In the throes of a golden anniversary

My wife and I were united in matrimony in June 1964. Several years earlier, I was thinking that we would be lucky to reach that rare milestone they call a golden anniversary. But now, at this writing, it is just a month of waiting and we will be welcomed into the circle of golden jubilarians!

However, the realization of that dream, impending as it may be, is still ambiguous and somewhat darkened by the fact that our relationship is now in the limbo of what is now popularly termed by Facebook netizens as “complicated.” But that is putting the cart before the horse.

I was in the midst of my review for the bar exams in 1961 when my friend and town mate, who is a lawyer, came to see me in my boarding house in Sampaloc, Manila. He proceeded to cajole me to keep him company in a first-time visit to a prospective girlfriend. I remonstrated with him, holding up the validity of my excuse, but I was prevailed upon to go. Concerned about my bar review, I calculated that I would be losing at least three hours of my time inasmuch as the place of our visit was in Malabon (at that time still part of Rizal province).

While on our way to Malabon in a jeepney, my friend (I call him Lando) narrated how he had met the girl. He was already a practicing lawyer then, and in one of the cases he was handling, the opposing counsel was the girl’s father. Lando had gone to his adversary’s law office in Quiapo and there he saw the girl who caught his fancy.

In Malabon we alighted from the jeepney and made a few inquiries from people in the street. We were subsequently able to find the girl’s address. Lando nervously pressed the doorbell on the front door and lo and behold, within seconds a tall, mestiza-looking young lady opened the door and invited us inside.

I asked Lando in a whisper if she was the girl. He murmured that no, she was probably a sister. And I said to myself that she was beautiful: “Aba, maganda, at girlfriend material.”

(She is pretty, and girlfriend material.)

Later, Lando and the object of our visit were engaged in a conversation with the usual first-time questions and answers: what school they went to, what course they finished, favorite subjects, etc. I couldn’t keep to myself the question I had been wanting to ask the girl: The one who opened the door, is she your sister? To which she quickly responded: Ah, yes, that’s my younger sister. And again I said to myself: I think Lando and I will constantly be together in visiting Malabon.

Actually, I had been in Manila more than five years already at that time. But it was the first time I had set foot in Malabon, and I hoped then that it would not be the last. Indeed, it was not the last time because I wrote this short piece here in the house where Lando and I first visited his intended girlfriend. To fast-track the story, Lando did not succeed in his quest for the hand of his adversary’s daughter. But he was my hands-down choice as best man at my marriage to the younger sister of the object of his unrequited love.

Thankfully, notwithstanding the distractions to my bar review, and because of my prodigious faith in and prayers to Padre Pio (now a saint) and Jesus, I made it in my first attempt with a fairly good rating. (And the bar exams of that year were one of the most difficult, with only 19 percent of the examinees making it.)

Well, at this point, to zoom in again on my story, my wife and I are indeed in the throes of a golden wedding anniversary. But a renewal of vows is not being planned for it will be inconsistent with our “complicated” relationship. But we are the best of friends, without benefits, with countless obligations.

I would like to think that we have given our best effort in providing our daughters (we have four) with the kind of education that we could afford at that time. Based on our children’s present station in life, we could not have done any better. They are all alumni of the University of the Philippines; the first three graduated cum laude but the fourth did not because she started her first year in college in another school. They are all based and working with their respective spouses and our grandchildren abroad—one in Hong Kong, the second in Melbourne, the third in London, and the youngest in New Jersey.

Do I look forward to that golden anniversary? Perhaps also looking forward to a diamond anniversary, but after making a quick calculation, I realized I would be 102 years old by then! With two foreign-sounding threats to my health lurking close by, Mr. Alzheimer and Mr. Parkinson, the probability of another 25 years is just too far-fetched.

Fernando B. Duque, 77, practices law occasionally as a hobby. He is the pioneer in introducing legal forms in CD and now in print, and has produced a two-volume “High Profile Cases” available at the Central Book Supply.