Although my teaching years have been officially ended, I want my last essay for this book to be about teaching. Later today I will be having lunch with my regular text mate from Iloilo, a former student of mine. Here are a few reasons for our bonding. We are both May born; our pragmatic philosophy about money is a strong factor for a meeting of minds. Our first born children (although I only have one against her six) belong to the same generation; we exchange notes on parenting. She is definitely a concerned parent as opposed to my now-hovering now-surrendered style. Neither of us is a fashion plate; we are minimalists! In my case I have stopped wearing jewelry except for my wristwatch for practicality. I don’t want to lose precious pieces again after I dropped one earring in Singapore. For a while I couldn’t forgive myself for losing the earring. After all I have been habitually checking on both ears. That year in 2007 I must have been so engrossed with the design of a Chinese-Vietnamese restaurant. I failed to check my earlobes before alighting from the cab. I suspect I must have brushed off one earring to struggle out of the seatbelt. I always get entangled.Although there is a gap of at least ten years between my text mate, Delia, and myself, we are now both retired. I refuse to be labeled as a housewife; Delia manages her home but she is neither a housewife. I can stay at home in the condo for days on ends but not necessarily doing housework. I will go crazy if I pay attention to the extremely delicate white tiles of the condo; even if I wipe clean the stains, the moment I return from the bedrooms there are new marks on the “sacred” tiles.

Both of us no longer go to a specific office but the world has become our office. Delia is involved in her parish. My husband has moved from active parish work to a wider sphere serving the Church. I am still a churchgoer but to remain healthy I have been on leave for a long, long time from the mainstream Church work.

I prefer to serve the people, regardless of religion, inside and outside Harrison Plaza and needless to say the employees of CBRE at Grand Tower I who are my family. This includes the maintenance people. The delivery component is special to me, not only because we depend on them for our food and clothing. I also feel responsible for the guards at our parking lot and for Raffy a pseudo-entrepreneur who lives just outside the parking lot.

Raffy’s brand of social concern fascinates me. He lives inside his shoe repair “cariton” yet he was able to shelter two women from the province when they had nowhere to stay some months back. I have to confess Emil and I shared malicious jokes about this with the guard of the parking lot.

Lunch with my text mate turned out to be a “teaching” episode with Delia and her children whose ages ranged from twenty one to thirty. We talked about life, religion, work, health etc. It was a kind of Juanita Brown conversation. What warmed my heart were the honesty and the free flowing conversation across the generations. I attribute this to the comfortable relationship between myself and my former student and the type of parenting she has been using on her children. She commented that it has never been easy raising her six children but her attitude in life has seen her through.

The session has convinced me that to raise a child like our daughter is just as soulful as raising six. Delia and I agreed it has to start from birth. I would push it to the prenatal stage. And it doesn’t take a village a la Hillary Clinton to raise a child. It needs something more proximate. The symbiotic relationships involved in raising each child require a stable union. It needs both parents: a father and a mother to go through the daily routine to grow with both the joys and the challenges of parenting which is the first teaching job.

In the course of the lunch Delia and I touched on a poignant insight. After years of loving nurturing, parents have to graciously allow their grown-up children to make choices. Like god parents must accept without grudges, without resentments the thought-of decisions of children especially when such decisions are not according to parental dreams and plans. At times like this God is supreme; he can make right what seems hopeless.

I teach with an irreverent voice but my teachings are heartfelt. I teach what I have learned the hard way. I pray those who understand will add their own erudition if only to lessen the struggles and sufferings in life.  Delia has an apt statement: “Forever a teacher”.