The One I Love

"...oooh...i hear laughter in the rain
walking hand in hand with the one i love..."

Saturday evening was one of those weekend nights that I spend deconstructing my mind of the outgoing weeks' negative energies.


"What would be a nice present for the one I love?"  I thought.  Father's Day was just four hours away.

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I scanned my portable backup disc for some pictures.  I find a handful taken by Jo Henry last year.  I just came from a harrowing week evaluating food-for-work projects and there was water everywhere.  As if I did not have my fill of assessing floods, we went to see how things were going in the Delta Bridge.  It seems that the Delta Bridge has become, next to water hyacinths, the symbol of Cotabato City floods.

There was a lot of activity -- people were chopping up and chainsawing the water hyacinth islands into manageable pieces so it would flow into the bucana (mouth of Rio Grande).  The Special Forces used the massive fans of their airboats to sweep these chunks out to sea.  Haven't I seen this scene a dozen times? 

Jun and I strolled the span and found some more friends and familiar faces.  Two young men eat rice out of a black kaldero with some instant noodles.  How that would be enough for physical work in the next couple of hours is beyond me.  We talk to a volunteer who gives off advice on how the flooding in Cotabato City could be minimized.  With the way he ticks off facts and figures of what he saw the past few days, I felt I must have been the 17th person he talked to just that morning.  Needless to say he sounded dissatisfied with how government was addressing the problem.  He's not the first person I heard talking that way.

I chose the picture where Jun and I were shot by Jo from a distance.  I was waving at her with both arms.

"This is nice," I tell myself.  The day looked gloomy and rain clouds were forming in the background.  Our smiles sort of lighted up the surroundings.  I upload it on Facebook and looked for Neil Sedaka on YouTube.

It's 2012 and the rains are back.  News of inundated houses and displaced people once again fill our collective consciousness.  But it's a special day.  It's always a good opportunity to give thanks that I'm blessed with the one I love.  He stood by me through thick and thin.

I hear laughter in the rain.

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Cotabato City
17 June 2012