In the afterglow of people’s celebration of February as the month of love and romance, I am pleased to share this account by Soledad “Choleng” D. Hidalgo, the transcript of her post-Valentine’s Day message aired over Naga City’s DZDR station on February 15 (year not noted). This was broadcast during the Sunday radio time of the Daughters of Isabella – Our Lady of the Nativity Circle, a spiritual, social and charitable organization. This piece shows how unchanged certain concepts are despite the 50 years since it was written. Although stilted in a way, I have found it quite humorous and heart-warming how this elderly couple, my parents, were attempting to find the definition of love.
LOVE AND MARRIAGE | CHOLENG D. HIDALGO
It is flattering to be asked to speak about love and marriage. For then you are supposed to have brought your ship to port easily thru the turbulent sea of matrimony. Nevertheless, one doesn’t have to delude herself. Every woman is an authority on the subject anyway.
What woman can truthfully say that she has not at one time, or another fallen in love? Be it requited or unrequited, wisely or unwisely, happy or unhappily! What a barren life for a woman who claims, “I have never been touched by love … a perfect way to waste time.” For a woman’s life is a rosary of love. It can also be sorrowful.
What can be more joyful than the first stirrings of the heart the awakening of first love, when the young floats in the magic air and sees life thru the multi-colored light of rainbow, when the moon and stars seem brightest the air sweet with the perfume of flowers. Yes, a young girl is sensitive to sights and sounds of nature when she is in love because she is part and parcel of it. What can be more joyful than the incarnation of love when one is young?
What can be more glorious than love’s fulfillment when one finally meets the ideal mate and share a perfect union in solemn vows of marriage? The sense of belonging, of being loved and wanted, to have someone to share life’s adventure… A happy marriage is paradise on earth—and when it endures until death, what can be a more glorious life?
What can be more sorrowful than love’s many problems? When a loved one goes away, never to come back: or when a sweetheart or husband or wife dies; the void that is left, the ache that is almost a physical pain to bear… It is said that when this happens a woman’s life is ended. The years ahead stretch unendingly and it is as if the sun has been shut away from life forever. What is more sorrowful than when two souls loving each other finally come to parting of ways with love fading, dying, dead. Most sorrowful of all is when two souls meet as one but cannot find love’s fulfillment because marriage is in the way.
We tend to condemn the person particularly if it is a woman who breaks the moral code. Yet, we would not be too harsh if we understood the tyranny of love. Even the Bible says, “Stern as death is love, relentless as the nether world is devotion.” Strong and stoic is the man or woman who can fight love when he or she thinks it may cause unhappiness in the home and children. “I must turn away from this love because it is not good for me. It is wrong in the eyes of God and society. It will cause unhappiness to my family and break my home.” When a woman is strong and can say these things there would be less broken homes and motherless children.
When I told my husband that I have been invited to talk about love and marriage over the radio this morning, I asked him “what is really love?” and he answered back, “look it up in the dictionary” at the same time, he got the big Webster dictionary from the bookshelves. Then as if realizing the funny part of the situation, we both broke into laughter. Here we were, two old people, a man of sixty-five, married for thirty-five years, not knowing the meaning of love that we still have to consult a dictionary.
Now, I’m being asked to talk on the subject of love and marriage, as if I were an authority. But I have come to realize that although love has become a subject of analysis by psychologists, novelists, philosophers and so on, yet its definition baffles the most knowledgeable. The mass media, movies, newspapers, magazines, radio and television oftentimes have love as its theme. Yet when one is asked for love’s meaning, it sounds like the eternal question, unanswerable.
A young girl asked me once, “How do you know that you love a person?” I think love is the most abstract thing in the world. You cannot measure its intensity with a thermometer as you do a fever or malaise. You cannot say you like a person because she is pretty or handsome, because many an ugly person becomes the object of love. You cannot say you love somebody because he is wise and intelligent because many a dumb and ignorant have been loved. You cannot either say you love a person because he is good and kind in that the wicked and even hoodlums have been loved. You cannot also say you love a person because he or she is rich and powerful; beggars and good for nothings have been the objects of love.
The header features the renewal of vows of married couples from Malinao, Rapu-Rapu, Bacacay, Daraga, Tiwi, Sto. Domingo, Tabaco, Legazpi, and Malilipot celebrating their 50th golden anniversary at the Albay Astrodome, November 23, 2023 (credit: Albay Provincial Information Office)
Contributed by:
TELLY HIDALGO HOW is a retired pediatrician and professor of pharmacology at the University of the Philippines, College of Medicine. Born and raised in Naga City, her parents were Dr. Jesus F Hidalgo, medical practitioner, and Soledad Dato Hidalgo, columnist and writer. She graduated from Colegio de Sta. Isabel, High School in 1965. She completed her medical degree from UP College of Medicine in 1974. She is an Emeritus Professor in UP.