MR. CORNELIO F. TRESTIZA
How short life can be! How quick and fast the wings of time flew over his mortality!
First, man trumpeted his birth with his first cry as the wind of earth and sky swirled strong and full through his little nose. Then, eventually, he would grow all bones and flesh, learn the ways of his existence that would challenge him later in his search for a better life, reap the joy of his God-given right, and fulfill his destiny in the company of his most perfect soulmate. He would fill his life with sounds of joy, with thunder of laughter, even with the wail of pain, and with the lightning of hope; but with a flow of kind words and actions he would grace himself, as he deals with his kind----if he had been good; or burn his life with blaze of greed and deception if he feared God not, and suffered hate and indifference in the curse of other men.
Then, in time, he would bow down in surrendering defeat, lay down his old bones and flesh, and, slowly or suddenly, heave his last breath, and slip in silence into eternity. Which, perhaps, what he would say on how his parents took their way out from this life.
But his parents were good and kind, even the best loving couple of souls there is he have ever met; without them, without their warmth and love that sustained him through cold months, he would have long ago frozen himself into oblivion, steered himself into wickedness of this ephemeral world. He would have been a different person, a different person that would have turned out to be unidignified, slost, and confused, baptized in sinful ways of the world.
Fortunately, the good Lord, with His angels, watched over him; He blessed his parents, Ricardo Trestiza Jr. and Justina Francisco-Trestiza, with a big good heart and wise mind. With them, he grew safe and strong; and, with a good heart and soul of his own he took the right, safe path between their loving, guiding hands.
He would remember his parents calling him Nonoy, Kooning, or Cornelio. Although these three names were used to call his attention, they are all each different by certain circumstances of the day. Nonoy is when his parents were “soft of heart”; Kooning when they were a little bit rough of mood for the day; and Cornelio when something went really wrong with his actions and words. He guess you would know.
He was born in a place where mountains and forests became part of his people’s lives, where the sky blessed the earth with fertile sweetness of green fields, where the stream stretched long and clear enticingly inviting to the young and the innocent to play in its clear, pure waters; where he would be blessed with three brothers and three sisters; where life used to be as easy as lying comfortably in the summer grass where birds swarmed and turned in a great form of clouds overhead, throwing a bright and hopeful look at the world. That day he was born was September 3, 1977. According to his parents, a loud, vigorous sound of cry wafted through the morning night, and reached as far as to the highest tips of the mountains that half-surrounded our barrio--- as they would tell him later with exaggerated seriousness. His first six years was spent in that barrio, where his grandmother would tell them the story of kapre or butigtig, a kind of forest dog which was believed to be eating people, or would scare us to sleep with her brave adventures into the woods when she was still a young girl before World War II, where some centaurs or scary bats as big as a female pig would try to sweep down for a night bite.
He took his elementary years of education at Atabay Elementary School from 1984 to 1990 in a town’s school ten kilometers from the barrio where he grew. There were, of course, a good and bad years of his life in the elementary but with his parents’ encouragement and love, he would only remember the best years.
When his high school came, they moved to another town where he didn’t have to walk far from school, because right there in front of our house was his school, the Antique National School. It was 1990 when he started going to high school. Much was to be relished and enjoyed in remembering his high school life. There he began to discover what he wanted from life and what he wanted to be when he would grow up. He wanted to be lawyer (but then his parents could not afford to send to college taking up such course.). As he must notice, time flew fast suddenly and he had to see good-bye to a kind jumble of faces who shaped his personality and perception about life: these were his teachers from whom he would learned many things about the realities of men’s struggle through life. It was from these certain people that he learned that everybody has the right to dream and make better his life. Of course, with God’s blessings everything is! 1994 was the closing moment of his high school life.
College was another challenge of learning and filling up his mind with men’s great adventures which most of us have admired. But college is also a time to prepare yourself for greater challenges of life ahead in four years. 2001-2012 was his first year of march into the gate of tertiary education. This time the name of the school is St. Anthony’s College run by a group of priests and nuns. Here, his spiritual values were founded firm. He learned more about gift of giving and forgiving. His course was Bachelor Secondary Education with English and Spanish as his majors. Times, moments flashed. Minutes turned to hours; hours turned to days; weeks to years. All seemed to be a blur and a jumble of research papers, thesis, teaching practices and a lot of dealings and communing with young people and adults around the communities. Then, there it was himself, catching his breath for just having accomplished everything----all the requirements of his course. Done and submitted and accepted his papers were, he took the stage of his graduation ceremony and grabbed with all pride and honor his diploma. He was delirious with some much sense of accomplishment. Yet even then everything was not perfect for feeling a great joy because his father was no longer around to see me holding his diploma. The good Lord has taken him to be with Him for a better purpose. That was 2004, the year of his graduation.
Now he is a full-fledged professional teacher licensed by the Philippine Regulation Commission. He have been teaching at Sen. Renato Companero Cayetano Memorial Science and Technology High School for almost ten years now since 2005.
He’s hoping to become a writer or a translator of Spanish. And he hope that with GOD’S blessings there is more to be achieved for him. Anyway, he’s finishing his master study at one of the universities in National Capital Region with Linguistics as his area of concentration.
"YOU ARE NEVER TOO OLD TO SET ANOTHER GOAL OR TO DREAM A DREAM."
-c.S. lEWIS