Good News -- not for the balikbayan only

In the 1960s and 1970s, migrating was so easy. Back then, one didn't have to part with an arm or a leg in order to work and live in a rich country. Consequently, half of my high school batch are now prosperous expats living the good life in the United States, Canada, and Australia.

When I meet some of them online or face to face in one of their balikbayan sorties, they frequently ask me: "Why did you stay?"

My patent answer is: "I didn't dream the American dream," with its prideful undertones.

But nearer the truth is: "It never occurred to me to leave." So I say that too.

"But why not," some would insist with great curiosity.

Such probing has led me to an exercise in introspection.

I probably lacked the daring required for someone to leave warm home and hearth to venture to a foreign land where nothing is certain except cold strangers and colder winters. Plus I happened to be so ginawin.

I probably lacked ambition, easily content with the tiny professional niche I managed to build here which brought me much in psychic income but little in material rewards beyond a small home and no-frills amenities. It must be the gift of shallowness, as in mababaw ang kaligayahan.

I probably lacked foresight to think in terms of "next generations" and pro-actively secure a good life for my children and my children's children. Tutulog-tulog -- that's me, to a T.

Could it be, on the other hand, that I define the good life a bit otherly than the Pinoy-everyman does?

Is it possible I have inherent faith in my country and people and by extension in my God. A God I cannot imagine --when pouring out His beneficence -- to distinguish between east and west and between white and brown and black.

This is a faith that is often severely tested by biting realities in this otherwise fair land -- including an economy that wouldn't take off, a body politic that refuses to mature, graft and corruption that have grown endemic.

Goodnewsbalikbayan.com keeps faith with this faith.

This new website invites Pinoy OFWs and expats to come home to Pinas -- virtually or actually, for a while or for good. And come home not only for the umbilical and sentimental ties, but also for more practical reasons.

Like for prospects in real estate, entrepreneurship and other investments. Or for enjoying the spectacular sunsets, culinary feasts and nature trips the best way they can be enjoyed -- in the company of a warm and welcoming people.

And also for connecting with other Pinoys in common passions and advocacies that will burnish the Filipino identity and label.

Goodnewsbalikbayan.com sends out the wishful message that the good life need not be sought elsewhere but rather lived right here in our country.

(Goodnewsbalikbayan.com is edited by Noemi Dado, with Dine Racoma, Annalyn Jusay, AJ Matela, and Annamanila, as sub-editors.)

APPROPRIATING PAIN

I caught my friend Doris crying silently in her cubicle. Although she doesn’t say anything, I know its again that good-for-nothing whom she calls “my everything.”

When your sister or friend hurts badly -- physically or emotionally -- and you feel so helpless, what do you do?

You make your shoulder a little broader for crying on.

You want to say "You nitwit you. Why should you let that SOB hurt you.” Or: "You think you love him but you don't, can't. " But you don't. You don't deny her her feelings.

You want to tell her about your kumare or kapitbahay who suffered bigger than she does, but who was able to cope. But you don't. You don't say "wala lang yang problema mo compared to so-and-so." Nope, you avoid belittling her troubles.

You just listen, make those cooing little noises, try to rephrase her pain, turn it every which way, and hope she talks some of the hurt away. Talking -- like writing -- can be cathartic, you know. You listen -- even if you can almost lip-sync what she's saying. And then you listen again. You take the phone even if it’s 2 a.m.

The cliché way is to pray for the hurting friend. Maybe it is unfair to call prayer that word. I am sorry if I offend others by the narrowness or recklessness of my vocabulary. But it’s too easy to say “I will pray.” It is even easy to do, too. I can pray by rote; I can compose a prayer – as I sometimes do –and say it over and over again until the repetition erodes it of meaning. And my own experience is that prayer does not always produce immediate results but has to patiently wait for “God’s own time.”

There must be more than listening and praying.

Can you – uhmm -- appropriate for yourself some of that pain? Can you carry around a piece of it to relieve someone of his or her load?

I have this lame-brain theory that pain is a universal pie that can be cut up and distributed thinly. And that if you get a slice bigger than your quota, you leave the other person with a smaller and lighter piece to carry around.

But I am just full of hot air, you know. Big deal, big talk.

For … what are the mechanics of appropriating pain for oneself?

How does the hot air translate into action?

I don’t know.

Another’s pain can never really reach me – except in an abstract way. The only way for that pain to touch me is for something to happen in my personal life that will cut and bleed me.

Then and only then will my talk turn into walk.

But I wouldn’t want that, would I? I am not as numb as I might tout myself to be. And if I have really desensitized myself, what pain would I be talking about?

No, there should be a better way. But I don’t know it yet.

Can it be to spread more kindness to the world?

Can it be to fix one’s own unmended fences – no more pretending the damage is not there, but rather pick up the pieces and hammer away.

Can it be to forgive those you are most hard pressed to forgive?

How will that help Doris who is hurting badly?

It is hard to say. I am not blind to the gaping fallacies of my reasoning. My brain is shot full of holes. Still, I rest my case on that fragile ground.

I just know, sure as the sun sets and rises, that people’s fates -- friends’ especially -- are inextricably connected.

(Ano daw?)

(To my friend, D)
Yesterday we cried, stung by life
That promised, gave, then smashed away.
The broken shards lie in the sun
Shimmering, a river of tears.

We swam, my friend, we swam
We swam for our lives.
Our eyes dried with every stroke
As we glimpsed the shore.

Yesterday we cried
But yesterday's far and gone.
We're safe, we're free -- we've always been.
We've forgotten why we cried.

POST SCRIPT ON GAGALANGIN (by Mario Silva)

Once in a great while, a blogger receives unexpected rewards such as this -- a letter/commentary from amazing Mario Silva sent through his daughter, kindred blogger, exskindiver Chesca.

(Read it for the historical highlights and human-interest sidelights about old Manila)

Dear Chesca:

This is an additional comment to Annamanila's blog. Very much delayed but I think she will still like to read it.

I did not know that Gagalangin is in Tondo. I learned this after going over her blog again. She wrote so many interesting things. The woman (Nena), whose story is so touching, a very admirable woman indeed. I am sure many of our dear women, wives and mothers, have gone through so much of this kind of suffering. She wrote about the native delicacies of our home land (chicharong bulaklak, balun-balunan, day-old chicks, penoy/balut, chicharong baboy, burong talangka.etc). She made me re-live again what is good and beautiful about the Philippines.

Her description of Gagalangin - I never realized how many illustrious sons and daughters Gagalangin had produced. Heroes, great men and women of our history, in our literary field, in the theater, in movies. Kaya pala Gagalangin ... it was the cradle of so many of our "talagang ginagalang" na mga mamayan. I recall mentioning long ago her blog to Ayo, and his remark was, "why did I never know about Gagalangin when I have known Manila for so long?" I think it is because during his time, Gagalangin was so out of the way for the youth like you and the rest of the children who grew up on Quezon City.

Going back to her blog again, I realize that I was mistaken. The street where I learned to drive was not Maypajo but Juan Luna Street, and the eatery that served bibingka beside the Pritil bridge was not Aling Nena, but Ferino's. Thanks to those who commented on her blog. But as you know, I must be given some leeway … it was many, many years ago … more than half a century ago. And going back again to Pritil Bridge, it reminds me of the book "Manila, My Manila" by our National Artist, the late Nick Joaquin. He said that Manila took a long time to make and that its ground used to be the sea and that surely explains the presence of so many esteros, one of them being where Pritil bridge is located. And speaking of esteros, the bridge on Escolta, near Sta. Cruz Church, along where Samanillo Building and Regina Building are located crosses an estero. And in Quiapo, there used to be a street called Estero Cegado (I wonder if that street still exists). Some historians, as I recall, also refer to the Estero de Reina Regente and Estero de Binondo.

One of her commentators also mentioned Bangkusay. Our history records a Battle of Bankusay of 1571. In the war of colonization the Spanish Forces had embarked on a search for native warriors who had resisted them. A fierce battle ensued in Bangkusay between the Spanish forces and the native Manilans. The Battle of Bankusay remains a significant event in our history.

More than 400 years later, on a night in May, 1954, another battle would occur in Bankusay. In this site, a gang war erupted between what was known as the Grease Gun Gang and another rival gang. The case (which I understand was made into a movie) resulted in prosecutions for four separate cases for murder and frustrated murder. The victims were in a calesa parked along Bangkusay street, between Kapulong and Inocencio. One of the survivors testified that he was there because his parents "needed pigs for the Gagalangin fiesta..." There were eleven originally accused, of which, one was killed before the trial, another was discharged and used as a state witness, but was killed after he testified, and nine stood trial. Three were acquitted and the rest who were sentenced to various sentences including life, appealed to the Supreme Court. The High Court in its decision modified the lower court's decision and sentenced four to the extreme penalty of death and the remaining two to life imprisonment. The Court also stated in its decision that it was error for the trial court to have acquitted the three but that as the law stands, it was powerless to effect the correction.

The reason why this is of interest to me is not only because of the element of Bangkusay and Gagalangin in the case, but also I was a young lawyer then and I was assigned by the court to defend one of the accused as "counsel de oficio." The judge who assigned me was my former professor at the Ateneo. The trial lasted several months. I recall that one of the trial dates was January 19, 1955, when your kuya Jimmy was born. I represented one of the three acquitted. My services were performed for free, gratis et amore.

Torres High School, which was discussed in her blog was named after Florentino Torres, one of the first four Filipino justices of the Supreme Court. The site of the school was originally a Constabulary barracks. As I said in my original comment to her blog, I and my brother and two sons of General Castaneda, Mariano Jr. and Juanito, walked all the way from St. Theresa's College in San Marcelino Sreet in Ermita to Juan Luna Street in Gagalangin, where the Constabulary Barracks was located. General Castaneda was the then commander of the military barracks. Our childhood escapade occurred sometime in 1937.

General Castaneda later figured in a famous incident. In 1947, he saved President Manuel A. Roxas from assassination when he kicked away a hand grenade hurled on the stage in Plaza Miranda, Quiapo, immediately after President Roxas delivered a speech. The grenade rolled over and fell outside the stage, killing an innocent onlooker and wounding others. The would-be assassin, Julio C. Guillen, was arrested, tried, and convicted. He was executed in the electric chair of the national penitentiary in Muntinlupa in 1950.

Before that, General Castaneda, as younger officer, had been assigned to Cavite, where Mommy's dad, your lolo Gregorio, was then assigned as Provincial Treasurer. Your lolo and General Castaneda knew each other well. Mommy told me that she and your Auntie Norma, had always dressed up similarly then they were children and they were often mistaken as twins. In fact, long, long after, General Castaneda happened to meet your Auntie Dollie and had asked her how the twins were.

These are some musings which have come to me since the Gagalangin blog of Annamanila. I hope you can transmit this to her. She writes very well and all her stories are so very interesting.

Daddy











Letterwriter/guest blogger Mario Silva, in his heydays, as trial lawyer in Manila
(circa 1960)

HOW YVETTE TOOK OUT AN INSURANCE AGAINST PAIN (conclusion)

What breached Camelot was another affair. Unlike the others before it, this one was serious. It broke their marriage.

It was in another Hong Kong trip where Yvette sensed that something was afoul. Taking the trip with them was Jorge's brother-in-law who planed in from California a week before. In Hong Kong, the brothers would disappear at 6 p.m. and would not reappear until the early hours of morning. In Manila, Yvette discovered that all the while, the new woman in Jorge's life was also booked in the same hotel their family stayed in. A neighbor heard Jorge boasting his audacious feat to a tennis buddy.

"Deny to the death si Jorge" when Yvette confronted him. It took a private detective for her to learn that the girl was a 27-year-old former guest relations officer -- also a former mistress of a businessman -- and that the lovers had rented a condo unit. As soon as she got the detective's report, Yvette packed all of Jorge's things and sent the bags to his clinic. Jorge brought them right back, fuming. He refused to go. He also refused to break up the affair. He came home erratically, spending more and more time with his girl. Soon, Yvette and Jorge were sleeping in separate bedrooms.

One day, he came home with a sheaf of legal documents. He wanted a separation of property. Yvette refused to sign. "Our children were begging me not to sign. They thought that if I signed, that would be the last they'd see of their father." But he asked her again and again. When she got tired of his pushing, she finally signed "... matigil lang sya from all the verbal insults he was giving me."

Within a few months, Jorge left the family home. But not before he accused Yvette of being "controlling and manipulative" and declaring that "he never loved me, was never happy with me." He dismissed their marriage as "wasted years."

Later, Yvette would herself put it this way: "We were meditating side by side. Suddenly, he snapped out of the trance, turned to me, and said: "I don't want this. I want romance in my life."

At first, Yvette tried to win him back. She asked friends and relatives to intervene. She stormed the heavens with prayers. She climbed Mt. Banahaw to invoke the help of the mountain spirits. She spent a small fortune on seers and clairvoyants at P10,000 per session. Someone told her of a new "technology" called "radionics" that could work like magic. For several nights, she mounted a picture of Jorge and then played tapes on family and moral values to the picture. All these to no avail.

She talked to Leila on the phone. She reasoned with her, described the family she broke up, warned her of karmic debts and responsibilities. She also told her that Jorge did not have much money, on his own. Leila snapped back: "He's not happy with you. Why do you force him to stay with you?" Later in their talk, Leila seemed to relent: "Alright, we're having dinner tonight. I will talk to him."

When Jorge came home the next morning, he woke Yvette and said: "Leila asked me to go back to you. So here I am."

Stung, Yvette was almost hysterical. "Is that it? You're coming back on her say-so? Do you really think I'd take you back on those terms?" Jorge left without replying.

The next day, Leila called: "I did my part. I can't do anything anymore." Yvette could only say later: " Ang yabang nya."

What made Yvette finally wake up was when Jorge phoned her to "get all your skincare products out of the clinic." Apparently, the lovers had taken a dealership with a competing company. Eventually, the business would collapse.

Three years into their separation, Yvette is beginning to heal. More intense meditation helped her tap the healing power within. She has joined a "truth-and-wisdom" group spreading the gospel of unconditional love and service to mankind. She lately learned that the best way to heal is by keeping busy and being preoccupied with other people's concerns.

She still hurts sometimes. While swimming in the beach last summer, her son almost drowned. After swimming to safety, he told Yvette: "You know, Mom, what gave me strength to swim in spite of cramps? I just thought of how much I hate Papa!"

It gets lonely sometimes. It has been one -- two -- three years of being celibate. She could have bonded. But with whom? The American whom she went out with for a while and who has kept calling and e-mailing? The sweet-faced, white-haired man who talks the same esoteric language she understands? But does she have to bond with someone special -- when all the world could be her lover. "Universal love, remember?" Yvette says chuckling.

A month ago, Jorge sent feelers he wanted to go back home. When Yvette asked him if he was about to give up his mistress, he smiled and laughed. "I think you want to come back for my money," she couldn't resist telling him, aware he was having financial trouble. He laughed again. She figured he was not ready.

If ever Yvette opens her doors, she'll make sure Jorge -- or whoever -- would give her space to practice what she has learned about loving and serving her fellows. She'd make sure nothing sets back her own sometimes faltering journey towards authenticity.

This journey is the most important thing in her life today.

She likes the woman that she is now evolving into. She organized a women support group to assist other hurt wives cope with the pain of betrayal. "As I help others heal, I also heal -- it is self-therapeutic."

The new Yvette feels more in charge of her life. It has empowered her to know that, much as she still loves Jorge, she could live happily without him. The new Yvette feels freer. This new sense of freedom will hasten her self-actualization, she says.

The last three years brought her self-esteem to an all-time low. Now, if Jorge told her again he never loved her, she could readily reply: "It's alright. I love myself."

She doesn't think of the future. She copes day by day, moment to moment. "Pag gising ko, thank you. Bago matulog, thank you ulit."

She also learned to take responsibility. It is neither all of Jorge's fault nor all of her fault. "We share responsibility. In a sense, Jorge is right in saying I manipulated him. I subjugated myself when I was with him out of fear. I lived a lie. I did not do it out of love -- for how could I have given love when I lacked self-love to begin with?"

In a previous life, she and Jorge were also a married couple who lived in England, she found out in a regression session with a psychologist-hypnotist. "In that earlier life, I was the one who was unfaithful. I ran away with a gypsy man," Yvette shares. The information helped her understand the law of karma.


The clouds above us join and separate.
The breeze in the courtyard leaves and returns.
Life is like that so why not relax?
Who can stop us from celebrating?

- Lu Yu

(Women In Love and in Trouble) HOW YVETTE TOOK OUT AN INSURANCE AGAINST PAIN - part 1

(as told to annamanila)

Jorge was Yvette’s first love. They were classmates in Pre-med at a Catholic university. He was tall, good looking, intelligent – with a little-boy-lost quality about him that drew women like a magnet. Yvette was captivated by all these. But most of all, she fell in love with what she thought was the “inner man.”

Jorge was religious … or so Yvette thought. Jorge looked beyond the material and superficial … or at least that was how he impressed her. He seemed to understand about Yvette’s own yearning to unravel the mysteries of life, God, and the universe.

Yvette’s fascination for life’s hidden meaning started as far back as she could remember. She would look at the stars and wondered how big was the universe and whether the God that she knew was also the God of all the universe and all that she could imagine as well as those that she could not. She marveled at how high her imagination flew, even as her feet remained on the ground. She asked questions her elders could not answer, such as if God created the world, who created God?

In
high school, while most other teenagers read Emily Loring and Mills and Boons, Yvette buried her nose into the Science of the Mind, The Autobiography of a Yoga, and self-help books.

She dabbled in astrology and numerology. She was curious to know the psychic meaning of colors, interpret dreams, play the tarot and the rune. Before long, she was trying automatic writing with some degree of success. She became a vegetarian in college. She still is.

Outwardly, however, she was a typical youngster who loved dressing up, partying, hamming it up, and having a good time with friends. No, she did not go around wearing high priestess robes or making esoteric pronouncements. “Kikay din ako. Chichay din ako,” she now says, suppressing a giggle. But even then, she had to fight bouts of insecurity. She thought she was plain looking, and doubted if any man would truly want her or bother to have a second look.

Thus, when Jorge, the provinciano from Bacolod, singled her out and wooed her, she couldn’t believe he truly loved her, “… except that he probably discerned the beautiful me inside.”

Before she met Jorge, Yvette had this grand dream of being a missionary-doctor. She fancied herself in some far-flung rural area, serving the poor with the devotion of a Mother Teresa. She would not mind being a spinster, she thought, or even a nun. Nonetheless, she was also open to a relationship, but only “… if I could find somebody who shared my dreams and convictions.”

Jorge went on to medical school as Yvette shifted gears and took up B.S. psychology. She later picked up a Master’s degree while waiting for Jorge to graduate.

When Yvette graduated in 1974, she married Jorge in civil ceremonies. It was a secret wedding. A year later, they were wed in church if only to quiet Yvette’s creeping sense of “living in sin.” It was another secret wedding. They had to keep their marriage under wraps because Jorge’s family would have been devastated over a premature marriage for their student-doctor son.

In 1978, Jorge graduated from medical school. It was only then that he and Yvette came out in the open as a couple. They renewed their marriage vows in church in the presence of their families.

As Jorge struggled through his medical residency, Yvette found a good-paying job in a government corporation. In those early years, she made herself indispensable to her husband. She made sure he was eating well, resting well, and unperturbed by family problems – so he could study well. By this time, the children had started coming. Yvette worked doubly hard. She wanted Jorge to be a good doctor, especially since a successful cosmetic surgeon had taken him under his wing.

The cheating started not long after their first baby came. A letter left unwittingly in Jorge’s car gave him away. It was from Gina, a young medical technologist. The letter relived in lurid detail a romantic interlude during a medical mission out of town.

Other liaisons followed. By then, he had set up his own private practice. He hired nurses to assist him in his clinic. Two of them became his lovers.

Every time Yvette confronted Jorge, he pressed his innocence. He chided her for being jealous, insecure, imaginative.

Yvette in turn blamed herself. “It must be me,” she told herself. She was not loving enough, not understanding enough, not pretty enough. “All the time, I wanted to believe that Jorge was the wonderful person I thought he was, and I failed him.” She was wracked by fear. She couldn’t imagine life without Jorge. He was the sun. Her life revolved around him.

To improve herself, she took up once again the inward journey she had begun. If she could not transform herself into the wife Jorge wanted, then she could at least fortify herself against the pain of betrayal. Slowly, carefully, she gathered the tools that she thought would make herself invincible.

Her search took her to the Science of the Mind and Man (SOMM) program. It was the very “in” thing in the 1980s. But unlike thousands of others who took the course and then moved on, Yvette stayed on and on. For 15 years, she belonged to the SOMM inner circle of disciples.

“The SOMM played on my fears. It taught me to esteem myself, love myself, be happy with myself. I was told that when I am happy with myself, all the rest will follow. I figured if I stayed with SOMM, I will always know how to keep my marriage happy.”

One of the SOMM’s promises to its followers was material prosperity. It was part of what was supposed to follow when one achieved self-awareness. To Yvette, SOMM delivered as promised. Money started flowing in for Yvette and Jorge.

She had by then quit her job, sold their home, and invested in a series of small businesses. She tried shoemaking, running a bakeshop, weaving – all with reasonable success. In 1990, she hit it big with a cosmetic formulation handed down to her by her grandmom who was a chemist. She commercialized and improved it and added product lines. Today, the business has captured a niche in the cosmetic market. And she has learned to manage by exception.

Where before Jorge dismissed SOMM as “another prosperity mumbo-jumbo,” where before he was jealous of the time Yvette spent with the “inner circle,” Jorge now joined in, at first cautiously. “I guess he couldn’t argue with success, so he jumped in.” In time, he too became part of the “inner circle.”

What followed were what Yvette called “my Camelot years.” Five glorious years of peace, love and plenty for Yvette, Jorge and their three children. Five years Jorge played the ideal husband and father bit to the hilt.

As Yvette’s business prospered, Jorge grew in his practice. He was slowly carving a name for himself as a competent surgeon. Their family and finances thrived. Her business and his clinic complemented each other. Jorge carried her skin-care products in his clinic. In turn, they tithed generously. It was the key to prosperity SOMM taught them.

Yvette and Jorge went to Hong Kong, Thailand, and Indonesia for a second honeymoon. Heaven on earth, Yvette calls the interlude. “We slept wrapped in each other’s arms. And when we woke up, we said, ‘I love you.’”

To further fortify their relationship, Yvette and Jorge took the Marriage Encounter program, where they eventually became a “shepherd couple.” They were the seniors who coached other couples on how to heal their marital troubles.”

Together, they grew in spirituality. They discovered transcendental meditation. It helped him relax from the pressures of work. It helped her manage her fears which still lurked from time to time.

As her mind relaxed, so did her body. A hyperthyroid condition uncannily disappeared. “I was scheduled to be operated on. But when the doctor looked again, it was gone.”

Yvette laid her fears to rest. She was convinced she had taken out enough insurance against unhappiness.

“I was presumptuous,” she now admits. After 18 years in marriage and three years out of it, she declares: “In marriage as in all of life, there are no guarantees.”

What breached Camelot was another affair. Unlike the others before it, this one was serious. It broke their marriage.

It was in another Hong Kong trip where Yvette sensed that something was afoul. Taking the trip with them was Jorge’s brother-in-law who planed in from California a week before. In Hong Kong, the brothers would disappear at 6:00 p.m. and would not reappear until the early hours of morning. In Manila, she discovered that all the while, the new woman in Jorge’s life was booked in the same hotel their family stayed in. A neighbor heard Jorge boasting his audacious feat to a tennis buddy.

Later, Yvette would herself put it this way: "We were meditating side by side. Suddenly, he snapped out of his trance, turned to me, and said: "I don't want this. I want romance in my life."

- To be concluded next week -

The Sandwich Years

In our backyard, where we pile up some of the bigger pieces of junk we have accumulated through the years, is a chair like no other. It has a lightly-upholstered seat and arm rests. It is a most beguiling chair because at the center of the seat is a perfectly round hole so big a basketball can be tossed right through it.

The chair is a reminder of my sandwich years.

You know, of course, the old saw -- there is a time for sowing and a time for reaping. A time to receive and a time to give back. A time for making something of yourself and time for raising a family. And for many – not all – there is a time for the sandwich years.

My children were ages five to 19 when my mother, 72, was felled by a cerebral stroke. Though it was described as moderate, it left her paralyzed on one side of the body, unable to walk, and unable to talk. A year after convalescing in my younger sister’s house, she came to live with me and my family.

The inability to speak coherently can be a condition known as aphasia. For an aphasic, the idea or the word is clear and intact in his or her mind but it just wouldn’t come out right when he or she attempts to get it out. At first, my mother virtually pulled her hair out of sheer frustration from not being able to express herself. Eventually, she withdrew into silence and learned some sign language.

What do you do when your sick, helpless, frustrated, and unhappy mother joins you, your husband, and your growing children in your cramped little home?

First you try to recover from the initial shock of seeing the world turn upside down. Suddenly, your parent needed parenting. You brace yourself for the anticipated tug and pull between the demands of growing children and an ailing mother.

Then you arrange for help. If you’re lucky, you manage, as I was able, to engage the services of a caregiver with a tough physique and a gentle heart -- the first for carrying Mom from bed to wheelchair to bathroom or car and back; the second for comforting her with touch or word in her darker moods. And at first those moods were so frequent it was all you could do not to break down. You get a neighborhood hilot – almost as old as your mom but a thousand times stronger – to massage her limbs each day with some potion, hoping against hope she might get some of her motor functions back.

Then you reorganize the house -- its rhythms and patterns -- around the afflicted one.

From school, each of the children had to take their regulation 30-minute turn with their grandmom. They could do their thing with her -- talk to her, read to her, sing to her, feed her, or simply lie down beside her to hug or hold hands.

On weekends, we pushed her to the center of family activities. We pulled her wheelchair to the table’s kabisera during meals. We took her to mass when we could borrow my sister’s car. We forced her to watch home movies though she would sleep through most of the run. When the afternoon cooled, we pushed her wheelchair out into the yard so she could watch children play and people go by or simply wait for sunset and listen to the bird calls.

I bought her a couple of Reader’s Digest large-font books so she could revert to her old love for reading. She just looked at the pages awhile and let the volumes fall heavily to the floor.

My son came homehappily one day carrying a big magic slate, certain he could now communicate with his Lola. He coaxed her by writing on the slate : L-O-L-A- S-U-L-A-T-K-A-D-I-T-O. Uhmmm, no thanks, her wan smile seemed to say.

My other son bought a bingo set not too long after. My mom hated bingo when she was younger -- dismissing it as a no-brainer -- and it seemed she was not about to love it now. She refused to play.

I guess that was then that an inspiration hit me. With my children’s help, I proceeded to execute it.

We set up a square table at the center of the living room even as we covered the table with a thick folded blanket. I lugged a heavy old box -- fringed with cobwebs and laced with dust -- from a top cabinet and poured its contents onto the table. Some of the tiles bounced as they hit each other. With my mom seated on one side and I opposite her, I bade my older sons take the two vacant chairs. Shuffling the tiles noisily, we built walls out of them on all four sides of the table. We were ready to play.

A son rolled a dice to determine who was first.

I began to distribute the tiles, giving the first set to my Mom, whispering a prayer.

Holding my breath, I watched my older daughter by her side put up the tiles for her.

I continued to watch, my blood rushing to my face, as Mom pointed at this tile and that for my daughter to arrange.

When I tossed one tile to the center of the table, my mom smiled broadly and held up her good hand. She was “pung.”

We all let out a whoop of joy. MY MOM STILL LIKED TO PLAY MAHJONGG!

Later, my children would boast they were the only youngsters in the world taught and encouraged by their elders to gamble, bribed to play every weekend, scolded when they didn't want to, told they could keep their winnings. The katulongs – there were three of them at the time – also learned the game. They didn't have to be bribed to play though -- it was part of their job description.

Someday, I might tell you what the big-holed upholstered chair was used for during those sandwich years.

To Apo Andeng, at One

Let me count the ways
A year-old girl is made
Of sugar and spice
And all things nice?

Sugar? she tosses in the air
Powdering mom's hair, dad's nose
In sweet sticky chaos.
Best to keep spice rack
Pepper corns and chili bits
Out of that impish reach.

Nice? this minute, horrid the next
Now gurgling, beautiful eyes-ing
Coochie-cooing little wench
Bewitching by the simple expedience
Of close-opening tiny fists and throwing kisses
Like a crown princess.

Horrid? No, no, no, you say.
No, no, no she repeats
A decibel louder
As she reaches for the 'puter.
Watches, rapt, David Cook for a while
Then knocks out power button
Faster than Manny Pack-yaw.

What is a year-old girl made of?
Mama-dada-wawa talk
Taking the first wobbly walk.
Creeping out
Of mama's arms to freedom
Fraught with slips and bumps.

Little girl, this is the world
You've chosen
David Cook, Manny Pack-yaw
Freedom walks, fall n' stumble
Sugar and spice
Some things un-nice.

September 15, 2008

Here's One for Rachel

Rachel is a biblical character who personifies filial love and devotion of the highest order.

In Heart of Rachel, the blog, the reader can follow the everyday life of a modern
Rachel, but one whose family is intact. This is the life that revolves around Yohan (Rachel's one and still only child) and her loving husband. I haven't seen Yohan but I am privy to his sweetness, pranks, and wisdom, prodigious for his age -- including what Rachel has called 'yohanisms.' I guess I am one of hundreds who have followed Yohan's growing up with much delight and anticipation, through the blog. It is for me like having a virtual grandson. :)

The blog brims over with the simple and complicated pleasures and challenges of motherhood. A feel- good blog, through and through.

I vote for Heart of Rachel for bloggers' choice in the Philippine Blog Awards.

Collecciones (Collectors, Collectibles, and Collecting Instincts)

My daughter collects abandoned kittens, wounded birds, butterflies with broken wings and such. She feeds and nurses them till they get well or die. Once, she attempted to augment her collection by retrieving a chick named Brutus from the mouth of a neighbor's dog named Bernie by forcing Bernie's jaws open. If Brutus as much as peeped -- which is unreasonable to expect as she was by then missing her entire head -- my daughter would have insisted we take her to the vet's, where we were already notorious for bringing in the only unpedigreed menagerie of pets for treatment. By the way, you should have seen how the manhandled dog ran away -- his tail between his legs -- crying "ralph, ralph, ralph," which happened to be the name of his owner. Poor Bernie, he never knew what hit him.

My office friend Arthur collected yellow green jokes, ostensibly to burnish his lackluster lectures on business planning and entrepreneurship. I asked him to quit it because he often forgot the punch lines anyway. He doggedly kept on collecting and mis-delivering them because that -- his forgetting the clinchers -- made his audience laugh, anyway. Art suddenly died a few years ago and my favorite image of him is still where he scratches his head and smiles sheepishly and boyishly, after botching yet another otherwise perfect little joke.

A former boss handed down to me his breathtaking (his adjective, not mine) stamp collection, which included first-issue stamps, Olympics stamps from 1950 backwards, Princess Diana stamps, stamps almost as big as a fourth sheet of paper, and stamps of unstamply shapes -- circles, ovals, triangles and hexagons. He expected me to wax ecstatic at the small turnover ceremonies we had just before he left for abroad. I managed to coo my feigned delight and I guess I did myself proud for he smiled in a very self-satisfied way. After the collection languished for years in my possession, I tried to pass it on to my eldest son who tried in turn to push it underhandedly to the brother next to him. In time, I gave the stamps away, a little at a time, to another friend who knew how to spell and pronounce "philately" correctly.

I am not so quirky I don't want to be a collector all because every other person I know is into collecting. On the contrary, I like the idea of being fixated on an object rather than a person. After all, we keep losing people when they migrate or die or stop loving us. And while they are still around, people complain we over- under- or mishandle them. Inanimate objects -- blessthem -- stay on and on (unless you break or misplace them and then it's all your fault) and are faultlessly self-sufficient, stoic, and uncomplaining.

My point before I got lost explaining the difference between animate and inanimate collections is that collectors cannot just choose what to collect: it is pre-ordained. When God matched collectors and collectibles, he was quite specific about it. Stamp people are not to be mixed up with coin people, candle people, perfume people, stationery people, rare books people. There are those into Lladro figurines and Murano crystals and those that do matches and caps. Apparently it was not written in the stars that I do stamps.

What was I then? I wanted to collect boy friends and suitors at the very outset but I simply did not have the shape and the looks required. So I reluctantly gave that up. I tried elephant figurines and paper currencies, then baskets, then Delft blues without much success. I was beginning to panic -- like a maiden about to enter spinsterhood -- I was sleeping when collector's instincts were being distributed. Until I went to Japan and saw in the sidewalks what looked like teapots with double spouts. Something clicked in me and I knew I had found the thing for which I was intended.



Since then my friends who are about to travel to Japan do so stealthily because they know if I knew they were Japan bound, I would drop my manners and be inconsiderate and insist they bring me stuff that had to be hand carried, being fragile-handle with care.

It IS preordained -- for why else would I have a cupboard groaning with tea pots now when I never ever got the tea set I made kulit to Santa for in my bereft childhood.

(By the way, I also collect -- aside from Japanese tea pots -- Chinese tea pots and generic -- from whichever country -- whiteware. Hmmm ... lapit na Pasko, di ba?)

You'll Be Fine

I was cleaning up my word files the other night while waiting for my sundo to come. Came across this poem written years ago when my boss Leon Chico, former director of UP ISSI (my organization) died. He died in California sometime during 9/11.

I was among those who spoke at the memorial service for him. This is what I delivered.

Thought I'd share it with you.


Was it ages ago? My first day at ISSI?
You were my one-man welcoming committee.
Who flashed the first smile
Held out the first hand.
Assured: "You'll do well. You'll be fine."
That chased away first day jitters.
Made the day soar like a song.

Was it ages ago? My first years at ISSI?
I got wed, had my firstborn
Lost my second.
Lived life, got hurt, lost and found self.
Grew a small faltering step at a time.
You were a constant – friend/boss/teacher
Who teased, cajoled, soothed, inspired
Assured in many different ways I'd be fine.

Was it ages ago? The day you left ISSI?
Did you outgrow us?
Were you destined to be an ex-patriot?
You missed people power 1 and 2
Erap's impeachment trial too
You'd have spilled your guts like us
Felt proud of your countrymen.

But you stayed away, flitting about and
Around somewhere
In the rain forests of Micronesia
The steel jungles of California
The predictable non-traffic of Singapore.
Wherever, you always did well
For the people you served
You were fine.

Was it just three Sundays ago?
When the phone rang '
Through dreamless sleep.
"LC is gone" the message said.
Say one for him, it prodded.
I mumbled rote words
But the tears didn't come
It is safe to die, I know
It is safe to fly.
You've never been as fine.

But wait, it was I that wasn't safe
Not from the memories
Of my first day at ISSI
Of my one-man welcoming committee
Of my first season of growing older
Of the one constant boss/friend/teacher.
I choked from all the remembering
Till I heard the wind whisper
"You'll be fine."