Happy birthday, Elias Leon

When it rains it pours. This, in the figurative sense of course. The rain may only be a light shower but if life itself is dark then even the lightest shower may bring us to the depths of despair. Which is not what we want. Because we are surrounded always by a multitude of causes to be sad and we would be swamped if we gave in even a little bit. Good cause for us to remember we are also surrounded by many reasons to feel joy even now as the days of summer die for us. We can still choose. How do we explain this to Elias Leon who is 8 years old today? Who is Elias Leon?

Elias Leon is the beginning of this serial narrative. It was he who refused to go school three years ago around this time, the beginning of the school year. His father brought him to the school gate. The guard was set to accept him and lead him to his assigned classroom. But he chose instead to freeze where he stood and refuse to obey. At the coffee shop near the school gate where his father and Elias Leon later talked he would ask him how many years of school he still needed to attend. His father told him 15 years if he planned only for a regular college degree. Three more years if he decided for a master’s degree. Five if he decided to be a doctor. He totaled everything to 20 years and told his father it was too much for him. He was only 6 years old.

The father wondered what to do. Should he spank him? Should he force him into the gate? Or go with him to his classroom and hold his hand the whole day? He wondered why. What brought him to this sudden unexpected change of heart about school? Were the teachers responsible? But these were all questions beyond the ability of his 6-year-old son to answer in words. What he got instead was this strange look on his son’s face. It was not a look of defiance but of a certainty of the rightness of his cause. Obviously, he had thought it out and come to a firm decision that he was now willing to defend with all that he had.

Such a look as would cause the father that early in the morning to envy his young son’s resolve.

The 6-year-old son had put his 50 years or so old father in his proper place. The son was not his father’s dominion. If he wanted a resolution to this impasse, he would have to think of something else besides what he thought of so far. Spanking had become obsolete as a deterrent. They would have to talk. And so the dutiful father loaded his 6-year-old son on his XL125S Honda motorcycle and they both drove to the nearest jailhouses. They rode to the provincial jail at Martires Street only to discover it had been abandoned. But the barbed wire was still at the high walls. From the door they could still peek into the dank and dark cells, empty now but still holding the sad spirit of punishment and incarceration.

Then they drove to the new jailhouse at Kalunasan and viewed it from the street across its large entrance. The guards were there as well as the regular visitors, mostly women sitting about near the steel gate. The father explained why the son must go to school so he will have the lesser chance of ending up here inside a jailhouse. He must have to endure school to find meaningful trade, to make something of himself and all that. It was only when they returned to the school gate when the father realized his mistake.

The son still refused to enter. But this time around, the father could understand why. He looked at the school gate and recognized the similarity between a regular school and a jailhouse. It was an unmistakeable semiotic parallel. They had the same signs: the guard, the yayas, mostly women sitting about near the steel gate; and inside the walls, the inmates lining up for the day’s exercises. Beyond the signs there might even have been similarities of meaning. He might have done his son more harm than good.

It was at this point that he decided to take his son with him for the rest of his workday. The father is a teacher. There was a symposium in school that day and the speakers were exceptional. He remembers now Resil Mojares, Merlie Alunan, Mayette Tabada and Larry Ypil. They talked about writing. The father was one of a panel of reactors and so he sat with his son on the stage. The lectures were excellent but he thought they might have been beyond the reach of his son’s understanding. Nevertheless, the 6-year-old sat with him and listened as if he understood and enjoyed. The speakers spoke of many things that day but of everything the father remembers most how they spoke of the importance of the viewpoint in the narrative, the “persona.” Who is talking to us as we read the text? It does not always have to be the writer.

The next day the father wrote his Kinutil from the viewpoint of his son. After a few more essays “the Maker” was born. Elias Leon decided to go back to school a few days later. It was the symposium (literally in old Greece, a drinking party) which might have convinced him, not the jailhouses. He loves school now. Let the rain pour all day if it must. Life is only a drinking party. Enjoy.