One couple's pearl jubilee

Happy Pearl Day, Mr. You Know Who You Are from Who Knows What You Are to Me

We must have asked ourselves many a time, not only in our respective thought balloons, what would it have been like if we didn't take the leap? But we did, and oh, how we did. It has been 30 years since we took our vows one evening at our Pasig neighborhood's parish church. He was 34; I had just turned 29.

When he and his guy pals get together, he still wins the contest of who of them married at a late age. Indeed, at 34, he was the oldest, perhaps in his sense of daring and adventure to offer his self's riches (strengths, weaknesses, humor, humorlessness but most of all his integrity as a person and a career journalist) to a shaky girl who was unsure, even today evidently, of her place in the sun. But they took the gamble anyway.

Who would have thought that our kind of unique loving would last with he there, me here? And we are very we in the couple sense despite our continuing tale of two cities. Okay, so it's a long, long-distance love affair, as the pop song in the '80s goes.

And since I'm singing today, let me sing (one of the songs sung at our 25th jubilee at the former location of Cafe Juanita in Kapitolyo, Pasig) "I'm Glad There Is You" by Paul Madeira and Jimmy Dorsey. I'm doing this using my best imitation of Sarah Vaughan as she recorded this with The Earl Rogers Choir (a capella) on April 4, 1948, in New York. As an aside, April 4 is the birthday of our grandchild Kai/Butones and Paula Carolina S. Malay, Armando J. Malay's spouse. Armando was Rolly Fernandez's choice as godfather at our wedding. Mine was Nieves B. Epistola whose birthday it was the other day.

I'm Glad There Is You

Said I many times, for others illusion,
A feeling, result of confusion.
With knowing smile and blase sigh,
A cynical so-and-so was I!
I feel so secure, so positive,
So utterly unchangingly certain,
That I never was aware of love anew,
Till suddenly I realised there was love and you,
And all;

In this world of ordinary people,
Extraordinary people,
I'm glad there is you.
In this world of overrated pleasures,
Of underrated treasures,
I'm glad there is you.

I live to love,
I love to live
With you beside me.
This road so new
I'll muddle through
With you to guide me.

In this world where many many play at love,
And hardly any stay in love,
I'm glad there is you.
More than ever,
I'm glad there is you.
(I'm glad there is you)

At their silver jubilee. Official photographer for the evening was the couple's kumare Anna Leah Sarabia who wrote in her Facebook caption: "if he could sing, it would be the way you look tonight. rolly was more clear-eyed, it seems, as our dear friend by then had had enough to make her smiling tipsy." To which another friend the three of us have in common, Pet Cleto, who's in Canada, responded: "the hazy borders are superlatively right for this image!"