Conversations between brothers

It’s always fun listening to conversations between my father and my uncles whenever we visit our relatives in Batangas. Just like normal siblings, they talk about each other a lot, especially the memories of their childhood. My youngest uncle, Tito Renato, is the designated joker. He possesses an earthy type of humor and is truly outrageous. He often tells stories on how he was bullied by my oldest uncle, Tito Ding, into doing more work, even though he was as thin as a rail and the youngest of the brothers. Then, there are stories about my father, the funniest of which are the inter-barangay basketball game where they lost 26-24 in double overtime, wherein he describes my father as one of the star players of their team (and my father did have a good game when he was younger, as evidenced by the multitude of basketball jerseys he wore as a player and coach during his younger days, most of which are now worn by my youngest brother, the most athletic among us) and the time my father tried boxing (my father always said that he fought only 5 times, with a record of 0 wins, 3 losses and 2 draws). Honestly, the way Tito Renato tells stories can really make anyone crack up with laughter, be it about himself or about other people.

It was only last week, after our latest visit in Batangas (to commemorate my grandfather’s 1st death anniversary) that I realized the value of the memories that my father and his brothers shared through their stories. Now, as I am writing this, I’m thinking of recording some of those stories, albeit discreetly, then transcribe it, so that I can save those stories for posterity.

People of different generations always have different stories to tell about themselves. And I felt a touch of envy as I thought about the conversations that my father had with his brothers because my brothers and I don’t have anything that can compare with what my father and his brothers had. But as my mother pointed out, they lived in a different milieu from us, so their experiences and our experiences may not even be comparable. Perhaps she’s right. Given time, me and my brothers’ childhood memories may be able to approximate the stories my father and uncles have, and maybe one of our children would have been thinking the same thoughts as I do now, of enjoying listening to the conversations of his father and his brothers and even recording it for posterity.

(written: 1306H 28 Sep 2005)