It was the second day of regular classes.  It was an overcast morning and it was gloomy and grey the whole day so it wasn’t surprising that it got dark sooner.  I suppose I was concentrating on my work and when I looked up to start dinner, it was past 6 pm.  My daughter would be boarding a jeep from the terminal on McArthur Highway en route home.  She will be with a few friends who lived in our area.

I checked my cell phone because she always sends a text “pauwi na po” or “what’s the plan, Ma?” There was no text message from her.  And then my phone rang.  There was my daughter’s voice at the other end of the line, a little too bright and cheery for the time of day — at the end of the day she is bone tired from hours and hours of lectures, seat work and sitting in class.

“Hi, Ma. I’m gonna be late getting home tonight.”

“What? Why? It’s only the second day of school.”

“Don’t worry, ok? I’m not hurt. Don’t freak out …. I’m at the police station.”

“What?” I was freaking out. “What happened?”

“My friend PJ and Claudia and I were walking to the terminal from school when a guy picked PJ’s pocket and walked away with his wallet. PJ ran after him and we ran to get a police officer and we caught him. We’re at the police station because we have to give a statement.”

 

That is the kind of phone call every mother dreads.  I don’t know if I am afraid because she was in possible danger and I didn’t know about it.  I was afraid because she was in danger and I was too far away to help.  I was angry with myself — what was I thinking, letting a 14 year old ride a jeep all by herself to and from school?  It’s a wild world out there full of perverts and muggers — what kind of a mother am I? What kind of world did I bring her into?

At the same time, I was just glad she was OK and she was calling me from the police station where she was safe and sound, giving a statement.  She wasn’t in an emergency room with a stab wound or at the morgue, cold and disheveled and dead — I mean, what was I thinking? What should I be thinking?

I think I was more worried about her state of mind (what could be going on in her mind right now?).  Will she be the same after this?  Will she be afraid to go out?  I wanted to fly to the police station and just hug my little girl! Of course I couldn’t — I had to wade through streets made muddy by the light rain, I had to creep along Iba Road in heavy rush hour traffic just to get her. She seemed OK on the phone.  So as soon as we picked her up and we were in the car, I planned on probing her to try and figure out how this incident affected her.  Would she lose her nerve?  Ask to be brought to and picked up from school every day?

When she got to the car, she told us that she had changed her mind about her classmate, PJ — he was a small and skinny boy — hardly the kind to be a tough guy, but as soon as he felt something different about his back pack, he ran after the guy who walked passed him from behind.  He confronted the guy (he was about 46 years old and weighed a hundred pounds heavier than PJ!). “Kuya, kinuha mo yung wallet ko. Ibalik mo.”  And wonder of wonders, the guy gave back the wallet.  And then he turned to walk away.

By that time, Fran and Claudia had caught up with PJ and they gave chase.  They found a police officer (there were so many of them out there — in uniform and in plain clothes! — I thought they were just tambay sa kanto!) and he also gave chase. They caught the guy about to board a jeep.  My daughter and her classmates positively identified him.  They then gave a detailed account of what happened and why they were sure it was the same guy who picked PJ’s pocket. He was denying the whole thing, of course.

At the police station, my daughter felt like she was under investigation because the police asked her so many questions.  And then the police officer (two of them, who according to my daughter, played good-cop-bad-cop) started asking the guy questions as well. Inside the guy’s backpack there were four other wallets (not his as there were IDs and they were pink) and a scientific calculator.

While she was telling us the story, she was laughing because she didn’t think, she said, she would ever see the inside of a police station or a police interrogation room, or even see for herself if police officers truly did a good-cop-bad-cop routine as she sees on TV — she was amused to discover that they truly did!  How predictable they were!  No wonder criminals get off very easily! She was then so very interested to know what would happen to the guy — who had been beat up by passersby as he was running from them.  At the police station, he was beaten up by the other detention prisoners.

My daughter who was usually indifferent to legal stuff (even on TV) or around the dinner table as we sit discussing issues of the day — was suddenly interested in criminal procedure.  I distinctly remember my husband saying (after I hung up when my daughter first called at 6:30 pm) “Hay naku, iwas ng iwas si Fran sa pag-aabogada — baka diyan talaga siya naka-linya.  This experience will be pivotal for her.”  And it could be — she could be so disgusted with the inefficient and unprofessional way the police handled the investigation or, she would be so intrigued and challenged by the legal system.  Or, she could be totally indifferent to the whole incident.

Time will tell. A few days after that incident, I told my daughter what her Dad said.  “Yuck!” she said. So, I didn’t press the issue. She is so undecided about what course to take in college.  She is so undecided what she wants to be or what she wants to do.  I knew better than to press.  It is her life, after all, she is going to live it, so she must decide for herself.

After a few moments of silence, she said, “Can I take creative writing in UP and then qualify for law school? Is creative writing a pre-law course? I can take up law, but I don’t necessarily have to  practice law like in court like you, right?  Or like dad?”

“Definitely,” I said.  “You know Scott Turow?  He’s a best-selling novelist.  He is a graduate of Harvard Law School.  You can be a graduate of the UP College of Law and still be a writer if that is what you want to do with your life.  I think studying law will give your writing depth.”

“We’ll see,” she said.  And we let the matter drop.  After a few more minutes of thoughtful silence, she said, “I know! I can write about this in my essay for the ACET, right? I mean, I’m supposed to write on what experiences define me as a person — this is a kind of experience that can define me, right?”

“Right,” I said.  I had to look away and go do something else or I might start crying and hugging her — she would hate that.  My little girl is growing up.  I suppose that incident is one of those defining moments for my daughter, for her friends, and even for us, her parents.  Our response to the incident will show our maturity and our faith in God.  Every time my children leave the house, I pray for them.  I cannot bring them to school and pick them up from school every day.  I cannot hover over her to protect her.  I cannot erect a wall with barred gates so that she will be safe.

I remember the words of Jesus Christ, and I claim them as appropriate in this circumstance “My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand.”

God gave me my daughter.  At those times when I cannot control what goes on in my daughter’s life, I have to trust that God is at work.  And if I am interested in my daughter’s well-being, well, no man is able to separate my daughter from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution or famine, or nakedness, or peril or sword?  Nay, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.  For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God; which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Yea, though my daughter walks through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for God is with her — His rod and His staff, they will comfort her.

I suppose that these same thoughts will keep going through my mind even as my son starts school in August — he will have to travel from Meycauayan all the way to UP Manila where muggers, pickpockets, perverts, drunk drivers and bullies abound.  As I cannot live in fear and I am commanded to live in faith — I have to daily cast my cares upon the Lord because He cares not only for me but for my children as well.  They are, after all, God’s children, too (note, God has no grandchildren!).  Because my children have a profession of salvation and a profession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, they are sons of God.  “But as many as believe him, to them gave he the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe in his name. They are believers and as believers, their lives are hid with Christ in God.

I have no assurance that nothing bad will ever happen to them — what I have is an assurance that God will never leave them nor forsake them.  That in the most difficult of circumstances, they will not be alone because God will be with them.  I think, on hindsight, that it is my sense of security that suffered more because of that incident — not my daughter’s.  I do know that every day my children leave our house, it is a test of my faith.