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.