the cuaresma of my youth

back in the early ‘70s when I was a kid, cuaresma was observed with much solemnity and drama. The latter, of course, was literal because it meant just that---the drama or radio soap opera mostly about Christ’s passion.

Radio then was the ultimate entertainment as this was before television invaded our place. But I never listened to this drama at home even if our Maharani quadrosonic stereo boomed and we had 7Ms bourbon and soda cracker biscuits for snacks because just as the dragon statue would turn real to fulfill the seer’s prophesy that the king’s sole heir would be snatched by a monster that spewed fire, my father would send me to buy Chesterfield. Whew! The hazard of being the youngest in a brood of six!

And so I had to sneak into our poor neighbor and lose myself, along with other children, in a fascinating world purveyed by an Avegon transistor radio that whispered from weak batteries.

Earlier that week, our neighbor had these Eveready batteries alternately boiled and left under the sun for hours. And if the volume still wouldn’t improve, she would wrap them with cigarette foil. Thus my penitence would take the form of piecing together missed dialogues, enduring a cabal of smelly kids and jockeying for that place near the speakers that had Vilma Santos smiling in a face that seemed rounder than a satellite dish.

The solemn part was ensured by Lola Pinang, Mama’s aunt who lived with us until she died a virgin at 69. She would instruct our helpers to hoard enough clean rice, water and firewood as they were not allowed to do manual labor during the Holy Week.

We were not allowed to laugh from Holy Thursday through Easter Sunday just as we were banned from playing and drawing lines on sand as we might cut Christ’s body. We had to walk slowly, on tiptoe if need be, as we might shake the house and the whole world and disturb the newly entombed Son of God.

Also we were shunned from using pointed objects to avoid getting cut or wounded because it would take a year to heal, a phenomenon my cousin swore was true.

On Good Friday, we were barred from taking a bath as this was the time when not-like-ours would go bathing in streams and rivers. More chilling was the fact that they could bathe in water stocked in pails and basins without touching it, causing incurable diseases should we have the misfortune of using it.

And Lola Pinang would add that since God was dead and therefore could not make them behave, the devil and all creatures of the netherworld would roam the earth to feed on us. Spooked, we would line up as soon as Jesus died so that she could whip us with pangyawan vine. With its bitter sap on our bodies, she said, we would be spared because the devil and its minions didn’t have a taste for something bitter.

That I stand 5’10” must be the result of Lola Pinang’s making me jump at the stroke of midnight when Jesus walked out of the sepulchre, exactly three days (or so the Bible said) after the guards had made ukay-ukay of His garments. She said the higher I jumped, the taller I’d become. My cousin, who’s now in the States, did the exact opposite because at 10, she was already 5’9”.

Somehow I feel sad that this traditional observance of cuaresma is now dead and buried. But sentimental fool that I am, I look forward to the day when it will be resurrected for all its worth. Meanwhile, I see people on Good Friday go to the beach to swim, dine and wine as sounds blared from their CD players. This makes me wish for all the bizarre things Lola Pinang said about cuaresma to come true, even just for once.

(this is an abridged version of the one published by the Inquirer.)