Nurturing the inner and real child

Family portrait by Mario's Christmas tree on the 23rd of December this year. From left: Babeth, Rolly, Kai, now seven, and Kimi Fernandez

Being a full-time granny nanny has become the greatest source of fulfillment in my life. It even beats writing, drawing and painting any day. I've suddenly become conscious of that cliche about passing on the torch to a new generation.

I have two daughters, but I was too busy with my job, whether as an employed journalist or as a freelancer, that in many ways they managed to thrive despite my benign neglect.

When, for five years, I became a full-time homemaker in Baguio, I was there to bring them to their piano or ballet lessons, fetch them afterwards, then go to a cafe with a pastry corner for a snack. I was there for the quarterly distribution of report cards and other milestones.

But I didn't deliberately pass on any skills to them the way I'm doing now with Kai Mykonos. Whatever my daughters are today, it is largely through their persistence in academic and extra-curricular work.

Kai's first Christmas in Baguio in 2011

Kai and I like to scour Pinterest.com for kawaii drawings which we copy and transfer to our respective diaries. She has acquired my knack for lying on the bed, belly down, while scribbling or doodling on the pages of her notebooks. That is also my preferred position for writing a la Odalisque!

Because friend Joseph Uy gave her a child's fountain pen on one of his trips to Baguio she has ignored the many ballpoint pens in the pencil mug in favor of something more sophisticated. She finds that the doodles tend to run more smoothly with the aid of a pen.

But we guard against her turning into a Mini Me. Her mother sees to that so she's allowed a few cartoons and YouTube videos a day under adult supervision. She's facile with using the Viber app of the family's iPad and shooting videos of herself to send to family members in the lowland. The goofy videos--that's all Kai, not me.

So on holy innocents' day, my wish is for everyone to find both the inner and real child in them and nurture it.

Getting through

I have a huge pile of dry laundry to sort, fold and "deliver" to every family member's closet, but I have deferred the chore in order to write a few words. I don't want this day to go by unremembered.

At the rate dear ones are falling ill or dying on me, the time I have left has become so precious. The sense of mortality is doubly heightened.

I've become acutely aware of some kind of legacy I can leave behind. Not in material goods, goodness, no!, because I have little where those are concerned, except for anyone who'd take interest in my overused fountain pens. I hear they have resale value -- they come with legit papers, I might add, thanks to Joseph Uy.

Since the month started, I've tried to do "jottings" on this space on sundry matters from making my Mom's chicken potato salad to my husband Rolly Fernandez's hobby of collecting stamps. I don't turn up every day with something to say.

There are days like today when I'm just sifting and shoving the papers that have piled up on my desk, papers that signify the amount of work I attended to in the last 11 months. I should sort them from the useful to the useless the way I do with the dry laundry and gift myself with an uncluttered desk on Jan. 1, 2019.

The spirit is willing, but the body, suffering from holiday languor brought about by a rich diet of ham, cheese, steak, pate and the like, is dragging itself. Anyone who suggests "Exercise, Babeth! Stretch your extremities and go for walks" will be shot.

On days like this, it is best to just follow your bliss, go with the flow and succumb to the allure of another nap.

Source of illustration found here: https://www.huffpost.com/…/cartoons-for-anxiety_n_5bacd763e…

'Tis the season for frozen margaritas

From left: Vergel, Rolly, Chit and the blogger Photo by Kai Mykonos

We had dinner a few nights ago at The Manor's Le Chef restaurant with our journalism confreres from Manila, Vergel Santos and wife Chit Roces. It's almost an annual tradition for them to come up to Baguio for a whiff of our rarefied air in the few forested parts of the city.

Rolly Fernandez and Vergel have a history -- they worked together at the post-EDSA 1986 Manila Times and Manila Chronicle. They never run out of subjects to talk about when they see each other which is yearly. So their conversation goes on and on from the appetizers to post-prandial coffee and on and on until the waiters are already preparing the tables for the next day's buffet breakfast.

What are the waiting wives to do? Drinking ourselves blind is out of the question because we were still under the vigilant eyes of our partners. Chit has a history of passing out when under the influence while I tend to be a rabble rouser once the alcohol kicks in.

Lightheaded Chit

We settle for a strawberry flavored frozen margarita, a huge one, enough to be shared with Chit's son Tex and his wife. We each take turns scraping the mountain of ice and tequila with our respective teaspoons. Soon I complain about brain freeze quickly creeping from the front lobe of my brain to the back of my neck. Soon Chit is lightheaded with laughter. Vergel's eyes just grow bigger. Rolly is as usual silent.

Chit and I decide to quit early and leave the young couple to finish the rest of the margarita.

The guys get the hint. At close to midnight, very late by Baguio standards, we break up our little party, they to return to their rooms, we to drive home.

In the absence of family

The Lolargas and Fernandezes are Baguio migrants, the former having settled here in the early '60s, the latter in 1992 to be exact. But my cousins, with whom we used to live in the retirement house of my grandmother (ever since sold), have moved to the sprawling Metro Manila or abroad, leaving me the sole Lolarga in the city.

When Rolly Fernandez (second from left), our family breadwinner, started teaching at the UP Baguio, we had to sell a number of artworks so we could get by from day to day on his assistant professor's salary. It wasn't until he accepted the post of bureau chief of Philippine Daily Inquirer Northern and Central Luzon in '93 did we loosen our belts a bit and breathe a little easier.

Rolly and I chose to remember one Sunday who was with us all throughout a financially shaky start in a new city where our kids went to public school. That was one reason for hosting a small reunion of friends, chief of them two retired but still intellectually active professors, Del Tolentino and Ben Tapang (bookending the group shot). How the two get by without social media accounts you tell me!

Tita Eppie Blanco (in red) is another one who stubbornly rejects Facebook and prefers to engage on socio-political issues on a deeply personal level. She has an iconic portrait of Chief Justice (she still is ours) Lourdes Sereno hugging her.

Because Eppie had long served Philippine Airlines' ground crew she has a colorful knowledge of the who's who of Baguio, like social chroniclers George Sison or Maurice Arcache. Only better--she dealt with these people personally, and they remain her contacts.

Rolly and I love her buko sinigang, which she ladles in bowls while talking a mean streak about the President the country doesn't deserve and the voter education needed to make the small steps to real change possible. She has voting age grandchildren, and like her, they're voting straight Liberal Party.

Speaking of PAL, Maria Klaridelle A Reyes (with son Marco on her lap) shuttles between wherever the airlines flies her as an attendant and Baguio so visits to our city are definitely precious. She is my eldest daughter Kimi Fernandez's friend from their Baguio City National Science High School years. Marco and my grandchild Kai are playmates whenever the gap in their years is bridgeable.

To my left is another high school pal of Kimi's, Agnes, pregnant with her first baby and the latest would-be mascot of their play group. I bless Kimi who added (bought, not cooked) the soft lengua to the festive fare that included my chicken potato salad and longganisa spaghetti, Rolly's salad and ribs (bought them himself), Eppie's spicy sausages and chicken pastel.

Junley Lorenzana Lazaga brought wife Janine and children Inigo and Joaquin. The toddler Aquin is off camera playing with Rolly's collection of bells or sneaking sips from his father's bottle of beer.

I grew up in a large clan complete with a great grandmother, a grandmother, assorted uncles and aunts, multi generations of first and second cousins that met at Col. Ernesto and Dr. Erlinda Lolarga's home every Christmas. The tradition fell away as the old guard died and the new one joined the Filipino diaspora to North America.

In the absence of family, I still have these.

Photo by Junley

Chicharon on my pasta

So as not to suffer from holiday fatigue, I've made it a point to see my friends in batches of two, three, four, not more than a dozen. That way we could listen to whoever was talking about how the year went for her or him.

Jennifer Patricia A. Cariño and Karen Lee Hizola make up my extended family in Baguio although the latter is originally from Cebu. Jenny is my confirmation hijada, designer of my third book of poems Big Mama Sez: Poems Old and New and my forthcoming fourth, Moon Hanging Low Over My Window. Karen is illustrating the fourth baby. We have the first half of 2019 to complete the project.

The blogger, Jenny and Karen

Together Jenny and Karen have also done assorted collaterals for the Cultural Arts Events Organizer and Guacamole Productions whenever concerts are mounted in the city.

But our four-hour lunch yesterday wasn't a business meeting. It was catch-up time and an occasion to exhale. As we nibbled our pasta (mine came with a generous sprinkling of chicharon on top apart from the basil leaves and olive oil), chicken sandwich, bacon quesadillas and spicy shrimp burrito, I had time to admire our surroundings.

It felt like eating inside an aquarium or terrarium for Cafe de Angelo in Chapiz Village off Marcos Highway is walled with glass. The cafe looks out to a well-tended garden.

One persistent black butterfly flitted in as we were discussing a recently deceased person. The butterfly even hovered over me before flying to parts elsewhere. It certainly caught our attention, and I mumbled a silent prayer for the person who had passed on.

The cafe is my most recent discovery although it has been around, serving mostly Korean students of English and their Filipino teachers.

We ate slowly until the noontime temperature dropped, and we felt it was time to go to our halfway points before finally heading home. Thanks for a lovely afternoon, dear Jenny and Karen. It wasn't a coincidence that the three of us wore varying shades of blue.

Conjugal account, or our 'daughter' Cecile

Look what my grandchild Kai dug up from the box where Rolly Fernandez stores negatives and prints from long ago and far away? One of the rare photos of myself with my LODI, Ms. Cecile Licad.

This picture was taken in the vast garden of surgeon Joven Cuanang in Antipolo City where the pianist performed another set of Chopin etudes in the early 2000s. During the socials following her performance, a lady came up to Pablo Tariman and me and asked, "Are you the parents of Cecile?"

Of course, Pablo gave his signature guffaw. But the question has been the origin of the joke between us about a mythical conjugal account where we are supposed to earn from every concert where we're involved. As I said, the account is mythical. And the reality of an impresario's and a cultural worker's lives is we really have a tough time keeping a maintaining balance in our respective banks.

That is not to say we have woebegone lives. Au contraire, hearing Licad and following her through several concerts like we did in the past, from Philamlife Auditorium to Antipolo to St. Paul University in Tuguegarao City, are immeasurable rewards in themselves.

Paper cranes

Folded paper cranes on my keyboard

Last night my only grandchild opened the wings of these four paper cranes made by a poet friend, Marj Evasco. It is Marj's Christmas tradition to fold paper to shape these cranes.

Kai, my little one, was supposed to make four wishes, the wise poet said in her letter: one for herself, one for her family, one for her pet dog and one for the planet Earth, her home.

I got teary-eyed when I read the letter aloud to her, this child who has taken to also writing letters via snail mail, designing her own stationery pads with origami paper which she spells "organic papar" and wishing her pen pals "Amare Christmas" after her favorite Italian restaurant Amare La Cucina at Albergo Hotel, Villamor Drive, Baguio.

Today my husband will hang the cranes on our Christmas tree, and I will make a silent wish that Kai, who now owns a child-size fountain pen, will remain the way she is for a very long time.

Chicken potato salad time

Photo from the World Wide Web

It's that time of the year again when I put on an apron and transform overnight into the Lady of the Kitchen.

Friends and family know that I don't cook by choice. I don't keep house even if I'm a stay-at-home wife, mother and grandmother. I do everything (read, write, doodle, paint, daydream, arrange the bookshelves), except go to the grocery or market, check the pantry, cook, launder (with great reluctance), etc.

My housemates have come to accept this side of me. But during Christmastime, I announce to them that I take over the kitchen for the preparation of the special chicken potato salad that I learned from my mother and the longganisa spaghetti that I learned by ear.

The recipe is special because it isn't written down. I just learned it from watching Mommy and eating the salad every Yuletide season since I was this small.

Recently, friend Gou de Jesus asked me how to do it. Ok, let's start with a kilo of Baguio potatoes and cover them with salted water. Boil for 30 minutes until potatoes are tender. In a separate pan, boil two chicken breasts, again in salted water because that's all the salt you'll put in the salad.

After the potatoes have cooled, peel off the covers. Cube the potatoes. Set aside. Shred flesh of boiled chicken breasts. Do not include the skin--give it to Boots (our pet dog).

Meanwhile, chop celery stalks into tiny bits. The celery is needed for that added crunch.

After both chicken and potatoes have all cooled down, mix them with the celery pieces and add a jar-full of pickle relish. Mix in another jar of mayonaisse, then mix well with a spatula or one of those Baguio-made wooden spoons.

Best paired with fried dishes like pork chops, Canto ribs, homemade fried chicken (oy! hindi nako magluluto nun, ah!!!) or anything savory like Pablo Mariano Molina's beef rendang. As midnight snack, Mommy's chicken potato salad hits the spot. Ask Frank Cimatu, her best endorser. He also loves her morcon!

Season with joy, peace, prosperity.

Chill. Play a lot of Mozart while working on this work of love.

Forever Norman

Norman Chow, my painting teacher for over 12 years, and I were supposed to "plot out" what would have been the 12th and last of 12 paintings for a two-person show I am scheduled to be part of in November. We began leisurely work as early as the first quarter of this year. We hated being hurried. But the 12th work isn't meant to be because just as Baguio was waking up from the debris left by super-typhoon Ompong, we who loved and respected Norman learned that he died Sept. 17. To say it was sudden is an understatement. I haven't totally come to terms with the loss. I will miss his quiet guidance, his humble ways (he was an excellent visual artist skilled in dry and wet media, able to paint in the traditional Oriental style and also come up with contemporary images) and his patience in imparting his technical knowledge. He helped me find my style and feel confident in it, not to be apologetic about a childlike view of the world and of shapes and colors. In honor of Norman, I am giving the title "Norman's Feast" to my show of still lifes of food painted in acrylic. The show, which will also feature the paper cutouts of Sinag de Leon, opens Nov. 7 at Waya Araos Wijangco's Gourmet Gypsy Art Cafe at 25 Roces Ave., Quezon City, and will run until the end of December. Waya comforted me, texting, "I'm sure he has given enough in the last 12 years for you to keep painting forever." In photo is Norman's rendition of what Green Valley in Baguio looked like before it was developed into the subdivision it is today.

Future diarist

Kai Mykonos, the Not So Little One, is growing so fast like a weed that I often am breathless at her development. A week ago, while the rains poured non-stop outside the window, I stopped from what I was handwriting in my notebook and noticed her scribbling also in her own notebook on my husband's bed. She looked like a little old lady with legs bent and covered with a blanket. I snapped this picture of her.

Later, she handed me the page where she had written her short composition. I am quoting it in full without any editing. It's the sort of thing that makes a grandma's heart swell.

Here is Kai's voice:

My lola always love to write about the things that happened last time. So I decided I will have a go. So I tried it and it struck me to a diary. I loved it so mutch that I wanted to do when it is Saturday afternoon. When I grow up I wish to learn how to write diary's with cursive. Then learn to draw things that are also wonderful. So thank you dear lola, to make me your granddaughter. Love Kai

Another picture of the diarist, this time with her hand-drawn stationery line

Photos by Babeth Lolarga

So long, Roger

Some members of Church Cafe, a Bible study group founded by the late Norma Liongoren at her New York street, Cubao, gallery, are shown supporting Mario Miclat (leftmost), Gawad Balagtas awardee for excellence in essay and fiction writing in 2013, the year the Baguio Writers Group also received the Gawad Pedro Bucaneg trophy from the Unyon ng mga Manunulat ng Piliipinas. This accounts for the blogger's presence in the group shot apart from her occasionally partaking of the study of the Word. Poet Rogelio "Roger" Mangahas, who passed away at 6:14 today, is standing third from right, with wife Fe beside him. Pastor Stephen and Fe Sunil are at center, Alma Miclat beside Mario holding their only grandchild Raj.

In all photos I've seen of Roger today posted in social media he always looked trim but strong. Who'd have known the body would turn traitor and we'd lose this nationalist poet, teacher, activist so soon? As the good book says, "Who knows the mind of the Lord?"

Roger was 79. Rest in peace, gentle friend! Photo courtesy of Alma Miclat

BWG recharged by chap chae, bread, carrot cupcakes, veggie sticks, etc.

In 2015, I was sick and spent my 60th birthday in the hospital. It was a lugubrious time in my life, but I think I'm over that so whenever I can, I try to celebrate my birthday with family and friends now that I've made it to my 60s.

To-die-for cupcakes from the kitchen of Toottee Pacis. After the fourth cupcake, I'm ready for a diabetic coma!

The Korean chap chae has increasingly replaced the pancit guisado as birthday noodles.

Healthy feast

Yesterday, though not my birthday yet, I decided to treat the members of the Baguio Writers Group to the traditional noodles (chap chae made by longtime painting companion and baker Toottee Chanco Pacis and her Girl Friday Joy), home-baked bread with cheese pimiento (also from Mamita Toottee's bustling kitchen) and carrot cupcakes with thick butter icing--the last were Toottee's birthday gift to the June borns in the group. The other girl marking another milestone in her life is Padma Perez although she wasn't present. It was actually her birthday yesterday.

Our host, Luchie Maranan, also prepared assorted teas and coffee, vegetable sticks with pesto and garlic dip, slices of orange and an Ad'laine roll brought by Junley Lazaga.

A portion of BWG having their snacks (food comes first but always) before the meeting

Allan Carino and EV Espiritu seated near the altar where candles are lit in memory of Edgardo B. Maranan and his parents

It just took the green tea or coffee to get us going with our supposed general assembly. Junley, our current president, declared a "failure of elections" because we didn't have enough members present for a general election. BWG officers serve a term of three years. Nevertheless, we soldiered on with the agenda put before us. Diego S. Maranan, son of the late writer Ed, whose 40th day of demise we were also observing yesterday, met with us to tell us about how Ed's heirs and BWG can work together to perpetuate his Tatay's memory.

The meeting closed with a poetry reading by treasurer Merci Javier Dulawan and Luchie. The latter's poem struck a chord because it was about the vicissitudes of ageing from forgetting where one placed one's eyeglasses to the chest constriction one feels after climbing a flight of stairs. When one hits 63, it is indeed time to ask, "Where did my youth go? Did I waste enough of it?"

So this early we can announce that the members will hold a how to make a poem workshop facilitated by Allan on July 20 at one of the rooms of the University of the Philippines Baguio that is accessible to weak-kneed senior citizens (I ought to be one of them). Basic requirement before the whole-day workshop proper is to write a poem for critique-ing, followed by shaping a poem based on the prompt/s Allan will give.
To the absent BWG members who are interested in joining the workshop, please indicate your participation to Junley for the head count.

Photos by Luchie Maranan and Junley Lazaga

The irony isn't lost on me

My co-mother (kumare, the godmother of my eldest of two daughters) Mary Ann or Meran Daza Umali emailed me this image, a photo she took while passing through Lantana Street in Cubao, Quezon City. My kids call me Nanay. I told her the irony isn't lost on me mainly because I don't or hardly cook, and I imagine my Lantana Street namesake as a woman as hefty of build as I am, wearing a greasy apron and ladling piping hot arroz caldo into bowls on a rainy day such as today. To my tokaya (namesake) in Cubao, don't work too hard!

The American Songbook goes places

I haven't blogged in ages. Busyness, grief, demands of running a house, much needed time with family are not valid excuses when you're in the writing game.

But today, after a seconds-long power brownout in our part of Baguio, I decided to write something on a project of which I am one of many organizers (the others being Joseph Uy, Alan Andres of the Cultural Arts Events Organizer and retired University of the Philippines Baguio economics Prof. Ben Tapang).

Ben and I are going to incorporate ourselves into a non-stock, non-profit outfit called Guacamole Productions whose mission/vision is to spread the good news about classical music in the city of Baguio. We intend to bring up our most promising classical musicians whether soloists, chamber instrumentalists, vocal artists or, God willing, symphonic orchestra players. The end goal is to make Baguio the Salzburg (northern musical capital) of the Philippines.

Logo of the new creative enterprise Guacamole Productions designed by Jenny Carino

So far, we have been encouraged by the support shown by President Ray Dean Salvosa of the University of the Cordilleras and his staff, particularly Onie Aguinalde, vice president for administration, and Vicky Molina, Salvosa's executive assistant, Des and Auring Bautista who've consistently been with us since the Baguio Summer Music Festival began in 2015, University of the Philippines Baguio Chancellor Raymundo Rovillos who greeted us with a friendly "Is that a cultural proposal you are about to bring to me?," friends from the Baguio Association of Restaurants like Edna Anton of Sizzling Plate, Ninj Sabado of Arca's Yard and Marie Therese Jison of Mother's Garden and Restaurant who immediately signed a check for the dinner of the visiting artists even if her venue is closed for major renovation. Therese said she believed in the project and would like to help. She went to the extent of delivering the check to me. Therese, it'll go to a dinner for 10 persons at the beloved hangout for unlimited Korean barbecue, Korean Palace.

Why Guacamole? Well, we found "pine tree" bordering on a cliche. And avocado trees also abound in Baguio. Plus guacamole implies halo-halo, a merry mix of European classics, American classics, original Pilipino music, Broadway and movie themes, opera, etc.

Salvosa has been some kind of guiding guru, making us understand the taste buds of our city. One time we proposed a chamber version of La Traviata to him and sent him videos of the Viva Voce performance at Ayala Museum last year. He nixed the idea, explaining that his students and employees were not yet ready even if some arias in Traviata were popular.

But when I watched The American Songbook recently (May 12) at the Insular Corporate Center auditorium in Alabang, Muntinlupa City, something clicked in my head. This was what Salvosa meant! Millennials could relate to the songs from the pillars of American classical music (George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter and Oscar Hammerstein) and the ones written for contemporary Broadway musicals like Wicked and A Chorus Line. Millennials could also appreciate the sight and sound of their fellow millennials singing the old fogies' songs.

With barely two weeks to prepare, Joseph, Al, Ben and I punched phone numbers, designed and redesigned the e-poster and e-vite, sought sponsors (Musar School of Music was the most recent to step in), composed ourselves into a text brigade to help fill up the UC Theater and UPB's new Teatro Amianan. Salvosa, Bautista and Rovillos were one in saying that the songs from the songbook they were familiar with and they were food for the students' souls.

The American Songbook premieres tomorrow in a matinee at 4 p.m. at the UC, followed by a 6 p.m. performance on May 26 at the UPB and finally, a by-invitation-only engagement to celebrate Bautista's birthday at the UB Centennial Hall on May 28.

The singers Jasmin Salvo, Jan Briane Astom and Mheco Manlangit Photo by Bianca L. Susi

After all these, the songbook team of tenor Jan Briane Astom, sopranos Mheco Manlangit and Jasmin Salvo and original pianist Michelle Nicolasora will reprise the concert on June 17 at Ayala Museum in Makati and in a dinner-concert on July 1 at Gourmet Gypsy Art Cafe on Roces Ave., Quezon City.

But nothing like watching the show in good ole Baguio in the summer when the living is easy!

Our thanks also to our other partners: National Commission for Culture and the Arts and Genesis Transport Service Inc. with its de luxe Joybus ferrying the performers, production and documentation teams to and from our fair city.

Food glorious food

Once a week, my friend Toottee Chanco Pacis and I get together with our painting tutor Norman Chow to spend a whole day mucking around with our brushes and paints. Toottee and I paint different genres--another reason we get along famously. We can never consider each other rivals. I'm sorry I wasn't able to take photos of her works. But here are mine, done over the past three weeks. I've focused on the theme of food because it is always at the back and front of my mind--what to eat next after the current meal is consumed.

Or maybe because Toottee, a baker also by avocation, serves wonderful refreshments. Yesterday we had slices of moist banana bread brought by Norman's other occasional student, Angie del Rosario of Veniz Hotel, Toottee's oatmeal cookies and famed brownies with Sagada tea. Conversation is always warm and robust even if Toottee and I are beginning to feel our bodies betraying us. But for as long as we can hold a brush, we promise to soldier on.

"Cupcake Fiesta," acrylic on canvas, 24" x 18"

"Brekkie," acrylic on canvas, 24" x 18"

"Halo-halo Ka Rin," acrylic on canvas, 24" x 18"