“Stretch pa more”

WALKING around campuses has enriched my vocabulary a word, a meaning at a time. At Diliman this week, tarpaulins announced a forum on disaster risk reduction.

The mouthful of English jargon translates into a single word in Filipino: “katatagan”.

I like how those upright strokes forming the consonants that precede the successive explosions of the first syllables resemble pillars before the final syllable descends and eases like an unfurling wave.

The late Rodolfo Cabonce’s Visayan translation also astonishes: “kamainat-inat”. The capability to spring back from hardship implies a backbone of suppleness not otherwise implied in a code of rigidity.

In class, my journalist professor observed that resilience has also been misused by the state or media to gloss over the people’s suffering. Runaway inflation? Street killings? Jokes degrading women? Smile: The Filipino is disaster-proof.

Rephrase “inat-inat” to the more current “stretch pa more”. As a girl, I played with rubber bands and garters.

In these competitions—whether to win my rival’s stack of multicoloured bands by flicking this the farthest or outjumping the competition in Chinese garter, raised by increments—I was testing my ability to spring back.

The sight of Jessie is familiar to those taking to the Oval in Diliman for morning exercise. I first met him while walking down the same slope he was walking up, balancing a pole that had a large can full of fresh “taho” on one end, and, in the other, bottles of soya milk.

I was looking for a poem in the mossy bricks in the path to keep my mind off my knapsack and the extra tote with library books for returning. From Jessie’s expression, I could tell his side of the slope was even more interesting than mine.

“Mabigat (heavy)?” I said to him as much as to myself. “Sakto lang (just right),” he said, smiling slightly.

Years ago, Dr. Madrileña de la Cerna was my editor in a project to compile the histories of Cebu towns and cities. A History class “terror” at UP Cebu, Ms. Madz never gave up while I brooded over my manuscript like a hen sitting on a nest of imaginary eggs.

It takes more than writing disasters to faze Ms. Madz. Since she shepherded me through the final “final” deadline, she handles thrice-weekly dialysis and recently, treatment for breast cancer while still being Ms. Madz: volunteering for Cebu culture, serving the community.

In Cabonce’s dictionary, “resignation” precedes “resilience”. In a poem, the best is saved for the last. The best is savouring steaming “taho” from someone whose day begins earlier than mine.

And learning from a teacher who inspires long after she left the classroom.



(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ 09173226131)


* First published in SunStar Cebu’s September 11, 2018 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”