Ever been asked “What’s your favorite month?” And you surprise yourself by saying March? It may be a knee-jerk reaction but a sincere response.
It wouldn’t matter if you came up with March with its Lenten season, Panagbenga, PMA Homecoming, Holy Week or whatsammater. Notwithstanding, you picked March since deep in you, something is murmuring, “It’s summer time.”
Ingrained in you since a youngster and now you’re a grownup, it’s still there, a subconscious memory of rain, sunshine, burst of green and flowers abloom. You have a familiar conviction a cycle of life of the year’s part has again started, timelessly snared by gut feeling.
You are in Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) or Region 1, and it strikes you that March rains still tiptoe, albeit subdued, each summer raindrop waiting courteously until its predecessor reaches soil then it, too, hits the ground running.
Kids of yesteryears remember summer as time for devil-may-care, frolic, sunburned noses, skinned shins, swimming and lice on hair. Optimists, children are, they have more fun in summer.
Generally, for everybody, summer time transmits a sensibility of sentiment and eagerness that can break down skepticism.
Summer inspires flowers and the blushing roses at Barangay Bahong, La Trinidad, and other areas in Benguet, to bloom more vigorously and cicadas to chirp lustily as night creeps in. All the more inspiring flower gardeners to croon their popular ditty, “Sabong ni Bahong.”
Love is to the heart, what summer is to farmers who know it’s time to reap, reseed, replant weed, irrigate and re-weed. For farmers, whose jobs are never done, march, or weeds march faster to cover farms.
Single adults pine for future lifetime partners. For the ladies, oh, how they wish what good is summer’s warmth if it’s bereft of the smile of suitors to give them company.
Summer comes to mind of an Ilocano buddy who fell in love, told his ma about it. He brought over to their house four women-friends for his ma to guess among them the one he wanted to wed that summer. His mother agreed.
After they left, he asked, “Who among them will I marry?”
His mother said, “The one seated on the left.” His son, surprised, asked, “How did you know?” His mother curtly answered, “Because I don’t like her.”
Summer wedding plans may not prosper for some, like that buddy. The brewing animosity between a mother and daughter-in-law soured his summer and lamented then he might as well be married during typhoon.
Summer can also be time for unacceptable opinion. There was this man of the Scriptures who, whenever he delivered sermons, ended up by saying, “Better to give than to receive.”
He insisted the church where he was assigned was small. The congregation vigorously disputed this. One day, the preacher boomed, “We must build a bigger church this summer when it’s a good time to construct. The good news is that money for its construction is found in your pockets. Remember! It is better to give than to receive.”
Still, despite summer’s other side of amusing inclinations, it holds warm reception even for our olds, even if it bugs them sometimes. Summer, with its gaiety, can play tricks on elders’ memory.
Probably, it’s this frivolous attitude we have towards it that makes summer for people to forget- yet forgive. Summer has that capacity for being able to lift up marital discourse to stronger friendship.
There was this Cordilleran elder couple who sold their cabbage produce at La Trinidad Trading Post one early morning long ago. After loading up on house supplies, they partook of breakfast then headed home to Madaymen.
Halfway, the wife told her husband they needed to return to the Trading Post restaurant since she forgot her bag. This made her husband irate who uttered nasty remarks.
He drove their vegetable pick-up back to the restaurant. As his wife clambered down, he sheepishly said, “By the way, would you mind retrieving my cowboy hat I forgot and left at the restaurant counter. And I’m sorry for what I’ve said awhile ago.”
Summer, for those looking for job, can be time to shut up if one can’t understand what he utters.
Such reminds one acquaintance who swore to himself last summer he’ll land a job no matter what the cost is.
Upon interview, the interviewer reminded him they needed someone who is responsible.
The interviewee immediately replied, “Yes, yes, I’m the one you need. Because at my last job, whenever something went wrong, they said I was the one responsible.”
So, dance then in summer, wear wild sunflowers and lie sometimes in the grass and watch the clouds float across the sky or sit underneath the trees. By no means it’s not a waste of time, but an opportunity for idle reflection.
Many say if a summer opportunity comes along, they luckily will be prepared for it, for it comes and passes only once every year. Or, it may not come at all.
While in reflecting, you may want to drink and give a toast to summer, with the thought, “here’s to summer. May it always return in our time.”