There

“I had wanted to tell you a story today,” my professor said at the very end of the class period. I was in my Philippine Linguistics class for a very special reason that semester. I was classmates with my students, as I sit in each class to learn how the subject is taught. Come next semester, I was to handle the major course.

My students/classmates, caught up in the business of putting away their notes and gathering up their things, eagerly settled back down and urged her to continue. My professor set her books down on the table again, and then told us about a day, twenty-five years ago, when--in her words--it was a particularly good time to be a Filipino. It was the day the Philippines made a difference in the world. In EDSA. She was one of those thousands of people who stood up in the bloodless revolution that became our legacy to the world.

One student, caught up in the narrative, asked what the people did in EDSA.

My teacher considered the question momentarily, in that half-expression people usually make when they are half-incredulous, half-impressed, half-sympathetic. She nodded once before she answered, as if to confirm a truth that presented itself only at that precise moment.

I was at the back row, contemplating an answer that floated up from the literature schema I had been academically brought up to create. This answer tasted like Pretense in my own tongue: it was a powerful irony I had been trained to anticipate, but one which was also the very exemplification of something “full of sound and fury, [but] signifying nothing”. It was something I’d expect to enjoy from literature and I had never really believed that I would hear it so sincerely said in real life.

That morning, I did.

“What did you do there, ma’am?” was the question.

A pause. A half-expression. A nod. And then a smile.

“We were there,” came the reply.