True Love Knows No Bounds

Believe it or not, our love story suffices to be a romantic fairy tale – me being a former nearly-to-be-ordained priest and my wife as an ex-future nun; me as whence a fresh-from-the-seminary college instructor and my wife being my former student in Spanish 4n class.

That our love story is founded on the current love month has two proofs: one, as I write this piece, today, February 12, is my wife’s birthday (fact is, at 5:00 AM today, I readily rose from bed, fancied up a quick birthday kiss for my wife, and managed writing this piece); two, February it was almost 36 years ago when a fateful romantic incident triggered and hastened our getting married too soon.

But let me recall first how I met my wife.

After going out of the seminary, I got immediately into college teaching. On my first day of work, ostensibly fresh and “naive” to the outside world, I went to the classroom ahead of time.

There was only one student, a lady, sitting in the front row. After asking her if she was enrolled in my class and noticing that there was no chalk for the board, I courteously asked her if she could find a chalk for me while waiting for the other students.

On that first moment of encountering her, I already felt something positively different, a sort of liking her.

On another occasion, a month or two later, I found myself stranded at the school’s facade waiting for the rain to subside and get a ride home.

Suddenly, this same student of mine (now my wife) appeared offering her umbrella.

This time I was certain that I like her. I later knew that, like me who had just gotten out of the seminary, she too had spent two years of aspirancy in a sisters’ convent and was just out to finish her last year in college, then supposedly go back to the convent.

Then came that fateful day in February – yes, still within that same semester while she was yet my student.

On one afternoon, after getting out from my class, I invited her to secretly ride on my motorcycle for a fast date to a bay shore some 7 kilometers away from the school.

She agreed on one condition: that she should be brought home (she was staying at her lolo’s residence) before her 6:00 PM curfew time – otherwise, she’ll be “punished” by her strict lolo who was then a city councillor. “Ok, that’s good enough,” I muttered, being cautious as well that others, especially from the school, might see us going out together.

Thus we went and found ourselves sitting together on a not-so-conspicuous portion of the bay shore, staring at bay’s horizon, whispering “sweet but immortal nothings”, and becoming oblivious of time.

Mind you, I find it now quizzically amusing to recall that at that moment I didn’t find the nerve even just to kiss her – that I truly swear!

Then at around 5:30 PM, we started our way taking her home – to her lolo’s residence.

But, alas, fateful as it seemed, my motorcycle conked out along the way and we had a hard time looking for a repair shop – until we reached a friend’s house and I decided just to leave my motorcycle and instead take a public ride to take her home.

But as it was already past 7 PM and already beyond her lolo’s mandated curfew time, she started fretting out saying, “Hindi ako uuwi, papatayin ako ni lolo...umuwi ka na lang. Ako na bahala sa sarili ko.” I retorted, “What? I can’t simply leave you without taking you to your residence. O God, what shall we do now?”

Sensing that she was obviously too afraid of her lolo and eager as I was of taking her to her residence by all means, I decided to bring her to our parish priest, with whom I pleaded to accompany us to her lolo’s residence.

The focal question fielded to me by my parish priest before agreeing to accompany us was: “Bob, did you touch her?” And to which I honestly answered, “No.”

So, riding on our parish priest’s car, we went cruising to her lolo’s residence – it was already past 9:00 in the evening.

Along the way, we met a colleague College instructor of mine, a lawyer, who was also on his car – and I asked him too to join us to my wife’s councillor lolo.

And thus, there we – I and wife, my parish priest, and my lawyer colleague – were in front of her fearsome lolo, who was clad in a night robe (and i suspected that the bulging tuck on his waist was a gun).

Anyway, to cut the story short, after all the nerve-racking verbal exchange – my parish priest’s intercessory pleading, my couched apologies while standing behind my parish priest, the biting berating of her lolo, and my wife’s unabated crying – she was back home.

Then I and my parish priest headed back to the parish convent. My parish priest sternly warned me: “Bob, I took the cudgels of interceding for you on that girl because I know you and I trust you.

Remember, you are on a regency period and you are supposed to go back to the seminary by next school year, with my recommendation.

Think carefully, if you decide to continue your relationship – if you have – with that girl, then you can freely leave and not see me again.”

That whole night, at my room in the parish convent, I never slept. I was in a wrenching dilemma whether to return back to the seminary or choose her.

I knew too well that I was not ready yet to go back to the seminary – parang may kulang pa na hinahanap ko.

At the same time, I also knew that I wasn’t prepared yet to get married. But I knew as well that I would readily lose contact with her after her lolo said during the night’s confrontation that she’ll be sent back home to Davao by the following month at the semester’s end.

This, I deeply felt, I cannot afford to happen – I simply did not want to lose her!

Thus, by dawn of the following day, i have already crafted my life-turning decision: I chose her.

And barely over two months thereafter, we embarked on the greatest adventure of our life: we eloped! But this would call for another story on this column.

Now, after almost 36 years of our marriage, with successful grown up children (who are also all ex-seminarians), I have come to realize that indeed “true love knows no bounds”, with the following insights.

One, love knows no bounds in a sense that it is truly indiscriminating and unforeseeable. Indiscriminating, that it knows no boundaries (between students and teachers); and unforeseeable, that it comes in the most unexpected time, place or occasion – resonant to Kim Carnes’ classic song, “Love comes from unexpected places.”

Everybody is equal before the bar of love; it is the ultimate equalizer.

Two, looking back to our long years of marriage, I reckon that it’s the struggles, sacrifices or “thornful experiences” that we have had, more than the happy or “rosy moments”, that have made our love even stronger over time.

Three, marriage, just like priesthood, entails total commitment or self-giving. Thus, from the moment I married my wife, I had to be dead certain that it has to be “till death do we part” or to use the colloquial expression, “may forever!”

This certainty of oneself, of “true love”, before entering marriage can be an assurance of preparedness in fighting against all forms of temptations and challenges that are bound to shake your marital vows.

In closing, I find the following quote from an anonymous source, which I came across online, indeed refreshing and meaningful: “Love knows no boundaries, no distance, no barriers. It has the sole intention of bringing people together to a time called FOREVER.”

A love-full Valentine’s Day!