This fine young man

This is what we woke up to this morning: a photo of two of our children at a demonstration against the government's inaction to SM's proposed expansion project that would result in the removal of 182 trees on Luneta Hill. In the photo, our son was holding a placard which was photoshopped to show the following:

"Aliping for President 2016"

The photo has since been taken down, thanks to the anonymous poster who granted our plea to do so, and as irresponsible and below-the-belt it was, and as much as I feel so guilty for allowing myself to be among those who were at the forefront of that protest movement that resulted in our children being dragged into the mess, we'd like to put that behind us. So there, thank you, whoever you are, Save Baguio of Facebook.

But let me tell you about that boy.

His critique of my work, particularly as a theater artist, is among those I value the most. He was not even three when he first started asking me questions about my production of "Pepe," a play on the life of Jose Rizal written by Malou Jacob which our theater group, Open Space, first staged in 1998, the year he was born.

In one of our re-stagings, he asked why the first part of the performance depicted our national hero rather comically, and what the real story was behind the slapstick that I as Pepe and my co-actors presented onstage. He asked why Pepe said that he was also Placido Penitente, Isagani, Basilio, Simoun, and Padre Florentino. One evening after watching that Disney movie, "A Bug's Life," he quipped, "Flick is just like Pepe, right Papa? He wanted to change things."

And he never let get anything in the way of what he believed was right, I would tell him some years later.

He liked that performance-art piece, "Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll," very much and our conversations about the characters in that piece were way more meaningful than ones I had with much older people. He would particularly rave about the segments "The Artist" where the actor ranted about how technology has forced him to stop making art, "Dirt" that depicted how we've managed to turn our world into a human cesspool, and "Benefit" that depicted, among many other ills of this social epoch, how detached some people are from reality, etc.

He's good at everything he puts his heart in. He was six or seven when he first got hooked on football, and once scored seven goals in a tournament. After being awed by good friend Ethan Ventura's guitar playing, he wanted to learn how to play too, and has since been filling up the house every now and then with Bach's Bourree and blues riffs. He took up taekwondo for a couple of years and has a haul of dozens of local, regional and national bronze, silver and gold medals in his room. You should see his photos - he's taken up photography recently.

He reads, and reads voraciously, lapping up literary gems from Marquez to Murakami to Nabokov to Tolkien to Tolstoy. And Rizal, El Filibusterismo is among his all-time favorites along with One Hundred Years of Solitude which he read, and had long discussions with me about, when he was 13. Our conversations about that play, "Pepe," has gotten more interesting too after reading Noli and Fili.

We disagree about many things - the challenges of rearing a teenager, but we do agree a lot on many things too. Like how the concrete pine tree, which has since been removed, at the top of Session Road was a symbol of the many wrongs about our city today. Or how misguided the decision was to fence Burnham Park and pour concrete on much of the Rose Garden.

He wouldn't cross the road when the light is red and there are no cars in sight, even if he's the only one standing at the curb - he's stubborn that way. He was the first to decide to boycott SM when their expansion plan was announced late in 2011, and has since been boycotting the mall. While his siblings, too, supported the family's decision not to patronize a corporation that threatens to put its interest ahead of that of the community's and would voluntarily join me during demonstrations against the planned removal of 182 trees, he was the one who stood with me, a heavy video camera on his shoulder, during most of the rallies. When school started along with the hearings on the case we filed against SM, DENR and DPWH, he would always ask me at the end of the day how the last hearing went.

His grasp of this particular environmental issue never failed to amaze me. I always thought that he could debate any of SM's apologists and supporters and be able to clearly express all that is wrong about their expansion plan.

When the news of Congressman Nicasio Aliping's destruction in Mt. Kabuyao broke out, he was very agitated. This 15 year-old found it hard to comprehend how grown-ups like Aliping, who looked people in the eye during the campaign and vowed to be a protector and steward of the environment, someone who's supposed to represent the people's best interest, can do something like that.

He does his best to do his share - from simple things like simply saying "huwag niyo na pong i-plastic" when buying something from the neighborhood sari-sari store, to speaking his mind about social issues that's affecting his immediate community, his country, his world.

It broke my heart when the anonymous Facebook user chose an image of him to forward his own agenda - he didn't deserve it. I felt guilty even, very guilty in fact, that he was dragged into the mudslinging that's been going on when what the community needs now is to unite to defend the welfare, dignity and heritage of this beautiful city. I have that same photo, in fact, taken during that church-led demonstration against SM's expansion plan and the government's apparent inaction, nay, endorsement of it. He was asked by the organizers if he would like to hold up a sign at the head of the rally, and he rather shyly agreed, but proudly did.

The anonymous netizen could have chosen to satirize me - been getting a lot of that from people who don't really know what forwarding the Luneta Hill cause entailed then and what forwarding the Mt. Kabuyao cause is taking now. But yeah, I'm fair game, but not my children, please. Not any child, please.

It's easy to grab a photo online, alter it, type in an insult, defamatory statements, smear one's reputation on a Facebook status update, I'm glad my son knows that, and knows too that it takes way more than that to sincerely forward an advocacy.

I'm even more glad that, seeing how he handled that offensive altered photo, that it takes more than that to break his resolve to stand by his principles. I don't have much in life materially, there are so many things that I will not be able to give him, but if there's one thing I'd like to be able to ensure that he has, that's it - prinsipyo.

That's Leon, the boy that the offensive photo tried to put down, our son, one of five children, five beautiful children with their heads held up high knowing that they're doing all they can to be responsible children and citizens of this city, this country and as children of the universe, while their feet remain planted firmly on the ground.

He's a fine young man, and we're very proud of him.