Our Endless Summer

Our Endless Summer
By Krip Yuson

National Artist for Literature F. Sionil Jose, our most prolific novelist and internationally best-known writer, declared some years ago that there is no such thing as summer in the Philippines. That summer was a Western concept that had no business being assimilated in our own calendar and culture. Or words to that effect.

Now, Manong Frankie, as we call him, is known to affect such seemingly feckless pronouncements, with the obvious objective of pioneering in a provocative idea. Maybe he meant, oh so fundamentally, that we shouldn’t use the word “summer” in our country. Or that we shouldn’t equate it to the summer that visits temperate countries as one of four seasons.

Our Spanish colonizers broke down our tropical seasons into three: four months of dust, four months of rains, and four months of muddy hell, or something like that. On the other hand, we ourselves appear to bifurcate time in a characteristically pessimistic view of inescapable no-win conditions: “Sala sa init, sala sa lamig.” (Damned when it’s hot, damned when it’s cold.)

But to get back to Frankie’s dictum, we may counter: Lighten up, what’s in a word, especially if it’s in English? Our tag-init (as against tag-ulan) is our summer, and it does translate to summer in more ways than one. It’s that period of the year when torpor sets in, ushered in by dry heat by the middle of March, and stays with us till the first typhoons, commonly starting in June.

This summer is inclusive of the Agua de Mayo or first rain of May, which is held to be a health boon. One drops what one’s doing, strips and runs outdoors, celebrates the water released by the first thunderstorm of May, as long as it’s not just a passing shower, but a drenching rain. We’ve heard from the old folk how this rainwater is a salve for the spirit and the common cold. Adherents to this folks’ tale even collect the Agua de Mayo in pots and pans, for use as especially beneficial drinking water.

But after Agua de Mayo, the dry heat becomes humid heat, as rain clouds daily gather but are often held back from healing the parched land. This condition gets worse towards June, when humidity rises, all the way through August and September, with only a welcome typhoon managing to clear the air of unfulfilled precipitation.

The case of our seasonal winds sets another dividing line: between the habagat of typhoon weather and the gentle amihan that comes as early as October. Monsoon winds from the southwest and the constant breeze from the northeast, respectively, are the role players that hand the climatic baton from one to the other as another year passes.

And while it’s passing, that’s when we enjoy our best season, from December to February, when it’s generally cool and dry, and in fact can become salubrious even in the metropolis come January, when a cold front said to have its provenance from as far as Siberia visits us. It makes us proud and happy to be farther north from the equator than neighboring states, such as Singapore, where the lack of typhoons and the regularity of hot humid weather knows no balm such as what we regale in for the start of the year.

All of these demarcation points with regards our tropical weather seem to have escaped an occasional government official or legislator who seasonally proposes that we do away with our summer season where the school calendar is concerned.

In fact, under the first Macapagal administration, then Education Secretary Alejandro Roces (who has also become a National Artist for Literature) actually made our school calendar conform to that of the West, with classes starting in September. Thankfully, it was set right back into place after a time.

Only some years back, Senator Franklin Drilon proposed a return to that system, arguing that our school kids suffer so much from cessation of school during typhoons. He theorized that they would be safer under a school’s roof if they had classes in the hot months, all the way till June. Then, like their Western counterparts, their “summer vacation” would be in July and August.”

There are many things wrong with this boneheaded proposal. First, the proponent failed to note that more typhoons occur in September, October and November than they do from June to August. We just know, from past experience, that June or July marks the start of the storm season. But with climate change, that season can come in full force as late as December. That means that for schoolchildren, there’s no escaping torrential rains and sudden floods, as well as the unpredictable suspension of classes because of such conditions.

But the more important arguments that completely demolish the idea of imposing a Western school calendar on our tropic isles are the following: all students would suffer even more in the classroom heat during Philippine summer; folks in the provinces expect their kids to come home during our traditional summer months so they might help out in the fields; and lastly, the clincher: our traditional summer months are equal to family bonding time for every homegrown and yet home-based Filipino.

Imagine what Sen. Drilon’s proposal would do to the domestic tourism industry, when Pinoy families and barkadas are prevented from enjoying their usual “summer vacation” in beach resorts or some highlands.

Ultimately, that is what Pinoy summer is all about — essentially, all those memories of bonding together in Baguio or Boracay, and then some. We do have a Pinoy summer, and it’s spent randomly in such places as other islands and mountains where the city-bred in particular can recharge themselves.

Our summer is also spelled by the rigors of Lent, as well as the frivolities of fiesta time, for the most part — the Santacruzan, kite-flying, halo-halo, the mountain-climbing escapade, trekking, hunting, fishing forays, all those hours to gambol by the sea, get a tan and savor the sunset, with a loved one or loved ones.

Indeed, our islands are a summer place, and some might say that perennially are they so. Yes, even local and national elections are held in summer. Metaphorically, endless is our summer — a moveable feast that is part circus and part torment when it’s not exactly that fine time for taking five.

Ends…