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[ GOOD TO BE AROUND ] Love stories for the young, and not so young (like us)
By Salvador D. Flor, Ph.D.

What is in February that makes it the most exciting month? Is it because it is a love month? But if you are young, February is not only for you. Even those in their sunset years look at it as full with wondrous things.

Have you come across the story of Robert Frost, famous American poet, who could vividly recall the times he courted a high school classmate and after 60 years he still could feel the same torment and bliss? In the article, First Love in the Reader’s Digest, his eyes lighted up when informed that the girl was back in his hometown, a widow but still beautiful.

He was quoted as saying, “Sixty years and I have not forgotten.” The girl was his first love. Jose Rizal’s My Last Farewell tells us of a beautiful stranger he loved up to his grave.

His first love was Leonor Riverea in the novel, For Dreams Must Die by Zoile M. Galang set during the colonial period. But it was Josephine Bracken, her beautiful stranger, who came to his life during his Dapitan exile. In the last stanza, Rizal bid her goodbye, “Farewell to you my beautiful stranger. In death there is rest.” Leonor and Pepe as Rizal was called, parted when the girl’s mother, insisted that she marry a British engineer because she had no future with Rizal, an enemy of the Spanish authorities.

The second Titanic movie, starring Leonardo de Caprio as Jack and Kate Winslet as Rose had earned millions because of the exciting adventures of the main characters. I had seen the movie twice, always savoring the scene where Jack and Rose were fleeing from her mad suitor’s blazing gun while the Titanic was sinking.

The couple had found themselves in an empty warehouse and made love while the over 1,000 passengers were in a mad rush to abandon the ship.

The final scene showed Jack and Rose on a floating raft, the former at the frigid sea and the latter on the raft, saying goodbye to each other. Minutes later, Jack was seen sliding into the bottom.

The movie opened with Rose in her twilight years, relating her story to a salvage crew aboard a vessel which found the Titanic at the ocean floor. Her memory sharpened when a crewmember handed her something, seemingly a gift from Jack.

You know, while watching Jack and Rose snatching few precious moments together at the warehouse, oblivious of the impending disaster, I seemed to see myself as Jack making torrid love with a ravishing new acquaintance.

In my barrio in Paniman in the Camarines Sur town of Caramoan, dapdap trees are abloom with fire red flowers after the first May rains come. Old folks said the dapdap tree was a lovely girl and the first May rains her lover.

An envious witch turned the lad into rains and the girl into a tree and willed they could be together only once a year.

If not for love, we won’t have these beautiful stories.