Re-imagining Nutmeg

Kai cradling Nutmeg

I will proceed as if the disappointments and frustrations of yesterday never happened. I will carry on as some kind of knucklehead Nelly, the self-confessed cock-eyed optimist in the musical South Pacific.

Nothing pulls me out of my blue funk more than pictures of my grandchild romping with the family dog, in this case Nutmeg, a mixed breed who stayed with us for only a few months. So frisky was she that she bit Kai not once but twice. The first time was a shallow nip on the child's face, but it was enough to get us all worried and bring her to the doctor for an anti-rabies shot.

The second time Nutmeg bit Kai, this time on the leg, we knew we had to let the dog go. But how? The opportunity presented itself serendipitously when Kai's yaya bid goodbye to our family after serving for five years or just when the kid was about to enter Grade One. Kai needed to grow independently while Mackenzie had commitments to fulfill in Pangasinan, among them to marry her beau.

As Macky boarded the hired jeep that would take her back to her home province, my daughter Kimi pulled the leash tied on Nutmeg and told Macky, "Here, take her. She's yours. We cannot mind her anymore at the same time that we're taking care of Kai."

Kai was too numb from shock at the sudden parting--first, from Macky, then from Nutmeg.

But Macky and Nutmeg had always been best buddies. She followed her orders and kept still when she had to be bathed or her head of hair trimmed.

Sometimes at night, when I imagine that all hope had flown away, I wonder how Macky and Nutmeg are doing. Nutmeg likes the beach in La Union. I wonder if they ever visit the beach together or with Macky's new family.

Meanwhile, Kai found a new friend in the golden retriever named Satchi. All is not entirely lost.

Happy nights with GCF

I no longer remember the year we met for a trip to Jetro Rafael's Van Gogh Is Bipolar on Maginhawa street, Sikatuna Village. Trips like this one have always been an initiative of Gilda Cordero Fernando, she who we consider our life coach, guru, role model.

Gilda with her son from maybe a former life, Jetro Rosales

Twin souls Jetro and Gilda

I dare you to sit on Marilyn Monroe's face.

Teapots and a lamp

Long-playing record spinning

Collectors' item

Curiouser and curiouser

Her Royal Highnesses

It was enough for Nash Tysmans and her mother Carole to meet at GCF's boudoir where we could perhaps play with her brushes and watercolors, then relish her kitchen's caper-studded pasta, but the hostess was restless. So off we went to one of her favorite spots in the city for dinner.

Strange but I don't have the slightest recollection of what we ate. I remember the drinks because I have pictures of full teacups and a pitcher of juice. What stuck in my mind was when the chef patron Jethro asked us at the end of the meal to pick a headdress for our parting photo. I chose one that made me feel like the Queen Mother--heavy and sedate.

I recall, too, the long-playing vinyl record that played French music. We could have very well been at a bistro in the old quarter of Paris. But this was Jethro's special place, with each item rich in history. No wonder Gilda wanted to leap, if that were possible, from the confines of her already art-filled house.

I wonder now how Gilda is coping with the lockdown. I hope she has enough DVDs of her favorite films to view and re-view--I remember sitting through The King and I with her and humming along every time Deborah Kerr as Anna broke into song. I hope she has conversation partners when she sips her hot chocolate with fresh pinipig. I hope she has tamed her restlessness for the time being and is turning inward and enjoying meditative moments.

My wish for her is this--a line from Proust: "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."

Silence and pudding

"How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife,things in themselves, myself being myself." ~ Virginia Woolf

I don't watch much TV or Netflix. I allow 15 minutes of CNN news, strictly after lunch only, to puncture my isolation from the world. Everything else is ambient noise, even the hyper reading of the news and the airing of opinions in radio station DZBB where my brother tunes in every breakfast.

The rest of the day is "wasted" on words. I grapple with words before this seven-year old laptop that threatens to crash any day now. I'm in a race to write about people I know, experiences I've been through, including those involving the senses of smell and taste. I think I can last in a retreat that requires two days of full silence. Just give me this well-worn computer with the thick photo folders, and I'll be all right. Yes, sir, I will.

Newsman reading his newspaper

But I don't think I'll last another month without my companion in silence, Rolly Fernandez. We have a routine of sharing breakfast in companionable silence whether in Baguio or Pasig. Picture shows him reading the day's issue of the Inquirer at Epic Cafè with a cup of black coffee, unsweetened, before him. When I still had a camera, I liked taking un-posed pictures of him.

When we parted in early March, talk of a Luzon-wide lockdown was very far from our thoughts. The agreement was once I was up and about and walking confidently, I'd take the bus back to Baguio in time for our grandchild's ninth birthday. Then Force Majeure came down heavily and ruined all our plans.

But let not talk of lockdowns and morbidity and mortality statistics take the #SimplePleasures out of our lives. At Epic on that ordinary day when Rolly and I each had a plate of Tapsilog, we ended our meal with a shared plate of pudding. We didn't even need a consensus on what dessert we'd have. We just looked at the tray of bread pudding, our eyes met, then an order was placed for a slice of heaven on earth.

Bread pudding with epic taste

Suddenly, she is 9

I woke up to Nash Tysmans' angry tweet: "Ang Amerika hindi rin preparado kasi ungas din ang Pangulo nila! #OUSTDUTERTENOW"

And to Pablo Tariman's angrier FB status, since then deleted, methinks, about the foul mouth of the Leader and how a janitor has more dignity than he who lives in Malacanang Palace. Nothing like a morning swim to calm Pablo down.

The malicious aspersions cast on Atty. Chel Diokno were causing me to roil and boil at 5:30 a.m., my usual time of waking. It wasn't a good way to start a Saturday, especially since today is special.

It is the ninth birthday of my granddaughter Kai. I bemoan that I am separated from her by 209 kilometers, and no bus is plying the Cubao to Baguio route so I can't be there to watch her blow an imaginary candle on a small birthday cake. Imaginary because blowing birthday candles is among the no-no's during the time of COVID-19. Small cake because she has no other guests beyond her mother Kimi, her grandpa Rolly Fernandez and our dogs Satchi and Boots.

She was up early, acknowledging text greetings from relatives here and abroad. Apart from "Thank you," she punched in the words, "Stay safe! God bless!" Then we teased her with a video call, singing the birthday song. My daughter Ida, phoning in from Los Angeles, CA, couldn't suppress the schoolteacher in her, asking Kai for the correct spelling of lumpiang Shanghai. In one of her communications, Kai wrote that "lumpiang Shang High" would be among the dishes served at her modest celebration.

Then we asked how she and her buddy Satchi, a golden retriever, were doing. As answer, she brought the phone outdoors to the Baguio balcony so we could see the dog sniffing out the birthday gal.

Baguio girl's carrot cake

A girl and her dog

Earlier in the week, she showed us a drawing of a slice of carrot cake, a manifestation of her heart's desire. She has remained cheery of disposition despite missing her lowland-based cousins and slew of grandaunts and granduncles, they who dote on her, her classmates, her play-date mates and her teachers.

Sadness over the quiet commemoration of her birthday is alien to her. As I write these words, the John Wilson Orchestra is performing Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," and on this day divided by broiling political forces, I wish you, Kai, a rhapsody in yellow... as in sunshine, sunflowers and sunny smiles. And hope!

Missing the secret garden

(Take 2, after losing my original draft)

I've been revisiting photo files from the year 2015. The year was personally memorable because I was taken ill for quite a while and confined at length at The Medical City.

When I returned to the world that was still spinning at its usual pace despite my prolonged depressive episode, I wasn't allowed to go out of the house unless I was chaperoned. My usual companion and chokaran then was Macky, the yaya of my then four-year old grandchild Kai. (While Macky, short for Mackenzie, kept me company, my mother, who has since passed on, and my daughter Kimi minded Kai who was pulled out of school in Baguio to be with me.)

So being housebound or being under strict house arrest is nothing new to me. When I was allowed a little freedom of movement, Macky accompanied me to the lecture of balikbayan poet Luisa A. Igloria at De La Salle University. Not only was the lecture substantive that I was able to compose an article out of Dr. Igloria's lecture notes, the event was well organized by Shirley O. Lua of DLSU. I remember the savory adobo served.

So my new life, post-hospitalization, revolved around weekend trips to Baguio and weekdays spent correcting my students' papers, preparing lessons, chasing after story sources (life of a freelancer).

Rolly in a huddle with his UP Baguio colleagues Del Tolentino (partly hidden) and Rey Rimando

It was around this time when my husband Rolly Fernandez thought of converting an idle patch in our Baguio property into what we called "a secret garden" dedicated to Kai. He had a truck haul in the pebbles, which were scattered and arranged neatly on the ground. He tamed the wildness by planting shrubs and flowering bushes. Then he invited our friend Rey Rimando, a retired math prof at UP Baguio and full-time gardener in La Union, for a visit.

Rey being Rey, he had opinions on everything from the foot path to the watering system. He offered advice on what plants thrived in the shade and what liked the sun. Rolly nodded, but knowing him, I knew he was separating chaff from the grain.

Name that wildflower.

Since then, the garden became the final stop where Kai and I parked ourselves after our morning walks in the neighborhood. Her paternal grandparents presented her with a garden set complete with a parasol. While we chattered and took pictures of the flowers, Rolly would join us with his second or third mug of coffee. We had Baguio's immense blue, blue sky for our roof.

Kai stops to pose for a picture at a neighbor's garden.

I miss the little garden and the refuge it offered. As I encode these words, I'm pale from want of sun and Vitamin D. Once the lockdown is lifted, you know which direction I'm headed for: my true North.

Meanwhile, there is comfort in the verse of Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz:

My generation was lost. Cities too. And nations.
But all this a little later. Meanwhile, in the window, a swallow

#LockdownDiaries

Willful gladness

"In the darkest times, we are the most starved for delight – for the self-permission for delight." ~ Maria Popova

The title phrase is also Popova's. This is a tale of willful gladness in a woman's and a child's search for meaning during uncertain times.

My grandchild Kai and I Facetimed last night before she called it a day. She's based in Baguio, I'm trapped by the lockdown in Pasig. Worse,my eight-year old talk and text cell phone picked the wrong time to die on me. Can't go out to a shop or mall to look for a replacement. COVID-19 took care of all our best laid-out plans.

But thanks to Facebook Messenger, Kai remains in constant touch, complaining, like me, about nearly going out of her head looking for ways to fill up her time. She feels bereft of a gin rummy partner (me). We play a game of two or three nightly, our routine at home up there. I taught her the rudiments of the game, and she has been defeating me consistently. Not that I don't try hard enough in the only card game I know.

My daughter Kimi Fernandez recently got Kai out of her holiday languor by encouraging her to make Spam sushi rolls. Kai has odd tastebuds--between the sweetness of ice cream and the sourness of yogurt, she'll pick the latter in a heartbeat. Here she is a picture of concentration.

Then visiting friend Precious Leano was impressed when we once went to Hill Station on Upper Session Road, Baguio, and Kai straight away ordered the artichoke dip with Melba toast.

My sister Pinky Lolarga Susi once brought Kai and her cousins Machiko Skye and Jared Franco to an Asian grocery. While the other two kids bought popsicles and candies, my grandkid chose a packet of salty nori wrappers. I think this may be the same packet from which Kai is making the sushi.

As a baby, she also had a pronounced taste for certain types of viand. Martin Masadao noted, while observing her on her high chair feeding herself, that she knew the most delish part of daing na bangus--the belly!

She loves "stinky" cheese, and when the Christmas queso de bola is sufficiently aged come the New Year, she requests slivers of it cut and popped into the microwave oven for what she calls "cheese puffs." They're as salty as any Jack and Jill product.

Cheese is a standby in the house along with eggs. Should Kai not find the food served come mealtime to her liking, the go-to dish is a cheese omelette enriched with milk.

I don't know how her food likes and dislikes are doing these past days. Hoping that my husband, her grandfather Rolly Fernandez, and Kimi are inculcating the lesson of being grateful for every meal served. And I hope they all gather around the table for a shared repast.

Our not so little Kai is turning nine years old in two weeks. Apart from making pancakes and omelettes, she has now added Spam sushi rice or Supamu sushi meshi to her repertoire of recipes.

So you see, Kai, if you can feed yourself and feel good about it, you can also extend your hand to feed others. Happy birthday soon!

Para Isabel

The 20th of March, decreed in some calendars as International Day of Happiness, opened for me at almost 3 a.m., the time of deepest slumber for a lot of people. I thought I was just hungry because I had skipped dinner last night.

My restlessness led me to turn on the computer and to my chagrin, I saw the face of the Leader in a pre-dawn press conference announcing stricter LGU compliance of presidential directives.

I couldn't return to the peace of sleep as I heard this Rambling Man (Ernesto V. Enrique's most apt description of him) go on so I visited the author Isabel Allende's website. I found two photos of her, as a young writer with ciggy in hand and face averted from her typewriter. It reminded me of a younger me when I was all angst and anxiety over the paucity of my writerly output.

A young Isabel Allende at her typewriter

Isabel, see how familiar I am with her, has 23 books so far to her name. I have read eight of them, Paula being my favorite followed by Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses. In comparison to my idol, I have written just four books, Catholic and Emancipated (personal essays), The First Eye, dangling doll: poems of laughter & desperation and Big Mama Sez: Poems Old & New, the last three in limited editions of 200 copies or less. I have a fifth manuscript (also poetry), Moon Hanging Low Over My Window, awaiting publication when things finally go back to some kind of normal.

But the Numero Uno fan of Isabel in the family is my husband Rolly Fernandez. At our long stop at The Last Bookstore in Los Angeles in November last year, he loaded up his shopping cart with all of Isabel's books that he had not yet read. And because of the prodigious-ness of the author, he piled up softbound and hardbound copies alike. That's the bibliomaniac in the family at work.

The second photo of Isabel also reminded me of an older me--less uptight, less self-focused, still introverted but capable of throwing open my arms to embrace a new day. Remember that this Chilean author knew what it was like to live under an authoritarian regime that killed her uncle and godfather, the democratically elected Salvador Allende.

Allende today

Now I am the one who's rambling. Her injunction to "write what should not be forgotten" is what is keeping me busy and buzzing these days despite the lockdown that has prevented my physical movements. In the recent past, my work as a freelance journalist enabled me to freely seek out sources for stories or events to cover. I have started this, my own version of the #LockdownDiaries.

Ahhh, on this day set aside for happiness, I salute you, Isabel, for your great capacity for joy despite irreversible losses of loved ones in your life. We should emulate someone like her.

The world and its woundedness

"The morning air is all awash with angels."
~ Richard Purdy Wilbur

While my doctor brother Dennis was dressing my knee wound this morning, I had a brief time to ponder on the world's woundedness wrought by Covid19.

(BTW, my stitches have dried and no longer require waterproof bandaging. Dennis sprayed a medical disinfectant, applied some ointment and instructed me to tape Band-aids on the top and bottom parts of the vertical line of stitches. I'm a cooperative patient and after doing as told, I walked within the house a bit, trying on my newly liberated knee. It felt grand!)

I also thought of the opening lines from W.H. Auden's "Musee des Beaux Arts": "About suffering they were never wrong, / The Old Masters: How well they understood / Its human position: how it takes place / While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along..."

We spent hours pouring over and discussing that ekphrastic poem in the comparative literature class of Dr. Gemino H Abad in the mid-'70s at UP Diliman. I remember thinking then how a Master like Auden could pull off a stunt like that--open a poem with a prosaic, almost forgettable observation. It led me to think that one doesn't have to always have a lyrical first line.

When super-typhoon Yolanda walloped Southern Philippines, particularly Leyte, in November 2013, poets were also called upon to do their own brand of "relief work" with the composition and immediate publication (uploading online) of poetry that soothed or raised a protest against what was perceived as a slow response from the powers that be.

That calamity enabled me to concentrate on renewed versifying, something the Bard of Pasig Pablo Tariman is doing in the time of today's plague. I wrote "Plane Manifest," partly inspired by Auden and taking off from a photo of a surviving father rescued and evacuated from Tacloban. His farmer's demeanor belied the dark color of years spent under the sun, his eyes a-brim with tears as they grieved for loved ones who didn't make it. The estimate then was 10,000 people dead.

I posted my relief response in FB and when the call for an instant visual and literary anthology called "Surges" was made by Rossana Golez and Joel Garduce, I was prepared with my submissions. Here is that poem in its entirety.

Plane Manifest

in the quieter network
where i get my news feed
for the day
where members
aren't so overwrought
and telling others
what to do
what to think
in a calamitous country

this image
and description
of a man
spoke for all
who had lost
someone
(never mind the some things
that are always replaceable
in some ways)

but to lose someone?
or maybe three four
six seven eight?
and see them
on some broken pavement
laid out straight?

the horror the horror

the awareness
that here he was
left with this one life
and some clothes on his back

haunted perhaps
by the thought
that he would've
given it all up
for a wife
a child not yet fully weaned
a mother who raised him up
to be as hardworking as she

he trembles
while seated
in this freight plane
of human cargo
flying him where?
to what sort of new life
in some strange place
will he rebuild
without those he knew
and touched as

love
made
manifest?

Truly, we are called whether it's in a time of crisis or a time of increasingly elusive peace and wellness in the world. To paraphrase the filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, the darkness is vast so we are all called upon to supply our own unique light.