June 1840
Hacienda Esperanza
Province of Batangas, Philippines
They would never tell a soul.
For how could they explain what drew them out the grand hacienda doors and into the depths of that summer night?
He released her hand and pulled her closer. The house stood silhouetted against the night sky.
“It is finally quiet,” he said with a chuckle. Their adult children and young grandchildren kept the many rooms and corridors filled with life-giving noise and activity. The image of them sleeping brought tears to his eyes.
“We are no longer young,” she whispered, but neither regretted it. The years of love and memories were there between them. And beneath a tropical moon with the earth cool beneath their bare feet, they felt nearly as youthful as the night they found each other during that great Philippine storm.
He took the basket of orchids from her arm, and they walked along the dirt path away from the house. The imposing gates didn’t take long to reach, and then they found the property’s cornerstone in the moonlight. It was a metal spike, hammered into the earth decades earlier by her ancestor, the One-Armed Spaniard, who first built upon this land.
“You do the first one,” he said, extending the basket. The light pink petals of the orchid seemed to glow in the moonlight.
She took a blossom in her hand and remembered the day she’d found the orchid. She had been at her lowest, but that day turned into the beginning of a life that was more than she had hoped for or imagined.
These orchids were different from all the other ones she’d ever seen, not at all like those that grew in the fields near the hacienda house. Once she’d found a book of varieties, and even there she could not find the orchid now called by her name, in her honor.
“Do you remember?” he said, knowing that she did.
“Do you?” she said coyly.
“I have remembered every day of my life since then,” he said, touching her cheek. “Now go ahead, my beloved.”
With a nod, she bent down and dug at the fertile soil, placing the orchid blossom inside. Her husband bent beside her and covered the flower.
She closed her eyes and made the sign of the cross at her breast and spoke aloud.
“My ancestors built something here, and it has been blessed with growth and prosperity. My husband and our children and I have continued to prosper with many harvests and, more important, with great love and joy even in the years of hardship.
“Now, together we will go to the corners of our land and bury a blossom of this orchid—the flower that bonded us together. They will not sprout in these places. No one will know what we have done, except You, God Almighty, who sees all things. We do this as a symbol of Your presence upon this land and our request for Your continued protection and blessing in the ages to come.”
She opened her eyes and gazed into the starry sky. Then she grasped his arm with worry in her expression. “There will be times of much adversity. Blood and tears I can nearly smell upon the future.” A wave of panic washed over her.
“Do not fear, my love. We can do nothing but one thing. It is all the more reason for us to ask for divine protection and guidance.”
She knew he was right, and yet how she grieved to sense that pain was creeping along the fringes of future decades or more away.
He took her hands, and they stood. With his strong grasp and steady gaze, she felt her fear and grief diminish.
Then he spoke with the gentle strength he’d shown all his days. “Father God in Heaven. Creator of life, love, mercy, and grace. Bless our children, grandchildren, and our descendents to come. Draw them to know this place on earth and to discover Your will and Your ways. And through the years of hardship to come, sustain them, protect them, and restore again and again.”
Their prayers continued, and peace came as the blessing was complete.
He took her hand. “Let us walk the border and ask God’s feet to follow.”
And as they walked, she wondered about all their descendents to come. It amazed her to think of the lives already born from the love they shared. Though some might travel far away and times of adversity would come and go, this land would be their refuge.
This she did not doubt.