Ebola

I somehow put two and two together: a post from Drs. Scott and Jennifer Myhre, whose blog I follow religiously, and a Christianity Today article. Both refer to a young man serving as a missionary doctor in Africa during the deadly Ebola virus outbreak.

That man is Dr. Peter Stafford. I realize, with amazement and concern, that Peter is my age: 39 years old. He is a surgeon, specializing in burn treatment, ministering to patients in Nyakunde Hospital in Congo. He serves with his wife, Rebekah, 38 years old (around my age, too), who’s an ob-gyn.

The Myhres wrote:

And join us in thanking God for sparing Dr. Peter. He was severely ill, unable to walk without assistance and troubled by mental anguish and high fever by the time the evacuation flight could finally be arranged. His life was spared by the grace of God, the prayers of hundreds if not thousands, and the competent persistent work of many people in several countries. He’s nearly finished the treatment period and entering convalescence, as his family and another doctor (Dr. Patrick LaRochelle) have a final week of quarantine to be sure they escape infection, but so far so good.

He is on his way to full recovery. 

 What struck me most about the CT piece is this line: 

Peter felt intense fatigue; at times he could not stand up to look out the window. He also had an intense fever but no thermometer to measure it. He felt delusional and could not eat or sleep. He desperately wanted to see his family but did not have the energy to record videos to send them or find some other way of connecting.

“We had just learned with our kids these small little verses. One was, ‘When I am afraid, I put my trust in you’ [Ps. 56:3], and that was just continuously replaying in my mind,” Peter said.

At the peak of his productive years, Peter and Rebekah chose the path of service. I don't know the story behind it. But I imagine that God put in their hearts a burning desire to serve wherever God leads them. God's direction pointed them to the people of Congo. 

There are days when I feel unhappy with my career, ungrateful and indifferent to God’s grace that sustains me. When I read stories about people living their lives for the glory of God and the love of all people across the world I realize I must be content with my lot. I am where I should be. Where God leads me, I will, and should, follow. 

Pliable, tender, open and raw

Nobody saw me at Blackthorn Café last Monday. I was rereading The Road by Cormac McCarthy. On my table was a cup of pour-over coffee, a pick-me-up after a satisfying lunch. In the café were two girls, teenagers with make up, taking selfies; they were all in a different world altogether and couldn’t care less about me. It was the perfect setting for a good cry.

I’ve been inspired by last’s week’s New York Times Book Review Podcast episode, where host Gilbert Cruz interviewed author and Daily Stoic podcast host Ryan Holiday. They talked about The Road with fascination and awe.

The Road is about a lot of things, of course, but ultimately it’s about a father and his son, moving through a post-apocalyptic world, trying to survive with each other. Gilbert and Ryan, both fathers themselves, talked about the book with sacrosanct affection. It is, as with most, if not all, of Uncle Cormac’s novels, a masterpiece.

I recall Gilbert saying something about how his vocabulary expands when he reads any McCarthy novel—the words are weird and rare, but they exist in the dictionary. Fine examples: slutlamp, bloodcults, bulldrums, dogmushers, bogfolk, siwash. Or how it was brought up that Uncle Cormac didn’t like using quotation marks. Or how beautiful his prose is—the way he strings together words and sentences and tugs your heart and soul and mind with the story. Or how utterly violent yet elegantly human his worlds are.

Before heading out to the hospital, I looked for my brother’s paperback copy. The books at home are all over the place. They were not in any particular arrangement—certainly not in the Dewey Decimal Classification System—but I could at least recall a general area where I may have placed a particular novel, for instance. Now the books are even more jumbled. When the earthquake struck, a bookshelf collapsed. The books were scattered on the floor. Neneng, our househelp, put the books back in place. She did a great job of arranging the books, but it’s hard to find a specific book now.

I first read The Road in 2011. My father was alive then. It’s now 2026, Tatay has passed away. I thought about Amanda Petrusich's sobering New Yorker piece, where she wrote, “Grief forces a kind of radical transformation, for better or for worse. I found it to be a shockingly generative state: I’d never been more pliable, tender, open, or raw.” That’s pretty much the state The Road brings me back to: pliable, tender, open and raw. It's been eight years after Tatay had died.

The magic of literature is how infinite a piece of work can be read, depending on the reader's context, mood, overall state of mind. 

In The Road is a scene where the father pulls the trigger to save his son. The books encourages me to remember Tatay, in whose presence I felt most safe:

When they’d eaten he took the boy out on the gravelbar below the bridge and he pushed away the thin shore ice with a stick and they knelt there while he washed the boy’s face and his hair. The water was so cold the boy was crying. They moved down the gravel to find fresh water and he washed his hair again as well as he could and finally stopped because the boy was moaning with the cold of it. He dried him with the blanket, kneeling there in the glow of the light with the shadow of the bridge’s understructure broken across the palisade of treetrunks beyond the creek. This is my child, he said. That is my job. Then he wrapped him in the blanket and carried him to the fire.

Father's Day

I know it’s Father’s Day today because Auntie Morena had called me up yesterday to ask if the church could use my electric vehicle’s battery as power source for the congregation’s sound system. Some parts of Marbel will experience a scheduled brownout this Sunday. I got the call as I was buying breakfast at Cafe Leticia at the General Santos City International Airport, while waiting for Auntie Netnet to pick me up on a fine, earthquake-free morning.
 

This day inevitably turns my recollection to my own father. Tatay passed away eight years ago. He remains alive in our memories. My faith tells me he is alive with the saints and angels, singing and laughing and worshiping the God he had lived for. We talk about him still. I encounter random people who have fond memories of him. He could be serious and silly, irritating but charming, and, despite his imperfections, he enjoyed being a father. He enjoyed our company, and we enjoyed his.
 

Because he had been around our lives so much, it is impossible to detach himself from our childhood and adulthood memories—and why should we do that? Tatay lived to see Manong, Sean and me graduate and become full grown adults. He would say, "You're getting taller than me!" He was deeply proud of us. He talked about us with his friends, who knew the landmarks in our careers and personal lives.

A deep regret I have is that I wasn’t able to lavish him with gifts and travels—things he would have loved. I was barely starting my career, was still in subspecialty training, and didn’t have much extra money. But he couldn't care less: what mattered to him was that we were around, safe and well.  

 

My brothers and I acknowledge that Tatay was the more fun parent. I remember dining with him in a Vietnamese restaurant where he ordered items in the menu he couldn’t pronounce. Nanay, on the other hand, is a kill joy; she knows that, especially when we make her try new food or experiences, which she refuses. She would say, “If your Tatay were alive, he would love this.” This—pertaining to food, trips, family occasions, and every day surprises and novelties that God lavishes upon our imperfect but blessed lives on earth. We live with a subterranean acceptance that we have lost him on this earthly coil but with the expectation that we will meet again soon.

It was hard to make me cry before 2018. But something moved the switch in my lacrimal glands after my experience with loss. For instance, an episode of Everwood, an American drama series in Netflix, can easily bring tears to my eyes these days. In that series, a world-famous neurosurgeon from New York leaves the city after his wife dies from a car crash, and brings his son and daughter to start a new life in Everwood, Colorado. I turn Everwood if I need a good cry. When I rewatch Kramer versus Kramer, the last film I saw with my father, I turn into a puddle.

But Father’s day inevitably turns my eyes to the ultimate father—God Himself. Tatay was but an imperfect version. God is infinitely good, merciful, and loving, and He dwells in and among us. I'm grateful for those precious years with my father.  

I need to stop writing because Paul is waiting for me to walk him around the neighborhood. Tatay would have loved Paul, as he once loved his dogs Jill and Rocky and Eve and Rocky II. He would have enjoyed being with us. But he is in a far more happier place with the Lord Jesus Christ. 

I can imagine him saying to us, as in the moments when he had wanted us to try something new, “Dali na kamo diri.”  

 If you're a father and if you have a father, Happy Father's Day! 

Putting my scanner to good use

The technicians told me my printer-scanner-copier is broken and is beyond repair. I tried printing some pages: an error 44 appeared on the screen. I had ordered another printer — an HP Laserjet, this time —and I was certain I was going to throw the three-in-one Brother device away when, of course, it proved itself somehow useful, still, It can copy and scan— both wirelessly and with an actual physical wire connected.

This led me to a resolution l am almost sure l will break sooner or later: I will put the scanner to good use.

I remembered the work of Jason Polan who died in 2020. I followed his blog, “Every Person In New York," where he posted drawings of people he met in the city. He aimed to draw every single person in New York — a quixotic quest that was also heartwarming. On the side bar of his unpretentious Blogspot is a note: "When the project is completed, we will all have a get together.”

I dreamt of using a scanner when I could not afford it yet. Part of that desire was to create something like Jason Polan’s website. But my scanner has largely been unused: instead of using the flatbed screen, I would simply take a picture with my phone and convert the file to a PDF.

Jason did not live to see his dream come true. Six years later, I am still reading his website, his small blog, written during the days when the World Wide Web was a much happier place.

Magnitude 7.8

I overheard over DZBB the news about the earthquake in GenSan. I was personal assistant to my mother, who periodically goes to Manila for medical reasons. I dismissed the news as just another earthquake. Intensity fives are common occurrences in Mindanao; they happen so frequently and quickly that people carry on with daily life indoors, the moving ground treated as a brief digression. When the ground movement stops, we’d say, “Kusog ang linog.” The comment on its strength may occasionally be replaced with a note about its duration. But this earthquake, which family and friends described as the worst in their lifetime, would be different.

When our Uber brought us back to the hotel, the family chat group was full of unread messages, mostly inquiries about everyone’s well being. Uncle Boboy’s fish were dizzy. Auntie Net’s bookshelves were toppled over. Auntie Bebet and Bicbic, who worked in Maasim, were looking for higher ground; a tsunami threat had been issued in Maasim, where they were based. Auntie Cecil called me to ask if I had news about Auntie Nene, my mother’s cousin staying in our house while we were away. She wasn’t picking her phone, Auntie Cecil said. She was worried that Auntie Nene could have tripped and fallen. I shared that minutes before, Neneng, who was also staying at home to accompany Auntie Nene at night, shared that some pots in the porch were broken, that one bookshelf fell, but that they were okay. And what about Paul? Our dog was so shaken he wouldn’t want to go for a walk. The thread of messages brought out a proverbial silver lining: at least, everyone in our immediate and extended family was safe.

One of my patients was scheduled to have her surgery that morning in GenSan. My patient was sent home, her surgery deferred. At least the earthquake happened before my patient was cut open. I learned that patients were evacuated out of the building. Tents were put up. The parking lot became temporary hospital wards. 

My Viber was awash with similar messages from hospital- and professional affiliations, asking me and my Region 12-based colleagues if we were safe and well. Pictures of damaged buildings and roads were shared. What struck me most was the actual video of Jollibee collapsing, the person taking the video  shaken as she held on to her phone, crying to God for help. The moving images gripped me: was someone inside when the building collapsed? Soon, the chat groups—our version of town hall meetings, really—would mobilize medical missions and financial aid. It amazes me, as I write this, that many quiet people's first impulse is to ask what they can do to help. Mister Rogers once said, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” They were “helpers.”

News reports would later show the devastation of the magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Socsksargen Region. A number of people are missing as I write this. I read a news report about a mother waiting for the authorities to recover her son’s body at SaveMore. The MSU College of Medicine building was badly hit; it might take a while for us to be able to use it. I wonder where we will hold classes now, or if we will shift to virtual lectures, as in the COVID era. Some coastal towns, like Glan, where we often vacation, struggle with water and electricity. The roads are impassable.

I rebooked our return flights to Davao. The GenSan airport was still closed yesterday. We didn’t bother asking Uncle Glen to pick us up from the Davao airport. Nanay and I took the Yellow Bus. We slept through the entire three-hour trip. We reached Lagao at 11:30 in the morning. We got our bags. Uncle Glen had an umbrella for us; it was raining. We dropped by their house in GenSan. Uncle showed me the plates and cups that survived the earthquake. A newly built wall in the neighborhood crashed. When I drove downtown, I could see the damage to infrastructure in the city, but life is returning to normal. In the background, the song, “This Is My Father’s World,” played in the car, a sobering and comforting reminder.

 

After an hour, we reached home—Marbel—and as soon as the gate was opened, Paul ran to welcome us. 

Reading

As I drive from home to my places of work, I wonder what the day has in store for me, what shape the next 24 hours will assume. The unpredictability of life, in whatever increments you measure it with, is simply a fact. You can start off with a benign, relaxed morning, then you face an exhausting afternoon. The reverse is true.

It’s pointless to meticulously plan a regular day—that much I have learned. But I find it a helpful exercise to imagine what my day is going to be like before I get up from bed. I list my tasks, obligations, responsibilities, and I plan for how I will book a full-body massage or finish a book chapter.

Few earthly things give me more joy than books. 

After I got home from an exhausting day at the clinic, I saw a pile of unopened back issues of the New Yorker, London Review of Books, and The Paris Review. I was so happy.

I'm currently reading Muriel Barbery's The Lives of Elves, a book I bought pre-pandemic with my meager fellowship allowance. This was in the Robinsons Forum alwong EDSA. The last time I checked the mall is no longer standing. I have fond memories of that mall. Barbery's prose captivates. It's a story of Maria and Clara, two girls with magical powers. Sheer, excellent storytelling.

 

I read Elena Ferrante's Frantumaglia and The Lying Life of Adults while I was in Naples. A surreal experience I highly recommend: reading a book set in a city while you are in the city. 

I also read the book while I was in Capri, waiting for the ferry to take Manong and me to Naples. 

The city was fascinating. The people were happy. The dogs were noisy and perpetually smiling. 

From the Castel Sant'Elmo, the islands of Ischia and Capri could be seen. 

I drank as much coffee as I could. 

I don't know what shape the days will take on, but at least I'm awake and palpitating. 

Opera and dinner

I’m told: write while it’s fresh—“it” referring to a memory of a person, place, or thing. The person who told that statement to me was referring particularly about travel. If you allow your memories to linger for longer than what is necessary, they can latch on to new meanings. Or you’ll find that writing becomes stale, bland, unable to capture the anxieties and excitement of the moment in question.

But there’s wisdom in waiting before writing things down. Certainly some impressions of a person, a place, or a time ripen to a greater level of wisdom, when one waits for the right time when the correct insight can be had, when a new sense or understanding descends from where these things come from. The cloud of memories, ripened by time, like fine wine.

I navigate both approaches to writing. But these days I need to force myself to put words onto the blank page. Writing is essentially a muscle that must be exercised—and often.

A week has gone by since I had returned to the real world: the endless daily tropical sunshine of my hometown, the patients and their cancers, and the household errands I’m obligated to perform because I am the only one left at home to become my mother’s personal assistant. But a week is not a very long time. There’s a certain freshness to the memories, of course, but unhurried insights have emerged, too.

So I’ll tell you about the food in Rome—a mere sampling—which I thoroughly enjoyed. Enjoy might be a narrow term, but as with most words, it is limited but sufficient to convey what I did feel. I eat for nourishment and also for pleasure: that much is clear. But what I don’t particularly understand is how people can both eat for nourishment, pleasure, and research. For such is the case with my brothers and friends, whose passion is to cook meals, discover ingredients, and spend time in the kitchen. The very essence of creation in the most gustatory of terms excites them.

I realize now that many of my close friends who are dear to me are passionate about eating. I can’t imagine traveling with someone who is indifferent to food. The food table allows conversations to flow, cultures to be experienced, and so on.

So Jef takes me and Manong to Romanè, and tells me all about the food we should try. The restaurant is unassuming, and you’d probably miss it if you passed Via Cipro without paying much attention. (I will return to it after three days in Naples; it's that good.) There are some places he had previously discovered, some he’s trying out for the first time. Google Maps offers a good starting point. It’s imperfect, certainly biased, but it’s a good place to start. Usually, he reads reviews, a summary of positive reactions of people who have experienced eating in those places. Then we trace the way to the restaurants or cafés, and order what feels right at the moment. It could be a dish that Jef had previously tried and wants to try again, or something he is curious about. With Jef and Manong, I don’t have to think about what I should order. I get overwhelmed with the plethora of options, up to the point of paralysis.

Jef tells me Italians typically only have a pastry and coffee for breakfast, but they indulge in a four-course meal for lunch and dinner.

We watch opera at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma. Our course we are underdressed, a fact we can’t possibly hide because the seats we’re given are in the armchairs of the theater: the first row, to the left of the stage. I struggle to understand what La Piccola Cubana is all about. Sure, it’s a vaudeville in five scenes by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, but it’s not the typical classical opera I’d previously seen. I should have done my reading in advance. I crane my neck to see the libretto, displayed on the wide LCD screen on top of the stage, while I struggle to understand the play. During intermission, I ask Jef what he thinks the play is about. His statement echoes my understanding about it: I have no clue. But I’m surprised that there are young people in the theater who pay attention. There are the elegant Italians, likely intellectuals or simply plain opera fans, who discuss the show in the lobby. 

We head out to a much subdued city at around 9 in the evening and look for a place for dinner.

We find the restaurant: Trattoria Vecchia-Roma. Jef orders antipasti — starters. There’s carciofi fritti — fried artichokes; fiori di zucca — friend zucchini flowers stuffed with mozzarella and anchovies; and melanzane alla parmigiana — along with tomato sauce and cheese. Then that should have been followed by a pasta. And then the segundo, and then dessert. But we are full, and it's getting late.