Trees

i consider myself lucky to be able to see trees outside the bedrooms i have had in the past few years.

they bring me back to days past when i lived the wild life my teenage years brought with it.
i have no regrets about those days.
i was in and out of school then for a couple of years.
in and out of our home as well.
my dad couldn't put up with my long hair, my friends, the drugs and the booze and my craziness.

some lessons learned came out of it which i carry, my baggage.

there was a short period when i lived with some prostitutes.
didn't meet them where they did their work. i had friends who were their boyfriends.
they took me in when they found out i got kicked out of our place.
some of them could relate cause that 's how they got started.
you say they could have done better than be what they ended up in.
easy to say. hey, some people today do worse.
anyway, it was to be a short stay. their "handler" found out and shot us out of their "house" early one morning.
yes. a couple of trees helped in our getaway and saved us from the gunshots fired at us.
ordinary trees, just.
i have never thought of prostitutes other than people who just don't have the same kind of luck we all were given.

i'll cut short to the next incident where trees made me do a turnaround.

my dad had given up on me. nothing he did worked to make me give up my "friends".
one day, instead of the usual screaming he just walked me out to our front yard where there were a couple of trees and a lot of smaller plants.

he admitted he was tired of me and his scoldings. i was a hopeless case.
(i finished high school and college and never attended graduation ceremonies which most parents look forward to. what for ? that was the end of the show, like the credits you see at the end of a film. now don't you guys walk out when they come along ?)

anyway, my dad then told me the trees and the plants around us were in a lot better shape than i was. they were stuck in the ground and yet each day they were able to do something with themselves and their situation. oh yeah, of course, it's the only way they'll survive.

but back to my dad. he said they were better off because they had something, leaves a-borning and a-falling, flowers and fruits showing. compared to nothing i could show for my daily, nightly excursions, incursions.

don't ask - it got to me. after he left i made up my mind i was going to finish school and get out of his face. after all he also told me he would still pay for my college education ( as well as for my four siblings. yes he did - debt-free.)

flash forward. when i was finally able to buy some land for my own home, first thing i had done was have some trees planted.

years later. were it not for the sight of those trees on the small plot of land, i would have sold it and not have the house i have on it now.

today, i think of my dad as another tree. he, inspite of our issues, has turned out to be a tree of sorts, holding us all together.

and so, every morning that i wake up, my eyes see the tall trees outside my bedroom window.
they seem to have followed me around from that time in my "friends'" yard as well as ours.

and, yes, Tony, the trees you are planting may well be enclosing me after i've breathed my last.

thanks Ton. let me thank you for all those people you say won't know you had planted trees which would outlive you, us.

they may just be trees.


you see me today and you wouldn't think i had done some wild things.
i'm sure you know some people who have similar experiences and you wouldn't know.
i know how you feel Ton.
you are dead on about those trees.
given the chance, they would be mute witnesses to the follies of man.

Mortality

found out about a friend's death last night.

brought back a lot of good memories as well as reminded me of our mortality.

everyone knew him as DonDon and appreciated him for his sparky personality and creativity.

we met while working for a bank in a desert kingdom. he found me.
a colleague at the bank told me i should meet him cause i somehow reminded him of Don.
for one we were taller than our compatriots.
and i think because i had a nasty sense of humor, much like Don, when a need for such humor arose.
we worked in different areas and we wouldn't have met had he not made the first move.
i'm glad he did.
for over the time i spent with him, he would provide me, as well as those who knew him much needed comic relief for the very restrictive lifestyle the kingdom enforced on everyone,
and more.

below are some of the memories of him i have and will continue to carry.

once, late at night he walked into a supermarket in shorts. no, you don't do that in public in this kingdom, men and specially women. got away with it. never did it again.

clogged up a kitchen so that the landlord would get some needed repairs done on the apartment he shared with a friend. he got found out and he and his friend moved out at the end of their lease. yes, we three found ourselves a better apartment and shared living arrangements for quite a long bit of time. i have not regretted doing so.

liked blue and white ceramics. yeah, for a while, i bought some. but he just had to have them all the time.

usually found a use for ordinary things for either decorative or utilitarian purposes.

gave good parties or had good ideas for them.

he termed women lacking in good looks "simpatica" after an embarrassing situation at a party.

never threw away leftover food until it had spoiled. said he learned it from his mom who told him it would bring bad luck as there are people somewhere who don't have the luxury of having enough food to get them thru the day.

taught me about his views on karma.
he believed whatever good or bad deeds you do would come back to affect you the same way, maybe doubled. ( i learned "every action has an equal and opposite reaction" from my high school physics class, and much more.)
don did as many good deeds as he could not thinking about whether he would get the same back.

gave one of my sisters a gold ring which she still wears everyday and which still gets "nice ring, where did you get that" comments from people who notice it. (they just met once when Don was on one of his annual vacations.)

he sometimes wore different colored or patterned socks not because he was setting a style trend. happened either because he was in a rush or he was dressing up in the dark.
how did i find out ? i called him at work once to tell him about my own booboo and he told me how often he did so.

one time he teased someone about getting a cat so he could practice for the eventuality of bachelorhood in his older days. don saw this colleague sitting in a rocking chair stoking a cat on his lap. yes, the guy took offense as he said he didn't have any plans of going thru life alone.
(i don't know if he has married. such is life, we move on and away from people who can't take our jokes.)

and the first gulf war. we were there.
the first time saddam's army sent in one of their bombs, we found ourselves sitting beside each other outside one of the apartment's bathrooms.
we were having coffee and cigarettes (typical of us then, i no longer smoke now) waiting for the effects of that bomb, (which fell a few miles away from us).
i told him that, worst case scenario, if he survived that bombing or any following it, to please tell my folks i was thinking about them to the last moment. and he asked me to do the same for him.

we both survived. and i am still here.

and such is life. people dear to us pass away and we're left with the memories.
we move on. we have to, like it or not.
i know. i started losing dear ones early on.
i'm still here, still hoping that i would grow old with people dear to me.
if not, then i just would like to be around to help people left behind move on.

and so, mortality.
we always forget that we could be gone anytime.
i'm guilty of it. we all are.
i wonder how it's gonna come for me.
truth is no matter how you want to, it will just happen.
we have no control over it.
but we can control how we live our life and how we affect the lives of people dear to us.
and the best thing we can do is to make it easy for them while we are able and when we're gone.
that's a good eulogy you can leave behind.