THE POWER OF NEEDS

THE POWER OF NEEDS

Thirty eight years ago, during the New Year’s Mass in 1970, I uttered a simple and very short prayer: “Lord, I want to marry this year. If it will be good for me and if it will be for the greater glory of God please send me the right woman”. God was so good. He sent me not the woman I wanted. God sent me the woman I needed.

It turned out to be a mutual answer to a mutual prayer. She also needed me and that magic filling of each other’s needs made our married life intact. Every time we thought we were tired of each other we always rediscovered that we needed each one.

I watched her watering the plants this morning with her usual get up of green duster and bilateral anti-rheumatic bands on both legs. I also noticed bunch of white hair appearing at random underneath her obviously dyed hair. It was the same blondish hair that left a mark in my mind when she was just a little girl I saw with her eldest sister one time when they paid our family a visit. Our eldest sisters were “kumadres”. We only knew each other because of them, long before God sent her to me to fill my void.

She need not water the plants herself this morning as we have several helpers but she enjoyed doing it and at the same time thought that only she could do it the best way. She was like that even in cooking or doing anything – a kind of messianic complex which is ok with me except that she was always tired.

I noticed that she was still slender and erect in spite of the years that passed-by. Her 27-inch waistline when I married her was now “immeasurable” at sight but she still exuded a mystical aura that probably filled the needs of my esoteric personality.

She still goes to Manila to attend to her many activities, selling this and that items – a hobby she has to do to keep her up and about – her own special tonic; the shot of adrenalin that keeps her systems always on the go. Most of the time, I am left at the provincial home alone with only the helpers. We are in a kind of marital arrangement that keeps us needing each other and filling each other’s needs. We are happily enjoying our very own brand of marital bliss