Come Saturday Morning

It’s one of my favorite songs from the decade of the seventies. It was the theme music of the movie A Sterile Cuckoo. It was the theme playing in my head when I had a Saturday well-spent (spent in the literal sense) with my sisters, daughters and niece at this serendipitously named mall-paseo Serendra at The Fort, Taguig City.

It makes me wonder why I have to have an official reason presented to my husband (in this case, I was due for blood chem and checkup with my neurologist and internist at the Medical City)so I could visit family members in Pasig City. I’ve narrowed the two places I visit with some customer loyalty at Serendra: Fully Booked and Cupcakes by Sonja.

I promised by niece Bianca, 6, that I would buy her anything she liked as her prize for turning in outstanding grades in her kinder class at Assumption College Antipolo City. We combed the entire children’s books section. It was my daughter Ida who found her beloved children’s literature characters Madeline and Eloise, and since she’s a kinder teacher and building up her own library, I didn’t hesitate in getting her two titles: Mad About Madeline—The Complete Tales by Ludwig Bemelmans and Eloise in Moscow by Kay Thompson and illustrated by Hillary Knight.

Bianca is a bit like Eloise in that she is surrounded mainly by grownups, except when she’s in school. She can be a smart ass, but as my sister Gigi said, she is not greedy. All of us wanted to buy her something for her remarkable academic performance, but she knew she couldn’t pick anything she fancied. She had to settle for one item from each of us.

So down we went to the art supply section (increasingly a rare section in other stores—there are just not enough quality stuff). She settled for glitter glue and Lyra watercolor pencils which I later showed her how to manipulate.

All that going up and down the multi-level bookstore made us hungry. Consensus for best pick-me-up place was Cupcakes by Sonja where sister Suzy and I chose our favorite lemon-frosted cupcake and Ida had a pistachio cupcake with strawberries and cream. My older girl gave me P500 (which is my affirmation that I must’ve been a good mother because the girls don’t mind giving their jobless mother some pin money).

Somebody had the bright idea of returning to Fully Booked. Big mistake (spending wise) because I ended up charging almost more than a thousand pesos worth of books on Suzy’s credit card.

I shall be armchair traveling for the next couple of weeks with Sarah Turnbull’s Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris, Caroline Seller Manzo’s Casa Nostra: A Home in Italy and Novel Destinations: Literary Landmarks from Jane Austen’s Bath to Ernest Hemingway’s Key West.

Ida and I are shown perusing our purchases. Photo by KIMI FERNANDEZ