My Father and W. B. Yeats

Abstract

My Father and W. B. Yeats Monica Macansantos (bio) For Francis C. Macansantos My father was a regular listener of Jaime Licauco’s “Inner Mind on Radio,” which aired in the evenings when I was growing up in the Philippines. I have distinct memories of Licauco’s deep, velvety voice ushering itself into our brightly lit kitchen as my father settled into a chair after having done the dishes. Sometimes, he’d ask me to sit with him at our kitchen table as the famous paranormal expert told stories about a woman whose late father sent her a message from beyond the grave through her son, or about a man who felt himself rising from bed before catching a glimpse of his own slumbering body from where he stood. “Didn’t this happen to you once?” my father would ask me, referring to that time in high school when I had gone on a strange, slow-motion tour of my own bedroom as I remained asleep in bed. He was convinced that I had experienced an astral projection, explaining this phenomenon to me with the same conviction that Jaime Licauco’s voice carried with it as he interviewed guests on his show. Our staticky radio coated their tales of out-of-body experiences and ghostly apparitions in a grainy, reverential film, and my father would repeat these stories to me in awestruck tones just to make sure that I could follow. Not once did I think of questioning my father or this old man on the radio. I was pulled in by the current of wonderment that filled our kitchen, carrying us away from the ordinariness of the room where we sat, in which nothing levitated or gave off suspicious energies. My father’s trust in this old man left no space in my heart for doubt. What made Jaime Licauco seem less like an intruder in our household spouting nonsensical claims and more like a welcome guest at our table was his ability to talk about the extraordinary experiences of his guests as though they were normal occurrences to be expected in a person’s life. His guests would talk about strangers who appeared before them before disappearing into thin air, messages sent to them from dead loved ones via a strange and overpowering scent, and a sudden and passing ability to levitate. He’d listen intently, sharing a similar story he’d heard from a friend or colleague before offering explanations for these events that made sense if one were willing to believe. An energy healer could make one levitate by lifting their hands before [End Page 79] one’s chest while one’s eyes were closed, while a deceased loved one’s familiar scent persisted in the air because one wasn’t listening to their message. My mother teased my father about the ease with which he accepted these explanations—she found my father gullible, susceptible to charlatans on the street who would’ve swindled him of their life savings if it weren’t for her vigilance in guarding him. But there was an earnestness in Jaime Licauco’s manner that made one believe that he wasn’t telling these stories for personal gain, but to help others make sense of unexplainable events in their lives that other people dismissed as mere flights of fancy. One had to trust him when he said these things were real, and for my father, trusting him meant opening one’s eyes to a world that was more magical than what most people were willing to see. ________ When my father died without warning in 2017, I arrived home from New Zealand to see his notebooks and papers scattered in our living room. His reading glasses, mended with a paper clip twisted around the rim, rested with their temples spread out on our phone table, right beside his beloved armchair where he wrote his poems in the early morning. He had just started a new collection of poetry about friends who were long gone, and inside one of his notebooks were the titles of poems he had intended to write at the top of each page, such as “The Campus of...