dilatation & curettage (d&c) but came back to rejoin, Bel Grandea, our sensual trainor & writer who also flew in from Cebu, Genette Ledesma, a Mutya ng Davao, realtor & proud mother of children working in Europe’s finest companies, Nelia Meren, an accountant at COA, Agnes Miclat, writer, teacher, & my modern Babaylan, Rosario Soriano, an accountant at PAGCOR, Miriam Tan, an entrepreneur & accountant & one of her kids is a Science wizard; and moi.

All of our male classmates except two or so are working out of town: a businessman in Cebu, doctors in Manila & abroad, or engineers abroad. Why, they could not come is another story. I was missing Mabel Gardose, our classmate because our friendship paced through the years from Davao through the Manila years to visits in New York. Mabel who earlier trained as a doctor now owns a building in Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

To some of us, a source of pride was having raised children but who are now trying out “life’s uniforms” in their chosen work away from home. Some of us are experiencing the so called empty - nest - syndrome. And perhaps, it is one of the reasons why we now have time to organize our long overdue reunions and catching up meetings which can collectively be beneficial for our well being as we journey through the second half of our adult life.

Photo credits : Agnes Miclat