“Is this the little boy we carried?”
The above line is an adaptation from the song “Sunrise, Sunset” from the Broadway musical “Fiddler on the Roof”.
We just replaced the first-person pronoun I with a collective we.
This song aptly describes the interesting stage of actor Paolo Contis at the moment from being a baby to a little boy to an adolescent to a man to a dad.
I know the mom of Paolo.
Jean Tusi Contis was a fellow teacher at the Inter-Church Language School, a non-denominational language center for foreigners and Filipinos (especially the balikbayans) as well who wanted to learn and speak Filipino, its root lingua franca Tagalog. The school, which still stands in Heroes Hill, offers language learning in Filipino, English, Hiligaynon, Cebuano, etc. for missionaries of all denominations.
At the time, I and the late entertainment journalist Arthur Quinto were co-teachers, Jean was still single.
We had students from across the globe—Christians of all persuasions, Catholics, nuns, priests, missionaries, returning Filipinos who wanted to learn and relearn conversational Tagalog and the King’s Language.
One of our students was Renato Contis, a Catholic priest from Italy who was on his ecclesiastical mission in the Philippines. Renato was in a Tagalog class in various curriculum proficiency levels, which Jean and other teachers handled alternately.
It was a homey, casual, yet professional situation inside the classroom between the teacher and the students.
Love blossomed between Jean and Renato.
To get rid of complications, Renato left his vocation and married Jean.
One of their children was Paolo who, in either, Arthur and Jean’s other fellow teachers carried and cuddled when he was a cute baby especially when Tusi got out of the teaching profession and concentrated on her motherhood. It’s because it was Quinto and Jean who were bosom friends in and out of school.
When we vowed out of ILS, Arthur and I became full-fledged entertainment writers and Jean was initially a homebody while Renato as a layperson managed (later with valuable support from his wife as a corporate manager) a travel agency. I only hear stories about Jean from Quinto.
Jean and I crossed paths again when I was one of the production staff of Inday Badiday’s “See True”, an entertainment talk show where Paolo as a child star had a guest stint in the program.
I also got to write about the kiddo Contis when he had movies and TV shows.
Until Paolo became one of the Star Magic regular talents and later, when he moved into GMA Artists Center in GMA Network where he was groomed as a young actor, I would still write about him.
Now Paolo is already a dad, not only of one but of three—the two being his children with his first wife, Lian Paz, and the other one, Summer, with LJ Reyes.
Recently, he and LJ split up. No, it wasn’t because of Yen Santos who was Paolo’s leading lady in a Netflix live-streamed film. According to Contis’ talent manager, Lolit Solis, Paolo and LJ had outgrown the love for each other.
So sorry for Paolo and LJ, but we wish them the best of romantic luck the next time.