i was twice an anomaly growing up in our remote island.
first, i was raised by a single parent, a withdrawn mother in a town peopled mostly with chattering wives and their drunk husbands.
then, my mother and i, we were the fourth founding family of a puny protestant church that counted only seven households as its core congregation. this in an island with then a four hundred year old, coral stone, roman catholic church.
this never bothered me blatantly before. it only did when i was in an overnight ferry towards the capital with my first girlfriend. we were on our way to see the pope.
the year was 1981 and the pope john paul II was making his first visit to our archipelago.
i was just a month away from finishing grade school and i know then something was really different with me. different, like i-find-other-boys-more-interesting different. and so like every other sexually confused boy in our class, i got me a girlfriend.
she was the daughter of a stalwart of the indigo uniformed legion of mary in our town. and when the pope decided to fly in to the country’'s capital, there was no question as to her family going to see the pontiff.
somehow, i was swept along with her family'’s plans. looking back at the trip now, i am amazed at how my fundamentalist protestant mother allowed me to be in a trip that would deliver me to the hands of the head of what she firmly believed the apostate church.
maybe, mother saw early on i would need a miracle myself to become the straight boy she prayed i would be. and if that would involve the roman catholic pontiff, so be it.
and there i was, the only non catholic boy, glaringly unable to recite the mysteries of the rosary, in a boat filled with signing of the cross pilgrims.
i remember hardly getting any sleep that night. i remember looking over the next cot where my girlfriend was placidly asleep, a novena prayer book still clutched in one of her hands. i remember feeling somehow disgraced, and i didn’t know why, by the pureness, the serenity of this girl’'s mien.
when our boat docked at manila'’s north harbor, our group'’s leader, a seminarian with this thick, unruly mop of hair, barked at us to pin the commemorative medals he earlier distributed.
on it was a rather fuzzy picture of the pontiff smiling dangerously like a cad. his chasuble was as gaudy as any of the vestments of the santos in our town’'s mossy catholic church.
as we were walking down the bobbing gangplank, the pin from my girlfriend'’s lapel popped off and flew into the water now thick with opalescent swirls of spilled petroleum.
a very young sea gypsy boy quickly dove after the shiny errant pin thinking perhaps it was a coin tossed by a generous pilgrim.
seconds after, the badjao boy surfaced. while treading under the water, he waved the retrieved gewgaw in his right hand hoping the owner would redeem it with some measly coins.
in a flash of gentlemanly decorum, i quickly tossed a coin towards the boy. before diving after it, the sea gypsy hurled the papal pin towards me.
i wasn'’t able to catch it for in the early morning light, the pin glinted and blinded me momentarily the way, perhaps, a similar light stunned st. paul on the road to damascus.