REFLECTIONS
Reflections
FAMILY REUNION, AGAIN?
Teresita Bacani-Oropilla, MD
S
he is an Olympian. Since age six,
traveling was incorporated into
her life as she practiced her sport
of fencing. At a tender age, her fa-
ther brought her and her siblings
every Wednesday to an adjoining city to take
lessons from a foil maestro who introduced
them to the sport. As a teenager, she mastered
the skill of traveling and competing in world cups nationally and
internationally in Europe, Asia and South America, following signs
in different languages. After the London and Rio Olympics, she is
now in medical school, her chosen life career in the good ole USA.
It was a surprise therefore when this highly competent and
confident young lady, near Thanksgiving time, called her parents
at dusk. Driving home alone from Notre Dame in Indiana to her
home in Lexington, Ky., she was passing her third horse and buggy
along the road and wondered where she was. With complete trust,
she had followed instructions from her GPS and went off the main
highway into a country of the past. It took some tracking by satel-
lite to figure out how she ended up there and how to return to the
modern interstate from the back roads and into the present.
Halloween, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas are in
a cluster at the end of each year. These are opportune times when
families, now thrown apart by circumstances, studies or work, mark
their calendars to be together.
They reminisce about the past and catch up with the future. It
is the time to pass on treasured recipes, meet and assess the newest
members of the extended family, either by marriage or by birth. It’s
time to brag with impunity to a sympathetic and adoring audience.
It is the time for firsts and lasts and fixing them in one’s memories
like a Norman Rockwell painting for posterity.
If one happens to get lost despite all preparations, it is time to
find one’s way from the back roads to the interstate and home where
love and security await.
A word of caution: be aware that GPS has a robotic mind of its
own, and it may recalculate one’s path in heartless circles.
Blessed and lovely reunions everyone!
Dr. Bacani-Oropilla is a retired psychiatrist.
DECEMBER 2018
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