Running against the wind
Wherein Teófilo realized that the greatest resistance one faces when flying supersonic is the headwind. Plus, Teófilo ponders his first-hand encounter with death.
Against the wind
We were running against the wind
We were young and strong
We were running against the wind
~ Bob Seger
Storm en route to the beach.
The year 1981 continued on with the further integration of our lives. Little by little I earned Doña Elba’s trust and confidence as I made myself useful in her home. I began to have dinner with them incrementally.
Somewhere along the line we had the bright idea we should all go to the beach. “Us” meaning Don Roberto, Doña Elba, Mom, and us two.
As we drove to the beach, an argument ensued between Don Roberto and Doña Elba. Don Roberto escalated the argument by screeching at Doña Elba and commanding her to shut up. Doña Elba was left humiliated and seething. Mom looked at me with somber-to-sour expression. “See what you’re getting into” I felt she said. By then I was a survivor of her own temperament. But also by then Mom was herself impervious to self-irony. She didn’t see herself in their spat.
As we got to the beach, we parked. Mercie was sitting to my right - as she always does, since she’s deaf in her right ear. (I learned back then to sit by her left every time so I could talk to her). She opened the door and got off. Mom remarked with a look of mock worry “She’s so fat.” I replied, “But I love her that way.” Mom had not absorbed how the strength of my love for Mercie had made me tenacious. I now think that on that day Mom decided to break us apart with every arrow available in her narcissistic quiver.
As for Mercie and me, we didn’t care what the otherwise “mature” adults had done to ruin their day. Ours wasn’t. The couple made up by the skin-on-bones guy and the fat girl scandalized all beach goers that day. We only had eyes for each other. In our mind the beach had no one else but us.
Censure comes from every direction.
But resistance to our relationship first became pronounced from men I held as father figures. Father Hugo was incensed. He was sure I was headed to the priesthood. Using our full parish’s name he’d said “I thought you were the hope of Santa María Reina” in his dejection. He criticized us for public displays of affection “reserved to married couples.” I was hurt, but undeterred in either my love for my Mercie, and Fr. Hugo. He left our parish right about this time, transferred back to his native Paraguay.
My neighbor Efraín was also dubious. His approach to me was more cautious, though. He asked me “Can I tell you something?” “No” - I replied. To his credit he didn’t pursue the matter any more. I expected from him more discouraging advice and I would’ve hit me very hard, as I held him and his wife as a model couple.
In school, authorities warned us to refrain from public displays of affection while in school or in uniform or they would summon our parents. We became more discreet but didn’t stop and we hadn't to this day. To their merit, when school administrators took wind of the deterioration of my relationship with Mom they looked the other way and ran interference. They began to sense our relationship was a plus for both of us and in time stopped from interfering.
My power of introspection grew during these encounters, as well as my sense of justice and fairness. I looked within me deeply and found that my decision to love was sound and grounded in authentic decision and feelings. These painful rejections saddened me, but I remained decided and unmoved.
I loved my Mercie and she loved me. The world just had to learn to deal with it.
A Very Sad Event
The PA system at la Academia crackled to life on May 14, 1981 while we were in class. The administration was piping in a radio news report. That had never happened before in my 11 years as a student there. There was a lot of static, but I got to hear two incomprehensible words: “Pope” and “shot.” With a broken voice Mrs. Reyes, by that time the school’s Director, informed us that the Holy Father had been shot while greeting the faithful at St. Peter’s Square, and that his condition was serious. The teacher asked me to lead the class in prayer which I did, on the verge of tears and with the trust and confidence the Spirit led me with.
The Holy Father recovered but his health was marked forever by the attempt on his life. In fact, the whole world watched in shock and no one was unaffected by this unwarranted, idiotic action.
High School Junior Year - My Worst Year Therein
If my sophomore year was to be my best year in high school, my junior year was to become the worst. Its driver was the way I had absorbed knowledge until that moment. I’d memorized lots of facts, but was only able to reason from them into new knowledge, deductively. I wasn’t a true scientist. And when I started my first foray with chemistry I got lost in the forest of atoms and molecules and molality and such. I was unable to grasp chemistry as a science of aggregates. The teacher didn’t help and in fact she was hostile and belittling. Chemistry was the first “C” I ever brought home in a score card.
Mom was livid. She went to school to talk to the teacher. I thought she was going to defend me. When I asked her how things had gone with the teacher, Mom fidgeted in a way I would come to recognize as a preamble to a lie. You see, when Mom is about to lie it takes an effort from her to keep a straight, reasonable face. The effort makes her fidget. At that time I didn’t know what her fidgeting either meant or portended, but I saved the moment in my memory. I needed more data before reaching the distressing conclusion that Mom lied at the drop of a hat when she felt a threat to her self-image of being a reasonable, yet victimized person.
Mom’s answer to me was a weak non-answer. Later I would come to know what’d happened. Mom had conceded I was wrong, that I needed further harsh discipline, and that in fact I was mentally diseased (“loco” or crazy was the word she used). As I would come to know too well, it is a favorite tactic of her to question everyone’s sanity while maintaining her own fable of an utter, compassionate objectivity. If the incident hadn’t been witnessed by the classmate who was to become our valedictorian, a person of intachable credentials and unimpeachable credibility, I would’ve found Mom’s betrayal difficult to believe. Yet, there it was. In order to appear credible and reasonable to the teacher Mom’d sold me out.
In the meantime, the basic weakness in the manner I learned and applied knowledge would go undiagnosed and untreated for years to come. Ironically, though, I would come to ace college chemistry. That showed to me later on that positive changes in my environment helped me learned. But the total realization of a stable and peaceful learning environment lied in the future still.
First-hand experience with death - pun intended.
One day I was headed to Mercie’s place I heard a “plopping” sound behind me. I looked back and lo and behold, a bird had fallen from a tree branch on to the ground. It was one of our local sparrow-like species, small gray birds with pointy beaks seen flying and chirping everywhere. “Rolitas” (roh-LEE-tahs) we used to call them.
I bent over and picked up the bird with my right hand. I felt its rapid-beating heart on my fingers. Its eyes were half-closed but then lit open and looked at me before closing them again. Forever.
I felt the beating heart cease beating. A drop of yellowish liquid oozed through its beak. Its head hung loosely to one side.
Silence ensued. A soft wind ruffled its feathers. A living being had died in my hands.
Startled and shaken, I deposited the now carcass into a trash can and continued my walk pondering the event as an omen of my own, eventual death.
Tempus fugit, memento mori. Time flies, remember death. That is, my future, my own death.
First Christmas Together
I confess I have no clear memory of our first Christmas together. I remember I gifted Mercie a pink teddy bear. She wore a beautiful pink dress. She looked lovely that Christmas Eve. I took her picture. My Mercie had become my principal photographic subject and has ever since. Meanwhile, I was as unphotogenic as I could’ve ever been. I didn’t know it but the increasing evil environment in which I was moving affected even the way I looked.
The most important thing that Christmas season was the realization that my loneliness had come to a blessed end. The previous Christmas had been the last one in which I felt alone, though not abandoned by God. Now I had a perfect complement, a life companion. And I still had God.