by ramon dacawi

The countryside, like the sugar hacienda in La Carlota, Negros that Maria Paz “Datsu” Infante-Molintas left in her youth, offers the therapy she and her ailing son Nino Joshua perhaps needed.

Such thought prompted Datsu’s maternal aunt, the late nationalist Maria Feria, to buy her niece a few square meters of a rectangular piece of untilled farm lot in Tubao, La Union.

Datsu and Nino moved there some six years ago, leaving behind her three elder sons at their shanty near the Wright Park bridle path where, in her teens, she fell in love with and later married Ibaloi pony boy Mike Molintas.

Slowly, she turned the barren lot into a mini-patch of fruit trees. She had a hole dug for a tilapia pond and tried to raise a couple of hogs. Nino tried to raise a goat and later a calf his maternal aunt Ging bought.

The rural scene gave Datsu peace and quiet, respite if not recovery with her son from years of seemingly unending trials and ordeals that tested the core of her being. The warmer climate was good for her aching back. It enabled her to paint, hoping some of the frames could be sold to address Nino’s emerging medical condition - scoliosis.

The spinal ailment was already affecting Nino’s congenitally weak lungs. An orthopedic surgeon who operated on Datsu’s slip disc, however, couldn’t recommend surgical intervention to stem the advance of the disease.

Still, there were enough blessings, enough reasons to mark Nino’s 23rd birthday last May 25. The boy had survived a life-threatening congenital heart ailment. He had undergone three surgeries, was spared from a couple more, and bounced back to life those few times doctors believed he was already a goner.

Datsu recovered from heart ailment, only to lose Mike to cardiac arrest, leaving her to raise four sons alone three years before Nino’s heart operation. Two years after the boy’s surgery, Datsu suffered a slip disc from hauling soil for potted plants she raised to be able to feed the orphans.

Michael, her eldest, sold burgers in a fast-food outlet to finish a course in information technology. He would rise to become manager of a computer sales branch. Mark, her second, left for hotel work in the Middle East then returned home to help in her backyard pig raising –and to marry. Julius Byron took on his late father’s work as a pony boy at the Wright Park.

With a few relatives and family friends, they assembled for Nino’s 23rd birthday. Bing Vicente, who took care of Datsu from childhood, came with her daughter. So did Dinky Casem, who also grew up tending to ponies for hire. He brought along children Marie Joy and Christian, making the celebration partly a reunion of half-orphans.

Dinky lost his wife, Dr. Asela Talco-Casem, to kidney ailment last March 13. Asela, who turned the psychiatry ward of the Baguio General Hospital into a full department, had turned down a less-stressful career offer abroad, noting the need to advance one of the most neglected and misunderstood medical specializations in the country.

Datsu failed to attend the wake or the funeral of her friend. She had just been released from hospital confinement due to stomach bleeding. Mark made it to the burial in his motor bike, telling Dinky his mother was just recovering.

Datsu sold a mother pig for her hospital expenses, after Nino pestered her for days to go for admission. The two were waiting for a bus to Baguio for her confinement when Nino rolled a wad of bills and placed it in his mother’s palm.

“My heart just melted,” Datsu said on Nino’s birthday, her eyes welling.

Over the years, Nino’s single cow multiplied to five. After the pig sale, he and Mark sold one cow – the first born - for P16,500 to add to their ma’s hospital fund. Many times over, they had seen how she had suffered the indignity of being pressured to settle Nino’s hospital bills, even at that time she was told of Nino’s critical condition after the boy’s hernia operation.

From previous births, Nino knew when his mother cow would deliver a calf. So last November, he had it tied beside their house, allowing him to now and then check on it.

It was morning when the cow began calving. Nino and Mark moved in as midwives. Two legs came out before Datsu saw four more.
“Kambal yata,” she said but Nino didn’t see the possibility, as twin birthing in livestock was rare, about one to seven percent.

Soon, neighbors gathered, watching the spectacle of a twin birth, a double pleasure for Nino.

Jules Byron once took a drift on Nino’s modest success as a cow boy. He suggested their roasting one for the cow owner’s birthday. Nino refused and his brother asked why.

“Para rin sa mga pamangkin ko ‘yan, para sa mga anak mo (They will be for my nephew and niece, for your own children),” Nino replied.

Last Tuesday the kids and others spread around the birthday cake, waiting for Nino to blow a single candle, so they could help themselves to it. Having done that, Nino took their shots and then moved out to frame his twin cows.

Datsu knew her son had wanted a camera to also document the growth of his niece and two nephews for whose future he’s raising cows. That’s why she and son Michael saved to gift him one on his birthday. – Ramon Dacawi.