By Pennie Azarcon-dela Cruz
Exec. Editor, Sunday Inquirer Magazine

FINALLY, after three weeks of hemming, hawing and chest heaving, I summoned enough resolve to dive into this literal cesspool of memories otherwise known as my baul of soaked baby pictures.

Not an easy task, this plunge into the sticky detritus that Ondoy had made out of almost three decades’ worth of family celebration, back when Kodak was the revered shrine we worshipped at after every Christmas, birthday, graduation, anniversary and summer outing. Every occasion worth being immortalized on photographic paper went straight into that baul, one of our first conjugal acquisitions. Nothing fancy or heirloom, the humongous chest was an unvarnished wooden box lashed with leather and some metal studs, for which I handed over a week’s household budget after much wheedling and haggling in a second-hand shop.

Nope, I didn’t have fine bed linens or a pirate’s haul stored in that chest, but it easily became the subject of my only house rule for the longest time: “In case of fire or threat to property, this baul goes out first, hear?” I badgered hubby and house help repeatedly every time the evening news featured a neighborhood fire, qualified theft or a disputed demolition.

Like a shrewd banker carefully lining his safety deposit box with wads of Euros, I was similarly hoarding my only capital at that time: baby pictures! My daughter being the first offspring on both sides, the poor girl couldn’t scratch her nose, wet her diaper or sneeze without a cosseting relative snapping a picture. Soon enough, every friend I had suddenly found reason to cross the street or remembered previous and urgent appointments every time I reached for my accordion wallet of family pictures. I remember how stiff competition among the photo shops at that time reduced developing and printing charges to 60 centavos for each album size, a fortuitous bargain even by my paltry paycheck standard.

You’d think we’d have lost all our friends when the second baby came, but ah, my inveterate back-slapper of a hubby soon found more warm bodies on which to foist our latest stack of memories. “Look, look, double dimples!” we’d point out, in case wary onlookers missed our son’s first claim to fame.

For some strange reason, probably the strong fumes from all those photo chemicals, onlookers always walked funny and in a daze after these sessions. (Shucks, we should have patented that technique and sold it to those CIA guys. Beats water boarding, I’m sure).

Not surprisingly, the baul filled up fast, with the kids’ childhood diligently documented until their grade school years. Thankfully enough, digital cameras were invented by the time they reached high school, and we could snap away without worrying about overloading our bursting baul or hocking my in-laws for developing charges. This time around, we turned to the flash disk or USB to store the thousands of digital photos we were rapidly accumulating—to our friends’ relief. Unless there’s a computer nearby, they know that they’re safe from another Assault of the Kiddie Pictures. Everybody happy.

Until Ondoy came, that is, and decided in one fell swoop, to erase our memories like Alzheimer’s pops out every brain cell in an aging mind. It took some time before we realized that underneath that wobbling tower of assorted household goods salvaged from the rampaging floods that was now filling up our second floor, was the beloved baul. I swear my entire life flashed before my eyes through those now-ruined pictures in that one moment of truth.

Well, I did manage to save about a third of the shots, telling myself all the while that the memories are hardwired in my head anyway, and that my now grown-up children will probably be embarrassed by their pictures which I’ve always threatened to upload on the Net unless they do my bidding on some chores.

When I started putting back the rescued shots in the now spacious baul, I realized where my priorities lie. Instead of putting in the pictures chronologically, I arranged them such that my travel shots were at the bottom, ready to be sacrificed to the floods should such catastrophe strike again. The precious few baby shots and family pictures left were protectively arrayed on top. After all, who cares if I’ve been to all these tourist traps except the kids for whom each trip used to mean some exotic pasalubong or knick knack? Who needs another personalized shot of the Eiffel Tower or the Alps anyway? As my friends would say with a Gallic shrug, “Been there, been that.”

Why are pictures so important to us anyway? I wonder what foreigners think of local news from here, where even in the midst of disasters—the collapse of the Payatas dumpsite, the sinking of the Superferry, the crush of Ondoy refugees in evacuation centers—as reporters speak of grim statistics and mounting casualties, clusters of uzis (uziseros or onlookers) are making pa-pogi faces in the background, smiling and waving at televiewers and striking telegenic poses. I can imagine them texting kith and kin afterwards, reminding them to watch the evening news and check out the faces in the background, “kasi andun ako, nasa TV ako! “

Even the hubby, not a stranger to on-cam interviews, is not above staying up all night and switching channels to check how many times they used the item on him. “Ayun, ayun ako!” he’d point gleefully when his face (shoulder, neck, arm, back or leg) hovered into view.

It’s probably at shot at immortality, a solid reminder that once upon a time, this person, yes that face in the sepia photograph, occupied space and breathed the same air we’re inhaling now. “What were they thinking?” You’d probably ask, as you scan an ancient class photo or a fading shot of the CWL manangs, their piety as starchy as their skirts. Did that topless Igorot maiden ever dream that someday her image would land in a glossy coffee table book, stoking less than academic thoughts among lowlanders? How many of those pre-war schoolchildren in some musty photograph in your old high school are still around today? They’re probably organic fertilizer by now, but for sure, unless the termites and floodwaters get to them first, several more generations are going to gaze up at these pictures, breathing life once more into the stolid faces preserved behind those glassed-in frames.

Yup, if you can’t write a book or a poem, plant a tree or sire a child, the easiest way to live forever is to have your photo taken. With Photoshop on the ready, you’re even bound to look better than you can ever hope to be. And with the Net at your fingertips, imagine how many people will realize that “yes, yes, we’re aware that you exist, you camera-hogging fool.”

Now if you’ll excuse me while I pack the camera for a family trip this All Souls Day weekend…