2016's Christmas card loot

The season's over, and I have to stash away my increasingly paltry collection of hard-copy Christmas cards. In my computer hard drive and Google Drive, I've saved the letters and cards sent by email.

I sent out over 20 cards and postcards by what's known as "happy mail," complete with stamps, as early as the first week of December. The addressees acknowledged my letters by email and text. I'm almost tempted to enclose a SASE, remember those? SASE stands for self-addressed stamped envelope.

Handwriting allows me to slow down. I guess it also brings down my blood pressure. It calms me. I'm able to reflect, rue, remember, regret, rejoice on paper. Not unlike keeping a journal only this time there is someone at the other end of the conversation. A friend asked me to send her a private message via her Facebook, which is faster, because she's "poor in snail mail." I assured her that sending mail by snail or donkey delights me so much so she needn't worry if my message is delayed by a week, 10 days or a month. She lives over in Western Australia and comes home twice a year at the most.

Here's the last year's mail, the last hand-delivered by the sister concerned.

Handmade's the best. This one's the handiwork of three-year-old Sophia, daughter of Liwa Araos and Archie Espanola. Made of dried leaves and shiny stickers. I like Liwa's penmanship--it indicates her lightness of being and overall cheerfulness.

Cousin Tess Lolarga Romero in Chicago is religious about her cards. They arrive as early as November. Perhaps she knows my husband is a stamp collector so she sticks assorted stamps on the envelop.

Beth Quirino Lahoz, president of the Technological Institute of the Philippines, unfailingly sends a yearly card. Sometimes, when I respond in kind, she emails quickly back upon receiving my card: "Despite the distance (not seeing each other), the connection thrives because you have also worked at it with your gracious letters."

Coming home from Baguio via Subic on New Year's Day, I found this on my desk--a card from my sister Gigi and inside were crisp 20-peso bills. She and our adopted sister Ruth Terania know my prepaid phone's limits and how I direly need the gadget for text blasts when supporting assorted causes. Thanks, baby sisters.

Watching them grow

These days, our Not So Wee One Anymore, a.k.a. Kai, often refuses to smile for or look at the camera. "That is not polite," she says with an accompanying "Hmmmph!" And then she stomps her foot like a Baguio version of the Queen of Hearts, and I can almost hear her imaginary soldiers marching towards me to take off my head.

On my visits to Baguio, I like taking pictures of how my husband Rolly's garden, dedicated to our grandchild, is developing. Yes, developing like the person to whom it is being tended for. Scanning my files, I saw how they (Kai, Rolly and the once secret garden) have grown, too, in years. It's the spot of paradise we are proud of in our home where the grandpa can be found as soon as the sun is up, picking up dried leaves or snipping branches here and there with his pruning scissors or bare hands (careful there!). Grandchild offers to water the plants or just walk around, acting as my spotter and telling me what closeup pictures to take.

I'm posting these since we are approaching Earth Day which is observed worldwide on April 22. Gardens may be a luxury during this time of El Niño when farmers and their families are making their parched voices and grumbling stomachs heard, often to indifferent government officials. Now, don't get me started. I don't want to meander just yet to another subject as hot as the sweltering summer sun is.

Meanwhile, how green was our garden then. I used the past tense there with hopes that The Heavenly Gardener (Our Father in heaven) would send some refreshing rain soon.

Photos by Babeth Lolarga

Fish on Good Friday

Going home exhausted one day and about to join the tricycle queue to get to our gate, I saw a vendor selling these goldfishes. I was annoyed that these beauties could be held captive this way and treated as merchandise. Memories of Finding Nemo swiftly bubbled in my head.

Another time my grandchild, the not so Wee One Kai, brought home a goldfish in a similar plastic bag. Apparently, it was a party favor from a birthday celebrator in her school. Her mother Kimi and grandpa Rolly looked for a container, a fishbowl, for it, but it didn't live long. Mother and child decided to buy another fish to fill the bowl's emptiness and Mr. Fish has been swimming happily along. Kimi, Kai or our help Macky take turns feeding the new family pet. When the water gets milky white, it's time for a change.

The point being fish belong in ponds, the sea, the ocean. If we are to make them a part of the family, this requires commitment--yes, the way we commit ourselves to our husbands and children. This makes me rail against dogs in small cages, birds in cages, etc. I guess I'm a big believer in being free to be you, to be me. (With thanks to Marlo Thomas for the last line)

Photos by Babeth Lolarga

Mango magic

Mmmmmmmmango crepe as prepared by a cook who deserves to be kissed, Pablo Molina

My friend Joseph Uy and I tasted the first mangoes of summer at the Molina residence in Quezon City last week. During the days and nights leading to that Saturday lunch, Joseph and I exchanged heated text messages about how we imagined the mango crepe to be prepared by tenor-vocal coach Pablo Molina would taste in our mouth. Everyone from the Viva Voce ensemble who had tried it was raving about it and making us envious.

At one point, Joseph waxed poetic and musical and said the scent of the Grand Marnier being cooked was enough to make him hit a high C.

Our SMS conversation took a turn for the ridiculous when Joseph tried to push our trip to the Molinas to an earlier time just in case we could be served dessert first. He texted: "How about we leave at 9:30?"

"Too early," I texted back. "How about 10:30?"

We were early in the end, waiting for lunch to be served while Camille Lopez Molina wrapped up private lessons with two students. I thought Joseph was becoming gaunt from his ravenous hunger.

When the healthy Mediterranean fare was brought out from the kitchen (seafood pasta, chicken and vegetable kebabs and salad), we hungry hippos quickly dug in. I don't know how many servings we each had, but Joseph had to ask for Coke Zero to be bought at a nearby grocery so we could all burp and create some space for the crepes.

Pablo was the perfect host. He gave us extra squeezes of cream for the dessert worth crossing several cities and enduring Saturday traffic for. Thank you, Molina family! We ask only to be adopted by you.

Seafood pasta (top) and kebabs paired with yogurt. The Molina family truly knows how to eat...and by extension, live to the hilt!

Joseph Uy (top) in a satisfied and contemplative mood and top chef Pablo Molina Photos by Babeth Lolarga

Four and a day forever

Before she grows too fast (and she is doing so each day), I'm posting photos of Ms. Curly Tops Kai during the summer of her fourth year. What I like about her is she never complains of boredom or maybe hasn't felt what ennui is. There is always something to be done either with her toys or with her immediate world. She can observe her shadow or watch a bee buzzing close to a flower or balance herself on the walkway around the community pond. In a few months she will be five and will move on to other activities. For as long as these pictures are here, she is four in my eyes.

Photos by Babeth Lolarga

Mae remains gentle on our minds

Photos by Babeth Lolarga

Two noontimes ago, I enjoyed a long, lingering lunch with Men Sta. Ana and Geraldine Maayo. Men is an economist and BusinessWorld columnist, Geraldine a retired university professor and writer of fiction. What binds us is the spirit of Mae Manalang, Men's wife who passed on in August last year.

I confessed to not having properly mourned for Mae. Going through my files yesterday, I found some still lifes I shot at the Manalang-Sta. Ana household in Kamias, Quezon City, where I visited her after one of her several hospitalizations back in 2014.

When you're with a force of life like Mae, it's hard to believe her body is weakening because she is an animated story-teller and can make her discomforts sound like the most exciting thing in the world to have. Why? Because they confirmed she was still alive. See? I'm having difficulty in being consistent with my tenses when referring to her.

Although the decorative wall pieces and those on the side table were, according to her then, selected and bought by Men on his out-of-town trips, they make me think of Mae, especially the color of the wall. I can still imagine her face set against it, she telling me of her work in the NGO world, of why there are multicolor pairs of Crocs in their house (to protect the soles of her feet from sharp objects), etc.

At yesterday's lunch, Mae hovered over our conversations. It felt like at any moment, she'd slide out of a corner of Cafe Via Mare at the UP Diliman campus and sing some Carole King or Carly Simon song. I suppose in a heart that's in denial like mine, she never really left...yet.

He makes all things new

Of all the public art I managed to see last year, it's Leeroy New's installation of a multi-color fly at the fountain of the Ayala Museum that struck me as most interesting, most inexpensive and most environmentally friendly. Look closely and find out why. May we see more such works this year. Leeroy's the boy for that. We're heavily counting on him and his wild mind.

Photos by Babeth Lolarga

Fill in my blanks

"You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page." - Jodi Picoult

You know how I get around the "write every day" discipline? I post pictures! I have hundreds of them in my hard drive that need to be backed up soon. The four-year-old laptop is showing signs of wear and tear.

I reviewed some pics and found myself acutely missing Kai, the Curly Tops of our lives. She left to catch the last day of "Disney on Ice" at the Araneta Coliseum (decades ago, it was my Dad who set the annual tradition of taking us children to "Holiday on Ice"). After this last full show, Kai returns to her Baguio home. She left wearing an aquamarine Elsa (from the movie Frozen) dress, a Mickey Mouse hairband complete with Mouseketeer ears and her trusty Nike sandals. I wasn't prepared with my point and shoot so I ended up looking for past pictures of her.

The first photo shows her boarding the back of the neck and shoulders of her Papay (her term for her father) so she can be taller than anyone at the Manila International Book Fair and easily spot the head of white of her Grumpa Tats. In the second photo I think she's holding a box of puzzles that her Mamay got for her.

I may not be writing well today, Kai, sweet granddaughter of mine, but you are filling up my mind and easing the blank space in my arms where I held you during your afternoon nap today and yesterday.

Photos by Babeth Lolarga

Mood-altering dinner

"We're all dressed up with nowhere to go," Gilda Cordero Fernando said yesterday afternoon as I sipped hot chocolate and scooped warm fresh pinipig from the same cup in her bedroom slash work room. To me being with her, listening to her reminisce and opine made enough of a destination for the day. She'd have none of that--she was determined to leave the premises of her abode with her cane and wheelchair which she calls her kariton. The movie we had wanted to go out and watch, The Dressmaker, wasn't showing anymore.

She booked us for an early supper at Van Gogh Is Bipolar on Maginhawa Street, Sikatuna Village. She prodded me to think of persons we could go out with and have a relaxing dinner. "At short notice?" I asked, incredulous.

On top of me is a Tunisian hat, a fake crown on King Jetro, a copy of the Miss Universe crown on Carole, something from Mongolia on Nash and a muffin hairband with the word "Happy" on perennially happy Gilda.

But young writer Nash Tysmans and her mother Carole were available. So that was how we found ourselves at a subdued Mad Hatters' Party at Van Gogh with a pastor serving as our waiter and owner-chef Jetro Rafael by our tableside, keeping up a running commentary on the dishes served and the restaurant's new daytime thrust as a mood-altering tea sanctuary.

Jetro and Nash show different ways of pouring tea. Nash takes hers seriously. She went all the way to Darjeeling district in India to study tea and got thoroughly sunburned during her apprenticeship there.

My turmeric tea with honey came from the uppermost pot and was served encased in elegantly filigreed silver. You'd surmise that food and drinks served this well would up the cost of the bill, but no. Van Gogh Is Bipolar has Quezon City rates, meaning, highly affordable for writers, especially poets, scholars, artists and similar vagabond spirits.

The beauty of choice for post-prandial tea: You get to choose from Jetro's collection of teapots. Unlike other art and knickknack collectors who keep their collections for their private enjoyment only, Jetro enjoys sharing his. Nothing in his home restaurant is only for show. Everything is meant to be used.

While more commercial cafes and tea salons would practically shoo you off if you're just availing of the free Wifi and have consumed your minimum one cup of coffee or tea, Van Gogh seeks to attract souls in need of silence and healing in the daytime hours of 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. You can avail of the Wifi but better if you take a break from the use of electronic gadgets by lying on a hammock reading from the book swap library, sipping tea that will address any negative mood at the moment (confusion, anger, panic, depression), doing art (art materials are provided free) or just wandering in the pocket garden.

There truly is something about the way Jetro prepares his meals that calms you down. He described the meat as "free range," the fish "wild." And I, like the fox in The Little Prince, felt tamed. All these things happened in a venue that has been named by a network or an international magazine as one of the coolest homes in Asia.

Enhancing the already rich ambience was the auditory pleasure of listening to chansons by Charles Aznavour and Jacques Brel spinned from an old long-playing record player with an antique case picked up from Jetro's European travels. They threw me back to Thursdays in my youth in the '70s.

A daughter who colors

"It takes a good while to color one of these things in completely—a few hours, I’d say—and there’s something very satisfying about watching the color slowly spread across the page, about seeing your thought and effort create a tangible, pretty thing at a reasonable, predictable pace. This rarely happens in life." - Julie Beck in "The Zen of Adult Coloring Books," www.atlantic.com

The daughter who turns child again when faced with adult coloring books is out of the house, out of town and won't be back until the weekend. That is when she resumes her coloring pace, her months-old hobby that took off at about the same time when these books became the hottest things in bookstores and online auctions.

I guiltily riffled through her collection of coloring materials (pencils, crayons, markers) and books to take some shots because I admire how she chooses her colors and puts them together to create jewels for the eyes. Hmmm...written like a proud mama. My favorite of the lot is how she "solved" the coloring scheme for the outline of Sherlock Holmes.

Keep on coloring, Kimi, as a way out of stress and humdrum routine and into something relaxing and enriching to your inner life.

I would've killed to own art materials like these in my youth.

It's also nice to leave an area uncolored (see baby owl at bottom) for contrast.

Mr. Holmes at his address on Baker Street Photos by Babeth Lolarga