Summer and the rainy season

D“ ili na mora’g Chocolate Hills,” my son Edison Khan said the other day while looking up the hills that overlook our small village in our town this southern town.

During the very hot summer, the leaves of the bushes that adorn the hill's slopes had turned brown, thus my son's Chocolate Hill's description. But though the hot weather was brutal, it did not tarry long like in the past, so the hill's foliage survived.

The morning was hot yesterday but the sky was overcast for most of the afternoon. The rain that fell was, in the weather bureau's lingo, “scattered” and momentary, but it caused thin flooding in some of the city's roads. Still, Pagasa said the rainy season “is not quite here yet.” What we have is but an “inter-tropical convergence zone.”

I am glad that despite climate change, summer and the onset, or okay the transition, from the dry to the rainy season has not strayed too far from tradition. School vacation from March to May was predictably hot and rain is starting to fall as school year 2013-2014 opens next week.

For parents, summer isn't necessarily a respite from the routine of bringing children to school, paying tuition before every examination and attending parent-teachers-admin gatherings. During the break, enrolling kids for sum- mer trainings is in. And there's Flores de Mayo.

For the nth time, I allowed my eldest child to participate in the two-month basketball training camp at the Minglanilla gym handled by our neighbor in Sitio Kawayan, the former PBA and RP team player Mark “Makoy” Anthony Tallo. I had wanted Khan-khan to stay busy in summer and I was glad at the progress he was making. He's getting a feel for the game.

Then my wife Edizza discovered Catechesis. Or should I say she was swept by the resurgence of summer religious activities at the St. Augustine of Hippo chapel in Barangay Inayawan, Cebu City. This was the very same chapel that so became controversial Archbishop Emeritus Ricardo Cardinal Vidal banned the holding of masses there.

But a group of concerned Inayawanons led by Dr. Ado Macaraya, my friends Sam Costanilla of Sun.Star Cebu and Pierre Infante of Southwestern University and many others united to save the chapel. The push for the holding of masses inside the chapel has still to bear fruit but other parish-authorized activities are being held there once more.

Those who claim that Catholicism is losing adherents in the country should just visit the various chapels and churches in May when Flores de Mayo and catechism classes are held there. Or the Santacruzan. At the Inayawan chapel, it was good to hear my other son Eldrick Khan recite the “Our Father” in Cebuano. Or see him wear the Constantino costume.

Summer, though, is coming to a close and school opening is fast approaching. With the rain come the usual hassles that parents go through, like looking for money to pay the ever-rising school tuition and to buy textbooks, whose prices are sky-rocketing.

Okay, the hill overlooking our village is turning green again. But not everything good comes with the end of summer. Flooding is once more a concern that government will again promise to address. By the way, did they talk about fixing the drainage and clearing the esteros in summer?