Message in a Bottle

Debbie Lozare in Ang Pinoy Stories

Jan 20, 2020 • 2 min Read

It’s Friday February 19^th 2010, 7:08am and I’m writing this message, so I could stuff it in a bottle. I hope you get it dry and readable.  My friend Timmy and I are launching it from the beach in Subic Bay, Zambales, a lovely cove north of Manila in the Philippines on Sunday, February 21^st.  It will be our first time together there.

Timmy and I have known each other since we were nine years old, having gone to grade school together.  We maintained communication intermittently, through direct phone calls or through friends relaying news about each other, over the years.  But since age 15, we hardly saw each other, having taken different paths—different schools, different friends, and later, different relationships.

It wasn’t until we were well in our late 40s that we met again.  We had gone on to marry other people, each of our marriage did not work out, and we found ourselves single again.  When we met, it was as a reunion of friends, so easy and so natural.  I guess when you’ve known someone for more than 40 years, it is so much easier to get up to speed and not have to make a good impression or put up a pretense.

It doesn’t happen to everybody and yet it is not a unique tale.  Friends, long lost and finding each other again after so many years, are a story that repeats everywhere and anywhere.  I just thought it would be nice to share it with a stranger—whoever finds this bottle and reads my message—just as it is nice to share a smile or a gracious word.

Happiness comes in different forms.  For me, as I think for Timmy, too, happiness is holding hands when you were nine and practicing a native dance, and holding hands when you’re 49 and nodding off to sleep.  Happiness is listening to music together, driving off on a breezy sunny day.  Happiness is walking off a big dinner, and talking about how the dream house will be built, not just with tile and stone but with love and laughter and many hugs.  Happiness is keeping vigil quietly, as a loved one passes away, and no words need to be spoken.  Happiness is hoping that after a misunderstanding, a loving caress, a sweet brushing of a gentle hand against one’s hair, will soothe away hurt feelings.  Happiness is allowing God to be in between, when wrong things happen and no reason or explanation could suffice, and letting Him make things right again.

If you find this, I hope you will share the delight of knowing that in this world of much difficulty and struggle, many people still live content, happy lives.  It is not perfect but it could be hopeful and good.

Timmy and Debbie