| When a House Folds Up |
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A house folds up when something of great magnitude happens like when a big number of its inhabitants cannot contain their roaring laughter; or when a big calamity falls upon that house. The whole house collapses! Pandemonium breaks loose. Fear seizes everyone by the neck, as he rushes to wherever his instinct tells him there may be a promise of safety. Scream decibels, usually coming from women and children, compete with the crashing noise of sections of the house falling apart one after the other. In this scenario of utter confusion and fear, the father and the mother of the house invariably emerge to placate fear, to reface confusion with reason, and to seek a way out of death threat to a haven of safety. This scenario may be a little cinematic and hyperbolic when you try to compare it with what happened to the town of Paniqui during the recent typhoon. But when I read through the report of Mrs. Anna Varona-Rivilla on the expanse of the floods, the plight of poor families seeking a temporary shelter in evacuation centers, the mobilization of people and resources to address the immediate needs of scattered communities in the face of a continuing natural calamity, all these happening under a cloak of general uncertainty and precariousness, I see the father and the mother of the beleaguered town emerging to placate fear among the people, to reface their confusion with reason, and to seek a way out of harm’s way to a haven of safety.Based on the same report of Mrs. Rivilla, there were both known and unknown personalities who selflessly gave their time and resources to help alleviate the affliction of those who had to leave their homes and settle temporarily in evacuation centers. This is a gesture that has always been replicated in the history of our Christian nation during most trying times, and we Filipinos have all the reasons to be proud of it. But the visible presence of the leader of the town as he orchestrates the various efforts to handle a calamitous situation can spell the difference. A soft nerve in my body was hit when I read Mayor Rivilla catnapping on a lawanit bench in his office after a very long day of wading through the floods and attending to millions of concerns of his constituents. The same goes for his wife when she whisks herself from one barangay to the next, in what mode of transportation I don’t know, to her laptop as she updates her news reporting, to an unscheduled trip to Manila to arrange for more relief goods, and back to Paniqui for more action. The Mayor and his wife have been violating the chronological order in the universe when they caused things normally done daytime to be done nighttime and vice versa. When we break standard operating procedures as dictated by normal times, then we are effectively facing up to the challenges of abnormal times.
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