Blue funk
“Pacquiao-loss-syndrome” bugged us. Listlessness spread as we surfed reports from Inquirer to Reuters, to AP, to Guardian. They flogged the judges’ decision.
New York Times, however, scored it for Timothy Bradley. “The decision was roundly booed,” British Broadcasting Corp. reported. “Despite landing 94 more punches, the Philippines fighter was beaten for the first time in seven years…”
In this blue funk, we sifted through our files and stumbled across an old “Senility Prayer.” It reads: “Grant me, Lord, the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, and the good fortune to run into the ones I do—and the eyesight to tell the difference.”
We’re in the youth of senility. Where is that cane an Indonesian colleague gave when I retired from United Nations? Was that a century ago? “Count your age by the number of your friends, not by the years,” a Pampango proverb counsels.
We’ve stubbornly sworn by Lady Astor’s stance: “I refuse to admit that I am 52—although that makes my sons illegitimate.” My knees creak. And why do I peer closer at this computer screen?
“When the eyes grow dim, / When the bones creak/ When the knees go bad/ I simply remember my favorite things/ And then I don’t feel so bad,” Julie Andrews sang on her 69th birthday to the tune of the “Sound of Music.”
Our family doctor now interjects, after every two explanatory paragraphs, with: “However, when you’re not so young anymore…” Or “You have to adjust with the years…”
Eventually, all reach a point “when you stop lying about your age and start bragging about it,” we’re told. When does that happen? When former classmates are so “gray, wrinkled and bald, they don’t recognize you.”
President Bill Clinton calls us: “junior seniors.” We prefer the Washington Post’s euphemism of “almost old.” In 1978, Associated Press cobbled the phrase: “near elderly.”
Nowadays, one discusses, with as much vehemence, the impeachment of a chief justice as laser operations for eye cataracts. You also appreciate the candor of a now balding high school class Romeo: “I can do without sex but not without glasses.” He adds wistfully: “Aging is for sissies.”
The one-liners we appreciate are on hearing aids, blurry memories or frequent medical check-ups. They’re laced with intimations of mortality. Jokes we swap reflect our diminished state.
“I bought a new hearing aid that cost me P50,000,” this editor brags. “But it’s state of the art.” The cub reporter is impressed. “Really? What’s the brand?” And the editor replies: “Twelve thirty.”
We belong to a fading generation whose numbers are fast dwindling. Many of the younger members of our craft are brilliant, talented and innovative. They do not share our hobby of going through the obituary page.
We hope they never have to look, as our generation did, at the business end of a Japanese (or if the Scaraborough reef controversy intensifies, a Chinese) bayonet.
Some of our age-cohorts were slapped around by Makapilis or Filipino quislings. Still others were confronted with mass-produced martial law arrest warrants, bearing the signature of then Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile.
We’ve lived long enough to see—and cheer—the same Juan Ponce Enrile emerge as the steely principled chair of the Senate impeachment court. Should we be surprised? The good thief, after all, wrested paradise in his last few hours with a one-liner: “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
“Today marks the start of the youth of my senility,” we told friends at a recent get-together: “If I were a member of the College of Cardinals, I’d no longer be able to vote, in a conclave, to elect the Pope.
“The number of candles needed for our birthday cake would cost more than the cake itself. If lighted, the candles would resemble Ninoy Aquino International Airport’s runway at midnight.
When Bob Hope turned 78, he joked: “General Eisenhower said there are three stages of life: youth, maturity—and ‘God, you look good’.” Like Bob Hope, “I don’t feel old.” Like him, “I don’t feel anything until noon. Then it is time for a nap.”
Farmers in Guatemala have a proverb that says: “Everyone is the age of their hearts.” Oliver Wendell Holmes converted that axiom into a mathematical formula. “Old age,” he insisted, “is 15 years older than I am.” Thus, this jurist would sigh, when he saw young co-eds traipsing through Harvard yard: “Oh, to be 70 again.”
Soon, the wife and I will pause from brawling to mark our golden wedding anniversary. Marriage is, as the Italians say, chiaroscuro or bittersweet—a mix of joy and pain. Indeed, “the years teach much which the days never knew.” The words of the Scriptures also come true: “Your children shall be like olive plants around your table.”
When one advances in years, God compensates by giving him/her grandchildren. Time also brings in the bifocals, grey hair, the stoop. And why did those stairs turn steep all of a sudden?, you wonder.
“Seventy is the sum of our years,” the Psalmist answers. “Eighty if we are strong.” That passage of time brings a gradual but stunning revelation: That in life, there is one unchanging constant, one fact that never alters: Without fail, “God’s love always rises before each dawn.”
This truth distills into only two words that we can only mumble: “Thank you.” That is all.
Many youngsters today still follow the Filipino custom of “mano po” or kissing the hands of elders. Whenever one reaches to “mano po me,” we hold back, recalling what King Lear told Gloucester: “Let me wipe it first. It smells of mortality.”
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