godmothers and teachers

We used to call my high school English teacher, "Godmother," as in kiss my ring and do me a favor I cannot refuse. It started out as a joke Sophomore year. It stuck. She ended up being a guiding force for me as a teenager, a relationship that would carry even to now as she entered my family's home a week ago, 12 years after being her student.

A friend of mine was talking to me about awarding and promoting blackbelts to the youth she worked with. She said this is not just something the teacher gives to the student, but it is a lifetime bond and committment. This made me start to think a lot about the teachers I have had in my life: my parents, my school teachers, my coaches, my friends, my mentors, my godparents. Although I may be out of touch with them, what they taught me has stayed throughout my life. These lessons are carried through my life reinforcing the bond.

We visited A&H, a pair we have asked to be our ninongs/primary sponsors in our wedding. It's the first time H has ever been a ninang for a wedding, so she's quite excited. We were there to show them the video and for the modern pamanhikan ritual, the nuts and bolts planning of the affair. H tells us, "ooh, now you get to call us ninang and ninong and we have new sets of kumares/kumpares." (The other sponsors we choose instantly become related to each other in a close kinship.) We teased A about how we would now kneel and kiss his ring when greeting him.

I have been blessed and lucky over my life to have come across my teachers. People who didn't just give me lessons on a blackboard, but also set their lives as examples for living. They go beyond the "thing" they taught. Because the "thing" they taught was really simply life and that "thing" was always just a vehicle or metaphor for it.

Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be a teacher. I remember that once we were to write on paper leaves what we wanted to be when we grew up. I wrote that I wanted to be a teacher. I remember watching teachers pick up my leaf and pass it around, getting a few giggles that one of the students wanted to be like them. At the time, I wondered what was so unusual about wanting to be a teacher. My grandmother had been a school teacher. So maybe it's why I've noticed the teachers in my life.

The two high school teachers at the party were indeed the ones who kickstarted my "writing" career, I suppose. I had written a group of poems, mostly for myself as a way to release. I had showed them the stack. They said I should submit them to the new literary publication at school. I told them that I wasn't really a writer, the poems weren't for public consumption and they weren't that good really. I tossed them into the trash. Despite my extracurricular activities in school, I could be ridiculously shy. Little did I know, they took them out of the trash and put them in the submissions stack. They published a few of them.

Looking back at the mentors in my life, they often knew when I wasn't applying myself as well as I should, or could see through the "front" that there was really something wrong that day, and they would always push/smack me around in a way so I could see the potential they saw in me. It's as if they knew there was something beyond what I would admit to myself. "You are a writer whether you admit to it or not." "You are better than you think you are." They have allowed me to become the person I am today and the person I hope to be in the future.

So here we are. The fiance and I are picking our primary sponsors and asking them if they would like to be a part of the celebration in a year. It hasn't been very hard to pick really. We just had to stop and look around. They were all around us, standing right here. We didn't have to look far. They are truly god's blessing. These are our elders. It's the least we can do in honoring them on one of the biggest days of our lives.

Before Eileen left the party, she tells me, "your Tuhan gives such a look! You're very lucky, you have a very good teacher." Of course, Tuhan overhears and tells her, "No, she's lucky, because you are a very good teacher."

They're both right. They both are. And I couldn't have been luckier.