A New "Old" Friend

For years now, I've been seeing this man in church and have noticed him for two reasons. He walks with some difficulty (and I can empathize/sympathize) and he looks like a friend of my father's when he was active in Rotary. He lives along the street where the parish church is.

It has been some time, too, when I have been wanting to condole with him because I read of his son's alleged suicide aboard a coast guard or Navy boat, just when he was supposed to have noted an anomaly somewhere and was about to report it or something. The details are now sketchy in my mind but I remember how I felt when I saw an image of the alleged suicide on TV. It couldn't have been one. The position of the gun on the floor while the man was on the bed, dead, seemed improbable.

It wasn't immediately then that I realized this old man was the father of the ill-fated soldier. I only knew for sure that it was he when I read an article on the Spirit Questors or saw a feature on them (so long ago, I can't recall which), trying to get in touch with the spirit of the son. Mention was made of our area.

Anyway, this a.m., after mass, (it's the feast day of my patron saint, St. Anthony of Padua), I decided to stop by a tianggue (appreciate that as the Ilonggo kind rather than the Greenhills kind) where I hqe noticed a table selling pineapples at P15, 20 and P25 each on our way to church. I decided to get one for my husband because I had P50 with me. I still had enough for Inquirer after getting the pineapple, I thought.

As I was parked on the side of the road, I noticed the "old" man standing nearby looking at the people buying. He had also just come from church. Impatient that my maid was taking so long, I thought of asking him "Are you Mr. X?" He said "yes" and I immediately asked if he were the brother of my father's friend. He said "yes" again. Then he said, "Those pineapples are sweet. They're from my farm." Oops, my IQ wasn't working. All along, it hadn't occurred to me that the tianggue was just in front of a wall of his property. I thought his property was but the nice house with portholes (so reminiscent of his son's assignment, no?). And then I asked where his farm was, expecting he'd say Laguna or somewhere far. He said it was in Antipolo.

We talked some more and he told me he was in Bacolod for six years where he was with an insurance company. He thus also knew another friend of my father's, a friend who had been my sister's boss. Small world. I guess that was what prompted him to say, "Someday, I'll invite you to my farm." I found that suggestion so sweet of him, never mind if it will never come to pass. The mere thought so touched me. He also introduced his wife to me but she didn't join our conversation. She merely smiled.

Eventually he left us but the maid was not yet done buying one pineapple. She was haggling that it be sold her for P10 because another customer she said got 2 for P20. I told her to just pay P15 and be done with it. To begin with P15 for a pineapple isn't much. In fact way back when my son was 3 or 4 years old, 15 years ago, that same table sold pineapples for P10, so considering the inflation and the intervening years, a P5 difference isn't something to "sweat" about, right?

So there. Fancy how age has made me less shy to strike up conversations with people. Weeks back, also in church, a man approached my husband and me asking where we lived because he'd see us and we him in the many churches in the area. Turned out he's the brother of a friend of my sisters. He's into koi breeding. When i showed interest in it, he asked if we had a pond. He gives rejects out, you see. Much as I'd have wanted one koi (aka goldfish in my unenlightened youth), I couldn't lie to a new-found friend.