Beauty Never Lost

By: Edwin G Gonzales

                                                  

More than tradition, not going back to my town during holy week adds to my increasing list of unfulfilled personal promises.  Who among us true bulusanons did not promise to return or visit the town that keeps our treasured childhood secrets and experiences - a town so simple still up to now? Only hypocrites.

 

I never relented, at least on my birthday. But circumstances were as unrelenting. The shop that promised a week repair of my second hand vehicle could only do so much of its promise. Heavy downpours complemented. Just the same, I bore to defy time in the hope that my birthday wish could come true. I wish to wake up on May 2 on the place I first called home. I probably never understood Divine intervention. My wish, not anymore.  Not yet. 

 

Forget about that wish. Perhaps as a consolation, as I took the road from Irosin to Bulusan, the same narrow asphalted road, I was reminded of our seemingly endless “baraklay” after a day long picnic at Masacrot Spring during high school days. At times, as if incomplete day, not contented, we found ourselves bracing and overtaking with one another in circling the circumferential road of the ever majestic and serene Bulusan Lake. How I’d wished we video-taped all these pieces of evidence showcasing the physical endurance brought about by thing called youth. By now I would have replayed them for nth times.

 

As soldiers only fade away and never grow old, my classmates grow older but fade away, never! Every time we get together again, the old group intensity is always there. There may be fewer in them but not in anecdotes of their individual struggles in life.  Dancalan Beach witnessed this one again as we tried to reconfirm its charm. I have yet to visit a beach with sand as white as Dancalan’s.

 

Masacrot Spring again asserted its magic. I couldn’t resist visiting it. I tasted once again its medicinal water. This time however, I was with the olds of our place in Dapdap. These are the once not so old but so nice people who then indulged me with daily unsolicited but really useful guidance in life handed to them by their olds when they too, were still young.    

 

The low tide scenery at sea on one mid day was just as panoramic as before. Although fewer town folks are now dependent on the “hubasan” for their livelihood, scores are still mesmerized by the cleanliness of our sea water that they could not resist swimming and kids frolicking on the shore under the happy sun. 

 

Bulusan, magayonon ka pa man gihapon para sa ako! Pirmi!