OUR PATINTERO: REMEMBERING INDAY*

 

 

OUR PATINTERO: REMEMBERING INDAY*

(For my sister Brenda Teodora Casuga-Maglaya+ on her Birthday)

 

How do I best remember you, hermanita?

That father would call you princesita mia
after a swig of Domecq and sarsaparilla?

You were not one to get excited by these,

nor would you bat an eyelash; you’d jump
off his lap and call out to me: “ ‘manong! "

That was always my cue for another game

of patintero under the lone lamp on our
camino; your sad eyes lit up, you’d smile.

The smile you bravely left me when you

hugged me from your sick bed, was your
own smile, nobody else’s. I will not forget.
 

---Albert B. Casuga

Revised, June 26, 2014

 

*Brenda Teodora B. Casuga-Maglaya, is a younger sister, who was also my best childhood friend. She would have been 70 today, June 26, 2014. She died in her middle 40's, a few months earlier than her husband Renato Maglaya while she took care of him during his final year.