Elixir

by James O. Sy, PhD

  Once free, we could fully and wholeheartedly commit to our noble and true calling: That we came into existence in this physical world to make it a better place.

  We are not born into this world to be consumers and exploiters of Earth’s finite resources; rather, we are to become warriors. A group of hardworking, dedicated foot soldiers tasked to be used as instruments, as deliverers of God’s unconditional love, overflowing and bountiful blessings, limitless grace, inexhaustible compassion, and grandiose magnanimity. In and through these committed workers, the unearned grace and benevolent blessings freely given by the Almighty are to be manifested.

  It was for this reason why Jake ran, literally and figuratively, from his weird, possibly asylum-bound dad. No way would he want to be a foot soldier.

  It truly infuriated his dad even more when, after Jerry‘s three-hour, one-on-one long proselytizing, JT sarcastically asked, “Can I be a five-star general instead?”

  CHAPTER 4

  SURPRISE WAITING AT THE DOOR

  Afew steps from his apartment, JT suddenly started to feel an overwhelming dizziness. Much to his astonishment, he sensed that he was being untethered from the pull of gravity, allowing him to float thirteen inches above the floor. Not only that, he could see the walls starting to buckle and all the objects in his line of sight beginning to swirl around him—slowly at first, then increasing at a sickening pace.

  He had a very hazy recollection of events after that, but he distinctly remembered seeing a younger version of himself strapped to a 2.5 feet × 7 feet stainless steel table with strange, menacing humanoids intently looking down at him.

  He must have blacked out after that, because a blank mental picture was what he kept getting no matter how hard he tried to recall. When he came to, he found himself sprawled face down on the old and stinky carpet of his room, his face partially caked with a semi-solid, slimy material that was rose gold in color. He could only surmise that this odious, foul-smelling slime must have drooled out from his mouth while he was knocked out, or that he had vomited the nasty stuff.

  Much to his chagrin, the disgusting, gooey slime also soiled the pricey Lacoste shirt that his mother had recently gifted him. He hurriedly got up, intent on trying to wash off all the potentially noxious stuff that was stubbornly clinging and sullying his favorite polo.

  But no matter how focused and doggedly determined his efforts were of ridding his shirt of the stains, they proved futile. He now felt totally overwhelmed by this growing stack of hapless occurrences: the broken window glass of his smart phone; missing his chemistry class (as a consequence, an extra chore of having to find a classmate to borrow notes of the missed lecture); the unfortunate collision with that inexperienced, careless skateboarder; the still-throbbing, painful cut on his left leg; the arduous (and most probably pointless) chore of removing the stains off the carpet; the possibility of having to get rid of his favorite shirt; and the unpleasantness of going to the apartment manager to own up to and apologize for the damage he did on the elevator doors.

  And he still had to think of ways to conjure up the money to pay for the destroyed elevator doors, not to mention the unpleasant necessity of having to confess to his mom if he couldn’t secure the funds to pay up by himself. These thoughts went on and on in his mind.

  Just when Jake thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse, a “…Jingle bells, jingle bells…” bit from a familiar Christmas song started playing from the Honeywell musical door chime. He painstakingly forced his very tired and aching body out of the couch. With a cautious dose of trepidation, he delicately limped to the door. His sixth sense, foreboding an impending doom, proved him right.

  There, through the peephole, he saw to his horror, his mommy dearest, patiently waiting to be let in. The only thought that crossed his mind as he debated whether to hide under his bed or to pretend that nobody was home was, I‘m DEAD.

  Sardonically, a follow-up thought registered, Ask for cremation, not burial.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE DOTING MOTHER, MARY

  With visions of a terrified man, a rope tied around his neck, and helplessly awaiting his execution (although he would have preferred the swift, precise cut of a guillotine), JT resignedly unbolted the door chain and opened the door. His mother briskly walked past him and went straight to the lounge room. He meekly followed, warily settling his bone-tired, pain-racked body into his favorite beige-colored leather chair.

  With mouth wide agape and a very worried, shocked expression registering on her blemish-free, porcelain-smooth exquisite face, Mary tried to speak, but all that came out were guttural, indecipherable sounds. The heart-breaking and pitiful image of her “baby” caused her to simultaneously bursts into tears and emit howls of deep despair. But being the profusely loving “mother hen” that she is, Mary immediately snapped out of her appalled state.

  First, she helped JT out of his favorite, irreversibly stained Lacoste shirt. Then, she hurriedly went to the drawer to get a clean T-shirt and a washcloth, moistening the cloth with warm water. She gently and soothingly wiped his face, her deep love for him manifested by the tender touch in which she meticulously cleaned his face.

  Jake trembled in helpless anxiety, for he knew the unpleasantness of the next thing his mom would do. Her handsome “bambino” (JT would forever be her “bundle of joy,” possibly even when he got to be in his forties) was ticklish. Touch his neck area, feet, lower part of both ribs, or his underarms, and he would break into uncontrollable bouts of laughter.

  It was funny when he was a young boy. His grandma loved the way he burst into hysterical yet joyful fits of giggling whenever she tickled the soles of his feet. But he found it extremely annoying nowadays when someone tried to tickle him. He even quarreled with his BFF (best female friend) when she sneakily approached him from behind to tickle him.

  Even though his mother is now approaching forty-three, her delicate and fine, exquisite features are still evident. Her face seemed untouched by the inescapable ravages of aging. Her delicate countenance is as smooth as the finest china porcelain, unblemished and nary any evidence of crow’s feet. The silky smoothness of her elegantly radiant skin gave it a soft tenderness and suppleness. Her face and skin could be a walking advertisement for a cosmetic company (move aside, Cindy Crawford!). And the wonder of it all is that she hated applying cosmetics on her skin and face. She claimed to suffer allergies whenever she applied make-up.

  For the majority of people, the unstoppable forward march of time breaks, stiffens, damages the collagens and the elastin fibers, causing these to lose their elasticity, as a result: wrinkles, crow’s feet, and aging lines start to appear around the age of late thirties or early forties.

  Worse, the oil glands start decreasing in size, making the skin dry, the unattractive consequence of which is that many end up with broken, damaged, or bruised skin.

  But due to a combination of a fortunate quirk of nature, a serendipitous assist from good genes, and an application of several blobs of 100% preservative-free, fresh virgin coconut oil thrice a week, her velvety, age-defying alabaster skin remained amazingly pliant and unwrinkled, which would be more surprising if people knew the complex story of her sad, hard life.

  CHAPTER 6

  ANCESTRY

  Mary’s father is an ethnic Chinese who was born in Fujian, a southeastern coastal province of mainland China. The dispersion of some of these mainland Chinese overseas occurred in two distinct periods and for different political and economic reasons.

  The furious pace of the first wave of Chinese migration happened from the early 1840s, tapering to a slower pace at around the 1890s. This movement both had a human trafficking and an economic component to it.

  The forced migration of these mostly dirt-poor Chinese was due to the “coolie” (loosely translated to mean laborer) trade. It was at a time when the last dynasty of China, the Qin Empire, was starting to crumble and experiencing the beginning of its end. British and American merchants were using the for
ced repatriation of Chinese “dogs” (how these poor souls were sometimes referred to then) as a source of cheap labor.

  The British businessmen were using these destitute laborers as workers in sugar plantations scattered around their colonies, or to work mining guano (an excrement of seabirds and bats that is a good source of fertilizer since it is rich in nitrogen, potassium, and phosphates) in places like Cuba and Peru. The Americans, on the other hand, got those impoverished Chinese (mostly from the South China province of Guangdong) to build the first transcontinental railroad.

  Another group of Chinese also went overseas, but for economic reasons. The discovery of gold in California in the late 1840s attracted voluntary expatriation of poverty-stricken Chinese looking to escape from famine, natural disasters, overpopulation, land shortages, and the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864).

  The diaspora of some Chinese families during the second wave of overseas migration happened due to political reasons.

  The Chinese Civil War (1927-1950) was happening, the forces of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek were battling the Communist forces led by Mao Zedong (devotedly called Chairman Mao by his followers).

  The intense pace of this wave reached its peak when the victory of the Communist forces was at hand (1949). Many were fleeing because of personal safety concerns and the strong disdain or aversion of living under a Communist regime. Quite a few of these freedom-loving Chinese, along with the remnants of a defeated Kuomintang army, emigrated to the neighboring island of Taiwan. The rest of these poor souls, unwilling to even entertain the idea of living under a new and more oppressive leadership, fled to Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines, and so on.

  Mary’s father, Vicente Sy (probably a name adopted as a way of assimilating to the new country), was one of those who fled from the newly installed Communist regime. He ended up in Manila, the capital of the Philippines, during the late 1940s. But because of his stubbornness and initial reluctance to uproot himself and move to a foreign country, he waited until the last moment to flee. The sad consequence of his poor planning was that he landed with literally only the clothes on his back and nary a penny in his pocket.

  He had a hard time adopting to this new country, since he only knew how to speak Fookien, a Chinese dialect, while the natives spoke Tagalog. Worse, he didn’t know anybody; neither did he have any relatives. As a consequence, he barely had food to eat. He considered himself fortunate when, one day, he bumped into a kindly fellow Chinese, who hired him to work as a janitor in the businessman’s handicraft factory.

  Vicente was thankful for having free lodging, albeit he slept on the floor of the factory, and of being nourished by three square meals daily.

  Unfortunately, the handicraft business was in its early nascent phase, and so he was paid intermittently. He was fine with his situation for the first few months, but after eight months, when his financial predicament didn’t improve, he decided to take his chance and purchased a one-way ticket to the southern Philippines. As luck would have it, he chanced upon a province-mate from good old China.

  The kindly old man need workers in his expanding copra (dried coconut meat from which coconut oil are extracted) business, and was too happy to have a fellow Fujianese (what Chinese people from Fujian are called) working for him. Vicente took the opportunity to showcase his hardworking, efficient, dependable, and trustworthy traits.

  The old man was very impressed, and not wanting to lose such a useful and industrious worker, he made Vicente a son-in-law by marrying him off to one of his daughters, Trinidad.

  The union between Vicente and Trinidad produced a brood of six girls and one son: Felicia (the eldest, also known as Fely); Reginald (the only male, nicknamed Reggie); Anastasia (the girl who fantasized of becoming an immensely wealthy, philanthropic Asian female equivalent of Donald Trump, fondly called Ana); Maria Lourdes (JT’s mom, preferred to be called Mary, but the other sisters kept calling her Lourdes just to irritate her); Sharon (whose goal was to become a caring and compassionate nurse); Melinda (also known as Mely, the fun-loving, free-spirited, no-care-in the-world sister); and Christine (the youngest, whom they called Christy, the sole sibling who caught the religious fervor and dreams of becoming a female pastor).

  Life was good for every one of the Sy bunch. Enteng (the term of endearment that Trinidad called her husband) was made a partner in the copra business, and his newly-minted upper-middle-class status accorded him the financial resources to provide for his family, having all of them enjoy the trappings of wealth: most expensive private education, legions of subservient maids, chauffeured rides, lavishly grand birthday parties, and, on special occasions, family trips to Disneyland and the Universal Studios.

  But no one ever knows what fate has in store for each of us: was rich and now poor; was poor and now rich; was alive, kicking, and enjoying life to the fullest, now dying in bed; was healthy and now stricken with cancer; the list goes on.

  Such is the fickleness of human existence. Here one day and gone the next. The uncertainty and the terminus of this temporal sojourn is only known by the Omniscient Creator. The fleeting time we have in this brief physical incarnation is not ours to own—leased to us not for self-centered, greedy existence, but to hopefully be used for the benefit and greater good of all of humanity.

  What happened next completely shattered the idyllic tranquility that the Sy family was enjoying immensely.

  CHAPTER 7

  GENESIS OF A MOTHER HEN

  People react to the loss of a beloved all too differently. An extreme example of undying devotion and refusal to let go, of reaction to the sorrowful loss of a loved one, is narrated in the following two paragraphs. This is only used to illustrate, and has no relevance to the story.

  A ninety-five-year old widower, unable to let go and accept the fact that his wife of fifty-five years, had passed away. Without remiss and always oh-so-punctual at precisely 7:00 am, he would rouse himself, meticulously groom himself, put on his Sunday best clothes, and beg his retired daughter to drive him to the immaculate grounds of the Rose Hills cemetery in Whittier. Once driven to the tomb where the remains of his beloved wife lay, he would gently place the very fragrant and pretty bouquet of flowers at the foot of her tombstone. None of those cheap flower arrangements, either. It was an elegant and artistically-arranged medley featuring cream lilies; ruby-red, large-headed roses; purple lisianthus; and ivory, large-headed roses tied together with asparagus fern, steel grass, and eucalyptus, all wrapped and tied with a ribbon.

  He would start by greeting his wife lovingly, then mournfully admonishing her for leaving him alone. In his hour-long soliloquy, he would alternately berate his deceased wife for having the audacity to abandon him, alone in this physical world; then revealing his deep longing, his resultant overpowering feeling of loneliness; and, finally, his eager anticipation of their eventual rendezvous. You would think that the passage of time would diminish his feeling of grief, or that he would tire of his visitations. But, NO, this was a daily ritual that had been going for two and a half years.

  It is such an undying love that even death don’t have the power to sever this eternal loving attachment.

  ………

  The utopian state of the Sy clan didn’t last long, as heartbreaking tragedy struck.

  Trinidad was fastidiously supervising the finishing touches of the large, spectacular garden being built adjacent to their recently-built opulent mansion, when she slipped on a pool of muddy water. Her head hit the pile of surplus imported Italian marble lying nearby so hard that the accident irreparably cracked her skull and left her in a coma.

  In spite of the valiant efforts of medical specialists to save her, she passed away two days later.

  Of all the brood, this sad incident affected Mary the most. She took the death of her dear mama so bad that she became withdrawn, barely engaging in any conversation, and most of the time, she was in a state of “physically-there-but-really-somewhere-else.” She constantly
isolated herself from her siblings by locking herself in her room.

  She missed her mama so badly. She missed the time when she was blissfully basking in the warm, tender, compassionate, gushing love of her kind, soft-hearted mother. So when that unfortunate tragedy struck, Mary was devastated, unable and unwilling to accept the fact that her beloved mama was gone.

  Refusing to even bathe and only taking a few morsels of food during lunch or dinner, she became emaciated. Because of her unkempt, unwashed, and unsanitary condition, her siblings refused to sit anywhere near her and started calling her, “Stinko.”

  Vicente was so distressed that he hired the sternest nanny he could find, and gave instructions to force-feed and bathe the “Stinko” daily.

  Fully occupied with his highly successful business and realizing the need for a mother figure for his still-grieving children, Enteng remarried. But his choice of wife was terrible. The half-Chinese secretary he chose wasn’t only coldhearted but was also devious and condescending. Her relationship with the brood could be described generously as cordial and heartless. There was no evidence of even an iota of care or feeling of love. Most of her time was spent plotting schemes for self-aggrandizement or for enjoyment of her nouveau riche status. At times, her dealings with the siblings led to heated and acrimonious confrontations.

  Mary felt even more isolated and neglected, longingly pining for the fun and tender moments spent with her mama. In her moments of solitude and reflections, she vowed to shower undivided, unconditional, and overflowing affection and love to all offspring she might bear.