Corazon Aquino

I'll be 35 on September.

My very first memory of Cory Aquino was that of being a widow of Senator Ninoy Aquino who was murdered August of 1983. A few years remove from the lifting of the martial law.

When she became our 11th president, it was this magical time when I was starting to understand how big the world is. It was a time when I was in acceleration class. It was a time when ideals are set for a man.

For men like me, our teenage minds were immersed and bombarded with this idea that the Filipino race is a special race. It is the race that produced Jose Rizal. The race that stage the first ever bloodless revolution to topple a 20-year dictatorship. The race that received the spirit that inspired songs like "Magkaisa" and "Handog ng Pilipino sa Mundo."

It infused in me that things are indeed possible.

You see, one has to grow up during the Ferdinand Marcos years to get what it means to be under martial rule. Though I was really young then, and it is only when I was in college when I fully grasped the idea of fear during the later years of the Marcos Presidency.

I mean, I used to laugh at the joke that the most powerful man in the Philippines was President Ferdinand Marcos' barber. Why? Because only his barber can order him like "tumingin sa kaliwa... yumuko..."

That joke only works when it is already imbued in you that Apo was someone you should be afraid of = )

Corazon Aquino defeated President Marcos in a snap election. A homemaker defeating the bar topnotcher. A widow defeating a 20-year ruler. That's something.

And for that idea to be drilled into my young mind, that's something.

Corazon Aquino, for me, is the impossibility that happened.

Corazon Aquino, for me, is the expression of God's hand in the Philippines.