After I wrote a love letter as my “Theme No. 1” in our Grade 2 class in 1937, our lady teacher eloped with her boyfriend. That was more than seven decades ago. Since then, I’ve come to realize that love’s definitions in the dictionary do not match with married life’s actual realities. While it is true that love means “a deep affection for or attachment or devotion to someone or the expression of this,” in reality it means “an ocean of emotion surrounded [by] expenses.” It could be true in my and my wife’s case: We had to sell inherited properties for the education of our nine children—six boys and three girls, three of them engineers—because my monthly salary as an employee at the provincial treasury office in Camarines Norte was not enough to send them to college and/or university. Besides, I was then also in college pursuing what I had started at the Ateneo de Naga College of Commerce in the 1950s, to position myself for promotion. I finally graduated with a business administration degree, major in accounting and minor in economics and management in the local college in Daet while our children were in secondary schools.
While other ordinary employees can send their children to exclusive schools despite meager monthly salaries, I kept my integrity, dignity and honesty for the sake of our children. In effect, their only legacy from us is their educational attainments which nobody can take away from them, unlike material properties such as farm and coconut lands. But being the fruits of real, deep affection and of “an ocean of emotion surrounded [by] expenses,” they can face anybody with chins up.
Our only property is a house and lot acquired through a Pag-Ibig loan in 1983. I have told our children that nobody among them can inherit this since my wish is to convert it into Villa Fernanda in 2033 in memory of my mother, the late Fernanda Oliver Peteza (may her soul rest in peace). She cried on Dec. 22, 1943, when I joined the Vinzons guerrillas that metamorphosed into the 54th Infantry Regiment 5th Military District 51st Division (Vinzons Division-Turko Command after World War II). She died in 1980 at the age of 90 years and six months. Our children can select from among our grandchildren or great-grandchildren the hotel caretaker. By the same token, they would have a place for the grand reunions of the Peteza clan every three years.
—GODOFREDO O. PETEZA,
JP Rizal Street, Barangay Camambugan,
Daet, Camarines Norte 4600