Madam Edna and Me

Now that she and his principal have joined forces, this can openly be told.

Many, many decades ago in Mamburao, there lived two sisters named Francisca and Bernardita Monsobre (y Delos Trinos) with their other siblings. 

The other siblings are nicknamed Suela (Valdez), Ensiang (Pansalin), Maring (Novelozo), Pauling (Monsobre), Miliang (Tadeja) and Juana (Coden).

When they grew up and had their own families, Francisca or Kikay (Nicanor) gave birth to a son nicknamed Luving.

After few years, Bernardita or Ditang (Ablog) who married a merchant from Zambales, gave birth to a girl they fondly called Senyang.

In their teens, though first cousins Luving and Senyang seldom see each other for the former lives in Sablayan and the latter in San Jose, they were very close. Senyang is always visited by his Manong Luving in Pandurucan every time there is a chance for him of going in Occidental Mindoro's southern town.

Years have passed and having separate families of their own, Luving had a child named Edna and Senyang got a son christened Norman but the geographical and social distance between the second cousins literally and figuratively made them strangers to each other. They did not become close like their parents. He knows that they are cousins from the start but she only discovered it lately when she had a recent political alliance with his principal and appointee. She was once a rival of his political appointee, by the way.

She is vying again for mayoralty position in Sablayan this coming May 13 while he is trying his best to be a good local blogger and a civil servant in said progressing town at the geographical center of the province.

Politics indeed change things. In life there are things needed to be momentarily kept until predicaments, circumstances and time set them free all together.

Even beyond this particular case, blood is thicker than politics and politics is thicker than blood, interchangeably, at times...

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Photo: Jasper H. Francisco