Chantal Tranchemontagne · Cornwall,Ontario, Canada · some 3 years ago
“He was a religious figure,” my mother explains. “So everyone trusted him.”
“But he was a religious figure who was having an affair!” I blurt out.
“Yes,” she says slowly, smiling, “But he was having an affair with me.”
……
In 1959, the lurch of the sea commanded my father to surrender his dignity and pray for merciful death. He was a 23-year-old religious Brother of the Sacred Heart, sailing across the Pacific on a merchant ship towards his new mission: establishing a college in a small seaside town in the Southern Philippines.
He first worked at the Digos high school where he met my mother, a local Filipina five years his junior and a teacher in the Girls Department. He immediately noticed her brightness and beauty but had no time for distractions. And he had a vow of celibacy. There was always that.
As the years cycled through the seasons of Habagat (hot and wet) and Amihan (damn hot and dry), he found himself more and more drawn to her. He liked her wide, gap-toothed smile and the way her eyes shyly shifted away. He liked the headstrong streak that made her spine stiffen and her slight stature grow. He liked her unabashed kindness and selflessness. He loved her.
In January 1972, my father, by then the dean of the college, declared that students and staff would mount a production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar. The timing was not coincidental. Three days prior, my father, still a Brother, had proposed to my mother. Surprised, flattered, and happy, she had accepted.
They couldn’t share the news of their relationship. Brothers did not have affairs. Women did not seduce the devout. This. Was. Not. Done. So, for three months, with my father acting as director, my mother as costume designer, they courted behind the scenes with a cast and crew of 200 serving as unwitting chaperones. The lovebirds traded furtive glances and risked light touches of the arm as if to say “Hello, darling”, and sometimes my father would drive cast members home, arranging to drop my mother off last. If there was a hug, a kiss, more, no one will ever know. It was their special time; it was their secret.
A few weeks after the closing of the musical, my father returned to Canada. This move meant he was leaving his adopted country and also the Brotherhood – for good – but the significance of his departure went unannounced and unnoticed. Shortly after, my mother left Digos too, with her family’s consent but without a word to friends or colleagues. On June 6, 1972, she landed in Ottawa. One month and one day later, she married my father.
When September rolled around and it became obvious that the two were not returning, news of their relationship slowly emerged. The elderly Filipinas flapped their lips, no doubt some in disgust, others in envy. “Dili katuuhan, noh?”
It’s unbelievable, no?
December 13,2016
Note 1: Published here with permission from Chantal Tranchemontagne and Nancy Limbo Tranchemontagne
Note 2: This article was published in http://www.cbc.ca/books/canadawrites/2013/11/call-for-submissions-bloodlines.html#mid=16036609&offset=8&page=&s=