A LIFT FROM AN ANGEL

MY wife and our two-year-old son Nathaniel just came out of a children’s party at Jollibee along Quezon Avenue in Quezon City. It was the first week of August of 1999. The gray cloudy sky, cool heavy wind, and low rumble in mid-afternoon presaged rain.

“It looks like rain, do you have umbrella?” asked Weng, my wife’s officemate and the mother of the birthday girl.

“No it won’t rain,” I replied as if I was that day’s weatherman.

  

“Yes, we have an umbrella,” my wife countered.

Instead of going home to Malate, Manila, we proceeded to Uncle Rolly’s house in Quezon City. My uncle, my mother’s youngest brother, had been asking us to visit them if we have time. So here now, we have this spare time after the party. My wife and I were also eager to see my uncle’s two lovely kids. It would only take one jeepney ride from Jollibee to his place in Project 3 anyway, and we might reach the place before the rain. If it would rain at all.

We arrived at my uncle’s rented studio-type apartment just in time for dinner and the drizzle. Nathaniel had fun playing with my uncle’s precocious children, Jap-Jap, 3, and Paula, 2. I think it was around 7 p.m. when the drizzle gained up strength, followed by wild gusts of wind. The strong rain grew even stronger, and it fell without letup for another hour.

I wouldn’t want to stay very late at night with my baby away from the safety of our home. My uncle would love to accommodate us, if we like to stay through the night, but when we decided to go home no matter what, he only allowed us to leave when the rain had stopped.

After more than an hour of continuous rain, the sky became quiet but the cold stormy breeze still lingered in the air. We waited for another hour without rain then we went out the house, bidding my uncle and his family goodbye. At the street corner, we caught a jeepney going to Quiapo. It’s almost 10 in the evening.

While our jeepney was traversing the busy street of Kamuning, the rain fell, this time harder and more fearsome. The rain drummed on the roof of the vehicle. The roads were covered with rain water in a short period of time. The traffic came at slow. We waited patiently amidst drastic rain, cool wind, and darkness.  

The driver made a shortcut to minor streets, yet we were still trapped along with other vehicles trying to evade the floods. Suddenly, we came to a dead stop, and he told us that it was very dangerous to drive any further. “I’m sorry, but you have to get out and walk,” he said, pointing out the sudden lull from the rain.

My family went out of the vehicle, and walked until we reached a corner of the road where we could see passenger jeepneys passing by. It’s not yet midnight, I thought we’d have no trouble getting a ride. After we waited in the corner for a while, a jeepney with only a few passengers pulled up and the driver asked where we were going. “Quiapo,” I said. He told us that with the floods, he was not sure if he could make it until that place, but he could just try.

So we hopped in. A big portion of Quezon Avenue ahead of us was already submerged with floodwaters. The driver made a shortcut to the road parallel to the main thoroughfare until we reach Sampaloc district in Manila.

The weather turned nasty in a split second. It began to rain again drastically. Our travel had become a long and tortuous wading through the flooded streets. Floods were nothing new to this densely-packed part of the city. Being drivers and commuters, living under the mercy of floodwaters during the rainy season, meant developing survival skills and prayerful spirit worthy of a survivalist.

The driver, just like the first one, saw the danger ahead and said that he wouldn’t want to push his luck. That means, we have to be on our own, go down the road, and brave that super-filthy flood with my small child in my arms. Wading through flood waters is dangerous. Flood water can contain hundreds of different chemicals, along with bacteria and other microorganisms that can cause disease and infection. And there’s that open manhole waiting for its victim. But I have no choice. 

We joined the remaining passengers as they alighted from the vehicle and went to the direction of España Blvd. There’s only a drizzle now, so my family had to huddle in my wife’s small umbrella as we groped our way to the nearest shed. 

Good thing, the drizzle stopped after about 15 minutes, giving us the chance to go on with the trek. Fortunately, the flood along the side of the street was only just as high as my ankle. From Dapitan Street, we waded toward the direction of an intersection going to España Blvd. I could see some vehicles traversing the street toward Quiapo. So I rather take my chances than have my family spend the night in the middle of the floodwaters.

The cold, dark night stretched dauntingly ahead. We were stranded at the corner of Blumentritt and España. We stayed in the corner, with Nathaniel in my arms, seemed heavier than before. There were only a few public vehicles braving the floodwater but none had stopped to take us in. Tricycle and pedicab drivers, taking advantage of the flood, offered their services to stranded commuters; while some men pushed stranded vehicles to higher grounds, for a fee, of course.

Then a dark blue SUV passed by with steady speed at first, but slowed down in front of us, then he stopped two or three meters away. Perhapsthe driver changed his mind to move on, then he backtracked very slowly. It stopped in front of us, and the driver slid down his tinted window.

“Where are you going?” asked the driver, a young man about thirty.

My wife told him we were waiting for a ride going to Malate.

“I am going to that direction, why don’t you hop in before it would rain again, well, if it’s OK with you?” he said. His welcoming smile eased my apprehension of a stranger.  

“I happened to see your young child, so I thought, he badly needs to be at home at this time,” he continued when we were already inside his vehicle, with our soaked pants and a dripping umbrella. My child was now asleep in my lap. 

The driver went on with his friendly chatter. He was on a hurry (yet he found time to stop and pick us up in the flood) to fetch his boss from an important meeting in a place near the US Embassy along Roxas Boulevard, and his boss might be worried by now. Just like the previous jeepney drivers, he made every shortcut that he would find, but unlike them, he didn’t stop at all.

As the SUV negotiated the swirling waters, I suddenly found myself praying to God and all the saints: to keep the car from conking out, and let us make it to higher ground. The speed was moderate and steady, and murky flood started creeping into the car. But the driver wasn’t worried at all. He told me that he’d used to this kind of flood and he had a full trust with his vehicle.

We reached the end of España, and there’s no more flood after the next street going all the way to the underpass connecting Quiapo. I knew that our ordeal was about to the end. We went ahead with normal speed going to Lawton, then to Roxas Blvd until we reached Kalaw Street.

We alighted, and thanked the man profusely. But our angel shrugged off our profuse thanks, and refused to accept any payment. In our haste to go home, we forgot to get his name. But I watched the car sped away, sending him a prayer for him to reach his boss safely and to his family after his work was done.

Whoever he is, I’m very thankful for all his effort. He went out of his way to help my family in a desperate situation, and perhaps, his only motivation is to help or to do an act of kindness when opportunity so provides. That man has done a very honorable act.

We made it safely home. We were blessed that August night in España to meet a nameless angel in the road. He saved us, especially my child, from spending the night in a flooded street.