She first entered one's consciousness when one was a
girl of 13, a seventh grader at an all-girls' Catholic school. For the first
time, one enjoyed art education as a minor subject, no longer the traditional
sewing and embroidery taught to homemakers of the future.
It was a liberating time, that school year of
1968-69, when weekly one looked forward to the lectures of Mrs. Araceli
"Cheloy" Limcaco Dans on Educational Television (ETV), taped and
broadcast from the Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU).
The following week after the TV class, one's art
teacher, Sister Glyceria, who trained with Mrs. Dans, guided us through the
application of Mrs. Dans's instructions. That first encounter with art, even if
the class lasted only an hour long, was embedded in this student's memory.
There she first held oil pastels and watercolors and stroked colors alive on
blank sheets of a sketchpad.
The dream of continuing on doing art remained in the
back burner for decades and decades until the school of life opened an
opportunity at age 49 when one's children were of college age, and there was a
chance of returning to the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts
where the mother of many art educators graduated from.
Indirectly, this contributor owes Mrs. Dans and her
trainee, Sister Glyceria, a debt of gratitude.
Her own journey to where she is now, one of the most
successful painters, the kind who can live comfortably for a year based on the
sale of one painting, was fraught with trials balanced by many comic moments,
too.
She calls her father, Eleuterio Limcaco of Navotas,
Rizal, "a consentidor who
enrolled me secretly at Santa Rosa College in Intramuros for art lessons. It
was run by Sisters of Charity. The extra-curricular activities then for girls
were home economics, cooking, embroidery, etcetera. It was the era when girls
were taught to be good wives so in school, we had to learn how to sew, cook,
go to market, how to kill a chicken. There were no dressed chickens then."
At Santa Rosa, she, a third grader, was in a class
of adults where "the kind of art
that was taught to us was where you draw scales and graphs and reproduce the
exact replica of a photo. Looking back, it must seem like torture now. But I
just obeyed. I so wanted to learn how to draw."
Her father and mother, Regina Fernandez of Kalibo,
Capiz, were, in the daughter's matter-of-fact words, "always fighting.
There was a disparity between them. My mom would tell me, 'Stop drawing and drawing;
you'll starve.' My parents clashed all the time because my father fooled
around. Women chased him because he was good-looking, and he yielded to
temptation. Even the nuns had crushes on him. They'd tell me, 'Esta aqui su papa es muy guapo (Your
father is very handsome)!' Kinikilig sila."
The Fernandez-Limcaco couple "had a tumultuous
life. Their fights were violent.
When they fought, father would hold a gun,
mother would hold a knife. My older sister Ofelia would come between them as
referee," Dans recalls.
She rues that her mother, a full-time homemaker,
"tried to be a good wife, but her fault was she was a nagger. She didn't
know how to handle my father."
As a result of the trauma she witnessed in
childhood, Ofelia, a poet who authored a book of poems, became schizophrenic.
Somehow, in her lucid moments, she managed to become an excellent athlete,
learning how to swim, bike, climb a tree all of which her younger sister Cheloy never
learned to do. Ofelia also studied the piano, could sight read and was a good equestrienne
to boot.
Came a time Ofelia had a nervous breakdown despite a
psychiatrist looking after her. She was confined at the National Mental
Hospital. On clear days, she'd walk into an office there, glance at what the
clerks and secretaries were writing and correct their English. At the hospital,
Ofelia helped the patients with learning music, conducted a choral group and
played badminton with the other inmates.
Upon discharge, younger sister Cheloy and husband
Jose P. Dans Jr. took care of her for 21 years. She is grateful for having had
a husband who was "kind enough" to allow someone with Ofelia's
condition live with them.
At 81, she can look at her parents dispassionately
and continue her narrative: "My father used to play polo. He was an
insurance salesman who mingled with the rich and the famous so he could insure
them. He liked rubbing shoulders with them to the extent that he became a member
of The Manila Polo Club when it was still on Dewey, now Roxas, Boulevard. We
owned three or four Arabian horses in our three-hectare lot There he practiced
polo, and Ofelia rode with him. He lavished her with praise."
Ms. Dans stopped at athletic activities, saying,
"I just wasn't interested in them. I wanted to learn languages, ballet, take
up voice lessons." (In her sunset years though, she sees the practice of athletics
and crafts like sewing in her 30 grandchildren. She has six great-grandchildren
with a seventh due in July.)
What comes naturally to her is being a true
care-giver, especially of other siblings like her brother Ruben, who adopted
the name "Fidelis." He joined the Carmelite order in the US, then moved
to a secular order before forming the Congregation of Emmanuel Servants of the
Holy Trinity. What this order advocates is the worship of the Holy Trinity (or
the triune of God the Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit).
Dans adds, "My brother noted how our people's
attention is focused on the Blessed Mother when the higher god is the Holy Trinity."
Father Fidelis Limcaco formed 11 other congregations
of nuns and priests before falling ill with Parkinson's disease. For two
years he was bedridden at the intensive care unit of a hospital.
His sister Cheloy couldn't stand his being taken care
of by strangers and offered him, "Dito
ka na lang sa akin (You stay with me). When I said that, his tears just
flowed."
The priest stayed in the Dans household,
specifically the painter's studio, for a year and a half. She had a voice valve
attached to him, had his bed arranged to face her garden, had a private bath
with hot and cold water installed for him "which he loved," she says,
had male caretakers looking after him around the clock, had a voice therapist
work with him so he could speak until his condition improved. When he could
wheel himself around and speak, she returned him to the seminary.
Somewhere in this family narrative is the love story
of Cheloy and Totoy. She says, "I wasn't aware I was the campus belle at
UP because I was too busy earning a living. My mother nagged me to earn. Our
family became poor after the war. Our property was mortgaged. I painted
portraits to earn our keep when father couldn't support us because he was
already living with his querida
(mistress). He had separated from my mom."
"After the war," she continues,
"there were lots of GIs around. A matron with good intentions, Tia Monang
Ramos (aunt of former President Fidel Ramos), put up a clubhouse for GIs
looking for good clean fun. Not all the American soldiers were dirty old men
who'd go to brothels and bars. There were gentlemanly GIs. At the clubhouse
they met nice girls with whom they could discuss books, play parlor games or
sing songs. I drew pencil sketches there. The soldiers would pose. I'd finish the
portraits in 30 minutes. There was a long queue, but I didn't charge; I asked
for art materials. When they returned to the States, several mothers wrote to
me, saying how pleased they were with the portraits. They sent me oil paints,
brushes, drawing pencils, sketchpads, all of which helped me through my college
years. Remember, there were no art materials during and after the war."
Those on-the-spot sketching sessions with the GIs
sharpened her skill in portraiture.
She says, "It's easier to draw Caucasians.
They have more pronounced features. It's faster to find the light and shadow
unlike most Filipinos who are all brown and their features indefinite."
In college, she continued to draw or to paint portraits
of her classmates, charging them P20 each.
She was attracted to her schoolmate Totoy Dans
because he was "extremely bright, low-key, a gentleman who was deeply
spiritual. He was an Atenista, raised and mentored by Father John
Delaney. Totoy was a valedictorian from kinder to high school, but he remained
unaffected despite these honors. He was very natural with a strong sense of
humor and an ability to make little of tragic things."
She continues, "I never envied my other
contemporaries who were fetched by car, busy with their social life on campus,
going to fraternity and sorority dances completely garbed, made up, chaperoned
and chauffeured. I had none of that, and I don't miss it. Totoy's parents (Jose
Dans Sr. from Paete, Laguna, and Filomena Jalandoni Ferrer from Bacolod) were kuripot towards their only
son. When we went out on dates, he'd tell me, 'This shirt I'm wearing is from Fred,
this coat is from Cesar, this necktie is from Aries, the shoes are from Toto,
my pocket money I borrowed from our maid.' I found him so refreshing, so completely
without affectation. I fell in love."
While eating at the UP campus cafeteria, he'd ask
her, "Can we go Dutch on the Coke? O,
di ba?"
When they decided on getting married, they were
oriented by Father Delaney. He told the future Mrs. Dans about her role:
"In choosing a partner in life, the husband comes first before the kids
and before the career. After the husband goes, the children come second. Career
is the last. Maintain the marriage by communicating constantly. Nurture
it."
At age 20, she was married. As Mr. Limcaco walked
his daughter down the aisle of a barn-like chapel at the UP Diliman campus, with
the groom and Father Delaney waiting at the altar, the father whispered to her
clearly, "There is no advice I can give you. Whatever wrong your mother
and I did, do not do. Your marriage will succeed."
By age 23, she had her first child followed by nine
others within 11 years. By 34, she had 10 children. Her doctor said she could
bear another 10. She blanched and said, "Twenty children? They'll become
juvenile delinquents!"
She remains amazed at people who say how difficult
it is to raise children. She says, "I played with them. I breastfed all of
them, the later ones just a few months. When I was a housewife, there were no
disposable diapers, no washing machines. Every now and then, I had household
help. There was no floor polisher, no microwave, no computers, no TV, no
dressed chicken! My mother would kill the chicken for me. I didn't know how to
clean fish. Totoy's engineering classmate, Alejo Aquino Jr., taught me how to
choose fresh fish, how to clean and cook it. If you cook a lot, especially for
teenagers, bottomless pits 'yan. One way of extending food was to
always have ground beef, one kilo of potato cubes and another kilo of carrots. Then
you can whip up arroz a la cubana, pochero, etc."
She recalls how one son, now an adult, told her,
"Ma, I miss your Army-style cooking. I told him 'Bastos ka!'"
She would spray the garden hose at her 10 children
when they were little instead of telling them to take a bath or giving the
small ones individual baths. When she hosed all 10, the older ones learned to
scrub the smaller ones. They just used two towels to dry themselves to save on
laundry.
She remembers another mealtime when her children,
now adults, talked about how many of the 10 ran away from home during their
teen rebellion years. One by one seven of them raised their hand. The eighth
said, "I also ran away, but no one noticed!"
One time, Ms. Dans was busy painting in her studio
when a daughter barged in to apologize, saying, "Mommy, I'm sorry, I drove
your jeep without permission."
"Why?"
the mother asked, not looking up from her work.
The daughter answered, "I went to the hospital."
Still not looking up, Ms. Dans asked
absent-mindedly, "Why? Are you sick?"
"No," daughter said. "I had a
pregnancy test, and it's positive."
That was when Ms. Dans made a mistake with her brushstroke.
She sat down with the daughter, and they had their
talk. She found out the girl did not love the boyfriend enough to marry him. Ms.
Dans didn't insist, saying, "So don't get married!"
That daughter was then teaching and was later
getting embarrassed because her tummy was beginning to show. A sister invited
her to go to Singapore and have the baby there.
The other girls in the Dans
family envied the pregnant one and started to play buntis-buntisan (pretend pregnancy). They thought how lucky could
their sister get, she had to be pregnant to fly to Singapore. What Ms. Dans
told them was to shut up and quit playing buntis-buntisan.
She says she still believes in not marrying if there
is the slightest hint of uncertainty, adding, "I saw from my parents'
example what a miserable life you could have. Do you want to live with someone
you're going to fight with for the rest of your life? The effect on Ophelia was
terrible and devastating."
She still hosts Sunday dinners with her children,
their spouses and grandchildren who live in Metro Manila. The others are in Los
BaƱos, Singapore and the States. Her cook would call them to confirm how many would come for dinner and report to Ms. Dans, "'Ma'am, 40 lang.' And my grandkids are six footers!"
She has realized that her early years of marriage and
motherhood were a struggle to keep the family whole. "We had our own
squabbles. One of things that kept our marriage was Totoy and I learned to love
each other. All I did was serve, serve, serve. I'm harvesting now. I have peace
and quiet. All the challenges in my youth have added to my wisdom as a mother,
an artist and a grandma. Without the texture of what I went through, I wouldn't be the
person I would be now."
For the first
time she can choose to decide how and where to spend her day, usually in her
air-conditioned studio that looks out of a lush garden, evergreen no matter
what time of year.
In the course of this interview, she'd pause in the
middle of a sentence and turn to the wide clear window, saying, "Sorry, I
keep getting distracted. Look at those maya
birds on my hanging plants. They're a family. They nest here."
When she waved good-bye, it came with a
"teacherly" admonition and a smile, "Stop calling me Mrs. Dans!
Tita Cheloy will do."--Elizabeth Lolarga
A version of this original profile was published in the magazine Contemporary Art Philippines in 2011.
Photo of the subject was taken by the author. Ms. Dans hosted lectures by her colleagues in the art world at the Ayala Museum where she had a retrospective exhibition last year.
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