Still pretentious?
Can't help it. This is how my life went or rather how God wanted it. It all started when this old woman, who lived with us, offered to send my elder brother Jun to the priesthood.
This woman was a client my lawyer father picked up from the street where he found her scavenging among garbage. Odd, huh! Actually my father was merely curious about her being so well dressed, with coordinated clothes and matching shoes and handbag in that situation. It turned out she was gypped by a lawyer of practically all her property, and my father offered to help her and took her into our home. It turned out, Miss Roa, as she was called, was a very religious woman, and a piano professor, who spoke fluent Spanish to her numerous pet cats. Her religiosity matched Mother's and this made her most welcome to us, or at least to our mother. Unfortunately for Mom, the piano teacher was the eccentric sort and mostly stayed in her room - where we could often hear her scold her pets, "Sin verguenza!" or call out to them, "Ven Aqui!' - and out of the way.
So, this was how the issue of the priesthood began - an act of mercy from my father that arose out of a chance encounter with a person in need. Who would have thought it would change my own life forever. It wasn't long after Miss Roa came into our house that she made the offer to Manong Jun and Mom in my presence: that as soon as she gets her property back she would sponsor my brother. I was barely seven years old at the time. And when I heard it, I was fascinated as it sounded so special and I asked myself, why not me? I kept thinking about it every night that our family would together pray the rosary before the near-life sized image of Our Lady of Fatima.
However, the case to recover Miss Roa's property dragged for years. In the meantime, our family's fortunes took a turn for the worse. My mother's fashion school foundered and my father's practice in Pampanga became too small to support us. We had to move to the big city, Manila, and Miss Roa chose to remain behind. (She would later join us here after Father won the case for her, but too late for her to enjoy what remained of her wealth or to fulfill her promise.)
The big city cost the family much in terms of the spiritual life. Somewhere along the way, in our frenzied struggle to survive, we stopped praying as a family. We no longer had our nightly family rosary. Not that we lost our faith. Our daily travails sapped us of our energy, or we children needed more time to comfort ourselves we turned to amusement, however we could find it, and left the praying to Mother who never failed to go to church dressed in her Lourdes Marian habit - an immaculate white dress with a sky-blue sash.
At about this time, I entered into puberty and my raging hormones took over my life. Music became my passion and racy magazines, and many nights I spent sharing them with my friends at a nearby lumber mill's log yard Although I never forgot my secret wish to enter the priesthood, sex became too much of an attraction to me I bargained with myself, just let me have my first taste of a woman and I would go.
Some calling, huh! But that was exactly how the cookie, rather, the wafer crumbled.
More coming!
However, the case to recover Miss Roa's property dragged for years. In the meantime, our family's fortunes took a turn for the worse. My mother's fashion school foundered and my father's practice in Pampanga became too small to support us. We had to move to the big city, Manila, and Miss Roa chose to remain behind. (She would later join us here after Father won the case for her, but too late for her to enjoy what remained of her wealth or to fulfill her promise.)
The big city cost the family much in terms of the spiritual life. Somewhere along the way, in our frenzied struggle to survive, we stopped praying as a family. We no longer had our nightly family rosary. Not that we lost our faith. Our daily travails sapped us of our energy, or we children needed more time to comfort ourselves we turned to amusement, however we could find it, and left the praying to Mother who never failed to go to church dressed in her Lourdes Marian habit - an immaculate white dress with a sky-blue sash.
At about this time, I entered into puberty and my raging hormones took over my life. Music became my passion and racy magazines, and many nights I spent sharing them with my friends at a nearby lumber mill's log yard Although I never forgot my secret wish to enter the priesthood, sex became too much of an attraction to me I bargained with myself, just let me have my first taste of a woman and I would go.
Some calling, huh! But that was exactly how the cookie, rather, the wafer crumbled.
More coming!
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