Why I don't like stationeries anymore...
One Tuesday, morning after everybody left for a vacation, I was itching to do the general cleaning of the house. Ever since I was young, I wanted to clean the whole house when I was left alone at home. When I say “clean the house”, it means everything up to the dusting, mopping, re-arranging the interiors, changing seat covers, curtains, bed sheets, re-arranging the shoe cabinet and even fixing the clothes again and again that were already neatly arranged in our cabinet.
I did 5s of my files of documents (even a letter from a friend in Grade II up to my latest pay slip) that were randomly dumped in two boxes. I rummaged one box and found letters and cards stored in a big special tikoy box. I picked some of the letters and immediately remembered from whom it came from. Some are from my childhood friends that were sent to me way back in College since we’re separated due to the closure of Sipalay Mines. Others are from my former schoolmates from La Salle sending their wishes for my board exam. Some are birthday cards, Christmas cards and other cards that I just tried to remember why I got those. One big envelope card does not contain any letter but pictures with dedication at the back. Hahaha! That was the way we gave remembrance or souvenirs to friends and classmates when we parted our ways like during graduation or just the end of school year. How funny!
I read again some of the letters that I got. One was from Suzette, my neighbor and best friend since grade school, written in three-page-back-to-back stationeries when we were first year in College. I studied in Bacolod while Suzette in Cebu. Suzette had rarely written a letter. I was the only one who was diligent to write even if I couldn’t send it yet. Sometimes, it took months and I already written three to four letters in different envelopes so I had to enclose instruction as to what letter should be read first. On the other hand, Suzette rarely replied but she would do sometimes but in person during school break when we saw each other again in Mina. Just imagine how she read again the letter in front of you at the same time answering them, verbally! But I don’t care! I just laughed at her. But that one letter was a surprise. I felt the excitement in her when she was writing it. And it was because she got to meet accidentally my ultimate crush since 5th Grade, Federick, inside the jeepney on her way to school and the guy asked her about me. She wrote in capital letters with so many exclamation points thereafter. “NADUMDUMAN KA NIA, CLI!!!” [He remembers you, Cli] And that the guy kept asking where I was studying, what course did I take, if I already have a bf, etc.etc. I just told her, he should remember me! He’d given me his picture with his dedication at the back. But I no longer have the picture now. My brother made a paper boat out of it and played with it in our backyard one rainy day.
One was from Marlyn, my other best friend, which she sent after reading my name on the newspaper. Unlike Suzette, Marlyn was my consistent pen pal. We wrote each other letters and cards since college even when I was started working in Manila. We knew about priority mail of Philpost. I was not used of sending thru LBC yet. =) It only stopped when both of us were able to buy our cellular phones. In her letter, she told me how confused she was of her close guy friend and of the other guy who was courting her as well. When it comes to love life, from the four us (one is Sharon Anne), Marlyn was too shy to share. We teased her to one of our classmates just for the sake of having someone to tease with her. I was excited reading her letter and even shared it with Sharon Anne.
After I tied all the letter envelopes and neatly placed in the box, I started to arrange the cards. I checked on one of the cards and it was from Lenin, sort of an Ate, in my first job. She was like my big sister helping me cope with the way of life in Manila. I admired her having strong, positive, conviction in life. Having a UP-blood in her, she taught me to be strong, fight back if needed and to stand on my own, making my own mark. She helped me overcome my fears and inferiority of being a probinsiyana when at times I felt hurt when the Manila-born would make fun of my Visayan diction. She knew my love stories and even though she would not agree on how I handled and nurtured it, she supported me to whatever decisions I had. When she saw me how troubled I was on what I should do with the letter that I had written so many years ago but haven’t sent to the recipient yet, she gave me a card. She had written a line from the movie, Runaway Bride, “ I must let you know… that I love you..this is better… if I won’t do this now, I will regret it for the rest of my life”. I finally gathered the courage to send the letter but only to return to me after a month for a wrong address. Tsk!Tsk!Tsk!
Another card was a thanksgiving card from Colay, a new friend, after Lenin left the company. Colay was timid, delicate and a modern Maria Clara. With her, I played Lenin’s role in telling her not to be intimidated by others, especially of our officemates who were fond to bully her. I told her not to just cry in one corner for some silly jokes but she should learn to play with them for they found it funny seeing her getting pissed off. She sent me a special card on an ordinary day just to tell me how thankful she was for knowing me. Our friendship even extended up to her high school and college friends from La Salle-Dasma whom I got to know also. I had my first travels with them – Baguio and Puerto Galera. It was with them that I got to watch concerts of Side As, Freestyle, 98 degrees and Brian Mcknight. They were nice people to hang with. Colay had played cupid for me so many times but never succeeded in finding me the right one. I met the first one in one of our bowling tournaments. She and her boyfriend, Ron, even accompanied me for a blind date with her high school classmate.
Then, there was one unusual card that was actually made from a 1/4 illustration board folded length-wise. Generie always amazed me with her artistic way of giving you gifts. She recycled materials to give me a birthday card when she was still working in Bacolod while Irene and Guia just cut a bond paper to half and scribbled thoughts and faces. Probably, they had made those when they were on a food chain and they learned that somebody would be coming over to Manila and rushed to write a card for me. During our board exam review, I was staying with my Aunt in Tondo while they stayed in a dormitory beside CPAR. Generie wrote letter and would gave it to me after our class. We shared our fears, the pressures to pass the board, our simple grudges with friends, and some chismis. We didn’t have our own cellphone yet (only our rich classmates!hehehe!) so we were happy exchanging notes.
Then, I took out the pictures with dedications in one envelope and arranged properly in a small photo album. I can’t help but smile how touching and sentimental people were for writing a special note at the back of 2R studio photos. We always love to write “Hope you won’t forget this face”! Oh my! Why should I? But do they look the same when I see them once again? Or “Keep this picture of mine as a simple remembrance of me”. Perhaps, subconsciously, in our hearts we have this fear that people might forget you. I really laughed reading again my batchmate, Dennis, had written on his picture, “ Just take a simple glance everyday.” A funny man he is, did he want me to have a bad day everyday? Just joking!
Most of the times, thoughts scribbled by hands are lingered in memories and not just remained through the scent of stationeries because it is written from the heart. The effort and the art could express the person’s feelings while writing – happiness, excitement, sadness and dreams.
As I turned the other box upside down to clean up, an old, stationery envelope which color could no longer be distinguished if yellow, flesh or brown flipped out with a scrunched paper inside. I knew it right away that it was a page torn from an old Reader’s Digest because of the typewritten words “Laughter is the best medicine”. Down below was a hand-written numbers in ballpoint, black ink - a radio frequency. This is the one that only two people knew about. This one should not be kept so I throw it away and scored 3-points to the big, black, garbage bag.
