A Place of Springs

By Paul O'Donnell

In the shadow of the Marcos regime, south of Manila in the Philippines, an extended family grows, grandparents, parents, children, friends, and enemies in a place of springs; a special place where heated and healing waters spring from a volcanic source; a surprising place where the struggle to love, serve, and forgive gradually (and humorously) transforms human relationships, revealing a divine source; a surprising place where a fabled lost treasure of gold, a rebellion in the hills, a recluse holdout from World War II, an oppressive local constabulary, and a brother and half sister all come together in a rousing crescendo leading to an unexpected dawn for all in eternity. Forty simple drawings by the author illustrate this whimsical yet gripping story, revealing the truth of what St. Francis de Sales once wrote, "The world is only peopled to people heaven."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9781644246801

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A Place of Springs

Paul O'Donnell

Copyright © 2019 Paul O’Donnell

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2019

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

ISBN 978-1-64424-679-5 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64424-680-1 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

The Land of Sunrise and Sunset

On the Wings of the Wind

Secrets of the Heart

A Place of Springs

Honey from the Rock

On the Lips of Children

At the Sight of the Foe

The Mouth of the Lion

Judgments Like the Deep

In the Company of Scorners

Hope of the Poor

The Courts of Heaven

With love and gratitude to

Mark, Joann, George, Dori, and Mary

As they go through the bitter valley,

They make it a place of springs.

—Psalm 84:7

The Land of Sunrise and Sunset

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My grandfather was an ex-seminarian. And thank God for that, otherwise I would not be here to tell you about him. My path in life began at his door.

Lolo Doming, short for Domingo, which is Spanish for Sunday, was born on the Lord’s day. Orphaned by a capsized ferryboat at the age of eight, his poverty-stricken relatives tried to situate him in life by sending him to the San Pablo seminary. Being so young, he went along with this traditional way of getting rid of another mouth to feed. To please his extended family, he extended his stay all the way until second theology. But when the war with the Japanese broke out, Lolo Doming broke out of the seminary to join the army.

The next thing he knew, he was rubbing elbows with the American and Filipino troops cornered on Bataan for the last stand. As bad as things were, he was strangely elated because he sensed he was doing God’s will, starving day after day while battling the Fourteenth Imperial Army, the oftentimes brutal sons of Hirohito.

My grandmother, Lola Naz, said that he was probably the only survivor wearing an alb or sotana on the infamous, 237-kilometer-long Bataan death march. I guess the rigors of seminary life prepared him for those days. While his fellow prisoners were dropping like flies from dysentery, beriberi, sunstroke, and general abuse from crazed guards, the young Doming sensed that, seminarian or not, he was born on a Sunday, and so, would stay alive.

But the fact was, it was a miracle Lolo Doming made it all the way to Camp O’Donnell in Tarlac—when more than thirty-five thousand others didn’t, their bodies left to rot on the sides of the road. Once inside the noisome compound itself, he was put to work burying more bodies, more than 21,500 over a three-month span. His survival, he took as a sign that he had made the right decision pursuing another vocation in life. In later years, he said four things gave him courage to survive—prayer, the thought of returning to his home province of Laguna, a kindly young Japanese guard and the memory of his sweetheart, whom he had met just before enlisting. Trudging through central Luzon, the desire to make my lola his wife gave him hope. So by the time the straggling, emaciated few reached the concentration camp, Nazarena had somehow been enshrined in the niche of his devotion just below the Blessed Virgin. Once the occupying troops had consolidated their iron grip on the archipelago, the POW’s languished day after day in the sweltering heat of Pangasinan—until the daring rescue by US Army rangers near the end of the war. Finally returning home, Lolo recovered his health in time for a hastily arranged marriage and a frugal, postwartime wedding. Official photos show both bride and groom looking extremely serious—I suppose because those were serious times in which to start a family.

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My lola Nazarena, named after the Black Nazareno of Quiapo church, was herself not black, but only kind of dark and leathery from years of walking back and forth teaching school—and from working outside in her vegetable garden. In their old age, to see her together with Lolo Doming you’d think both had endured the scorching sun of the death march. As newlyweds, they had inherited a piece of land not far from Pansol on the road to Los Baños. It was a little peninsula jutting out into the Laguna de Bay split by a gurgling hot spring that emptied into the lake. All kinds of trees shaded the property, mahogany and narra, plus of course, plenty of mango, coconut, langka, and other fruit trees like rambutan and lanzones which flourished in the lake breeze. There was even one marshy stretch which Lolo turned into an irrigated rice field.

Lolo Doming was always up before the sun to pray, a remnant habit from his seminary days. The old breviary, bequeathed to him by his former rector, was so worn that the corners were as rounded as Lolo’s calloused fingers. Praying, he would watch the sun rise over the place he and Lola had, with infinite effort and sweat transformed—little by little, year after year—into a home. By the time I arrived on the scene—of course—their twelve children were already sent into the world like apostles to form families of their own. As their youngest apo, I felt blessed to have the two of them all to myself. Listening to Lolo Doming mumble mysterious Latin, I too entered the mystery of light.

Pater Domini nostri Iesu Christi illuminet oculos cordis nostri…

In my childhood, shadows lengthened and then fled before the sacred. Every morning was like Sunday—still, receptive, alert, and ready.

Although beset by the countless economic worries in the postwar years, Lolo Doming and Lola Naz put order to their world. The vegetable patch, the exclusive domain of my grandma, was a symbol for the neat arrangement of the whole. And I fit right in. While speaking to the plants and to me, she pruned their leaves and my mind at the same time. She sang constantly. Lolo Doming, on the other hand, out among the trees, preferred to hum. Both were like deep wells echoing contentment. Lola sang, and Lolo hummed, a pretty good duet, accompanied by the cacophony of animals they kept. Thus did a joyful noise rise up to the heavens every day.

Lolo Doming named all the animals that lived outside the house. Recalling his philosophy days, the three dogs were Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Soc barked a lot. Plato was later stolen, and no doubt ended up on a neighbor’s plate as a pulutan appetizer. Aristotle was a beggar for the bottle, liking the occasional nip of beer. The behemoth pig, Albertus Magnus, was teacher and mentor to our carabao affectionately christened Aquinas, after the dumb ox of scholasticism. Finally, and for some reason, he named their mischievous monkey, MacArthur. The boys of Bataan never really had much use for him.

Lola’s menagerie naman (on the other hand) lived sa loob (inside the house). Being a retired English teacher, the three cats were named after novelists, orange (Jane) Austen (a virtual kitten factory), black Thackery and the polka-dot Dickens. The mocking mynah bird was named Shakespeare, which it could quote at the drop of a straw hat. To be or not to beee… Lord Byron the rooster commanded the hens and ducks who were all poets, while the occasional slithering snake or scuttling field rat that entered at their own peril were named after various politicians. The house gecko, named Betty obligingly ate all the mosquitoes in the world, lassoing them with her rubber tongue.

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I should point out that Lolo Doming was almost completely deaf. During the