When I was this wee, I was a bit resentful of my other siblings when they would address my baptismal godmother and first cousin on Mommy’s side “Ninang Jane.” She was my ninang, I would rage inside, so why were they laying claim to her? Why can’t she just be Jane to them the way her brothers Shorty and Fritz were to us? Yes, I admit to having been proprietary toward her as only the immature could be.
When I still didn’t know what the word glamour meant, Jane Pearl Server (standing left with her mama, Nazaria Dula Server) was already firmly installed in my mind as the epitome of that. I have a faint memory of her wearing white gloves and bending down to whisper goodbye to my ear before she enplaned to the US to study at Marymount College. A still fainter one of accompanying her to Ben Farrales’s shop in Ermita and stepping out, looking up at the elegant awning and admiring that stretch of road. Was it an unintended early lesson in aesthetics?
She sent me Dr. Seuss books at about the time I was learning to read, and The Cat in the Hat, The Cat in the Hat Comes Back and A Fly Went By made the interminable hours of childhood tolerable. Years later, she came home married and introduced us one by one to tall, handsome Hans Banzhaf who formally shook our hands.
My chest constricts as I write these words. Hans went ahead of Jane two years ago. Meanwhile, widowed Ninang Jane is fighting for her life at the ICU of Asian Hospital. I think of what a great friend she has been to her four children Pipo, Tina, Dada and Yammy even if she isn’t the baking-cookies-from-scratch type of mom. Right now my wish is for her grandchildren Olivia, Georgia and Max to continue to experience this special being the way she once graced my youth.
She sent me Dr. Seuss books at about the time I was learning to read, and The Cat in the Hat, The Cat in the Hat Comes Back and A Fly Went By made the interminable hours of childhood tolerable. Years later, she came home married and introduced us one by one to tall, handsome Hans Banzhaf who formally shook our hands.
My chest constricts as I write these words. Hans went ahead of Jane two years ago. Meanwhile, widowed Ninang Jane is fighting for her life at the ICU of Asian Hospital. I think of what a great friend she has been to her four children Pipo, Tina, Dada and Yammy even if she isn’t the baking-cookies-from-scratch type of mom. Right now my wish is for her grandchildren Olivia, Georgia and Max to continue to experience this special being the way she once graced my youth.
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