Hospitals and Classrooms

Nothing quite reminds us that we’re part of a bigger whole--our family--like medical emergencies. Late last week, a close relative went through a serious one, which sent most of us thinking about the consequences. How significantly would this unforeseen event affect her, and us?

Work schedules had to change; some of us had to visit or stay with her. When the emergency was happening, I thought of her a lot, but I did suppress signs of being bothered when I did an interview that day. The family was amazed and thankful that she revived moments after flatlining, and eventually felt relieved that she’s on the road to recovery.

Hospital stays can be dreadfully dull. She wanted to leave when she felt a little better. I was confined a few times myself when I was a kid. Hospitals make me uneasy now for different reasons, but that’s just something I have to get over when I need to go to one. I’m glad that she felt a little happy when I showed up, though.

Anyway, the events of the past few days made me think about hope, and the oft-unspoken rapport between loved ones. I took a break from work because my mind was just too busy. I listened to music, channel-surfed and contacted people. One particular conversation with my friend John didn’t really center on the recent medical situation, but led instead to our long-forgotten elementary classrooms.

We found out that we had similar “open” classrooms, in that all sections in one level were contained into a one-storey building. Where I studied, chalkboards with wheels, or shelves and wooden lockers, divided the big area into several rooms. Sometimes, we could hear the activities of the sections nearest ours, but it was easy to get accustomed to.

The center part was an open teacher’s lounge. At the end of each hour, a teacher would ring a handheld bell, not unlike an ice cream vendor’s or an altar boy’s, and signal all of us to prepare for the next subject or leave when it was 3:00. It was also used once by a teacher to call fellow teachers after classes, signaling them that she carried the latest magazines that covered the Sharon Cuneta-Gabby Concepcion wedding.

I remember one time when a batchmate, an attention-deprived boy, wandered past the teacher’s lounge and near our section. He was playing with clay, and noticed that some students from our section were bored and just staring at him. His exhibitionist tendency surfaced; he shaped the clay into a male organ--uncircumcised--held it in front of his crotch, and sure enough, he got some giggles. I wonder what happened to that kid.

The conversation led to Religion class. John and I found ourselves reciting “Hail Holy Queen” at the same time, without missing any word. “To you do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to you do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.” Man, we can’t relate to it now at all. We were laughing at how strange it was to have that stuck somewhere in our brains, many decades later.

I suppose that’s the kind of week it’s been. Many connections to old memories are quite intact. The random things from the past remind us how our minds can retrieve specific information, which may not always be essential.

And events in the present also remind us that there is a need to preserve some old connections, to be there for people who’ve been there for us.