His tree

Kinutil
As fate and the stars would have it, friend, he finds himself here.
Here, is a perfect morning in Baclayon, Bohol, where trees, many of them, grow perfectly, as by nature’s design. In the big city, they grow twisted by inordinate pruning to make way for electrical wires, buildings, haphazard streets, and roads, going every which way, both ways, just so its residents would have no trouble at all losing themselves if losing themselves is what the residents desire.
Here, is a small town, which in the old days was just walking distance from Tagbilaran. Thus, its name, Baclayon; baclay or baklay being the local word for walk. Few walk to here anymore. It is too hot now and too far away. They mostly ride.
They cannot possibly lose themselves here just as they cannot possibly lose themselves in any other small town like this. What with the national highway speeding through it, past the church, past the municipal building, the market, the plaza complex? There must be one other road parallel to this national highway doubling as Main Street: Just a few other small streets, and then that’s it: the whole, small, municipal town.
Who does not want to retire here eventually? Who does not want to wake up here after a rather cold air-conditioned night, waking up to coffee and staring out into sea, the horizon, trying to figure out once again, issues of life and death. And along the way, missing his single tree at home.
Here, is for him a time for reflecting on what seem to him at times crazy thoughts. He is Raymund Lozada Fernandez, father of three, husband of one, writer of this, sculptor of this and that, painter of paintings here and there, performer, finite human being; possibly: one soul eternal inside the cosmos he has yet to see.
Here, his family is detached from work and school. They are detached, in a sense, from all life as they know it. There is only the Christmas season all about them, peopled by Lolo and Lola, Titos and Titas, family friends, the household staff, one dog and numerous cats.
Here, his family is isolated. Just so they have to reinvent themselves as a family, together. They refigure how to deal with each other where they must stop dealing with life in general. They talk because they have to. Or there would only be silence. And you can really have too much of that even if silence in moderation is also quite nice. They have a guitar and songbooks. They sing to and with each other if they should ever run out of things to say.
Here, is an alien world, a warp in gravity and time. Here, takes them to the country’s collective past. Such as when they are confronted, if not in church then in the house, by acolytes bringing with them, door to door, a perfumed icon of the baby Jesus. They take them all about town. The people kiss for a small donation.
And always, when confronted this way, it takes him a while to decide where to kiss the little icon. The forehead as some would? The cute tummy, as most women are inclined?
He might as well go for the feet.
He imagines how it might be, after all these, when he must come to a door upon which to knock. And there to meet him, this baby, albeit, now a grown man of 33. And this man might proceed to wash his feet to welcome him across the threshold. And then to kiss them as was the custom back then for welcoming strangers into the house. And he would be humbled for all his sins, saved only by what he is doing now, kissing this baby’s feet while he, Raymund L. Fernandez, is still among the living. Here and now, he must remember that when he kisses this baby’s feet he does so not as a humble act of love but also of thanksgiving.
He misses his tree. He remembers it as distant cousin to the forbidden one in Paradise; of whose fruit, the very first man and woman partook of in an act of sinful defiance; thereby, choosing to live as we all now must live.
And yet, this baby became also a father who opens doors for us, forgave them and all of us, His children. He finds it hard to contain this act of forgiveness, except to relish its divine irony. And then to be thankful: For of all the gifts he ever received of life, the one he treasures most is the gift of the freedom to choose where this day might go.