My Huckleberry friend

These are my Throwback Thursday thoughts and photos as I deal with another foggy and chilly day in my adopted city. Call this my intermission number while I take a break from line editing some manuscripts.

It's bonnet weather up here, but I've misplaced mine while Kai, now eight and in school (surprisingly, the school bus came by to pick her up and she was ready and warmly dressed as she boarded it), has outgrown hers. She now wears a hoodie.

Booboo Babeth and Kai wearing bonnets

Yesterday classes were suspended so she stayed by my side all day long while I faced the computer. She played with her dolls and stack-up toys. When she grew weary of them and while I was taking a siesta, I overheard her take over the YouTube shuffle list and listen to different versions of "Moon River," her current favorite. I let her be, secretly pleased was I that she liked the songs I liked.

After dinner, she brought out her blank notebook that she uses for her doodles.She asked me to dictate the lyrics of the theme song from Breakfast at Tiffany's while she carefully wrote them down on a page, mindful of her spelling and placement of apostrophes. Then she began to sing a capella. Over and over until I wanted to cry.

Here Cecile Licad skims over the poetry book of Marne Kilates while Booboo Babeth and her Kai look over her shoulder. Photo by Anna Leah Sarabia

Who would have thunk it--that the kid I used to carry in my arms to meet such personages like our goddess of music CL would fall for a Mancini ballad?

Kai, don't rush, don't age too fast. You'll have a long time being a grownup, but childhood is such a fleeting period.

Rain, food, books and work

Today's weather was not an improvement on yesterday's. We woke up to ceaseless wind, rain and fog. At least, I did wake up ahead of everyone else in our small household; Rolly, who is usually an early riser, got up reluctantly at 9:30 a.m.

Nobody was in the mood to cook although we were all famished and wished for hot soup, arroz caldo, fried rice and tuyo--you know, rainy weather fare. But who was gonna prepare them?

Not I, said this housewife who has never gotten the hang of running a house. I had too much writing and editing work, chief of which was a book manuscript, on my plate, and deadlines were a pitiless lot.

So I said, I'm treating everyone to lunch at HOY (short for House of Yolo Yogurt) on Marcos Highway, a few minutes drive away from our place. Rolly couldn't be parted from his bed and blanket so Kimi, Kai and I dressed warmly and each carried an umbrella to the car.

I told Kimi to drive carefully through the zero-visibility fog, fearing she might bump into a stray dog or a human. We reached HOY without incident. Hardly had we sat, then the place began to fill up despite it being way past the lunch hour. Then we realized today was a holiday--Eid Mubarak!

Hot choco for my grandchild Kai

Daing na bangus with red mountain rice and fried eggs

Booboo Babeth looking ghostly amid the thick fog. Photo by Kai

Kai back in the warmth of Rolly Fernandez's room/library. Photo by Babeth

I settled for my favorite daing na bangus with mountain rice and two well-done fried eggs. Kimi had the bulalo which was for sharing. Kai had a little of my viand and her mother's, paired with a cup of rice and another cup of hot choco.

While Kimi was driving home through the zigzag road, I told her to slow down because I had a very full tummy and didn't want to throw up.

We brought home takeaway food (sirloin tapa with rice and sunny side up eggs) for Rolly. In all, it was a blessed day, the weather notwithstanding.

Meeting Damodar Das Castillo

Young cellist at the PPO Youth Concert last week

Experience has taught me to be wary of prodigies. Sometimes they don't live up to their early promise.

But I am a grandmother who dotes on her only grandchild, a violin student in Baguio. So when the opportunity to watch a free young people's concert at the Cultural Center of the Philippines Little Theater presented itself, I didn't want to let it go. The featured soloist was 11 going on 12 cellist Damodar Das Castillo whose instrument still looks huger than him.

I first heard him play at the 2016 Baguio Summer Music Festival, dubbed by Jeffrey Solares as Summer Out There. The boy was Maestro Jeffrey's pride and joy.

Damodar needed a special diet which the kitchen of the ICM House of Prayer was just willing to accommodate-- he was a full vegetarian. Even his table was set apart from the other members of the Manila Symphony Junior Orchestra.

On the last day of the week-long summer camp, the boy played solo in the chapel which had perfect acoustics since it was built with wood, bricks and glass. Sister Perla Macapinlac, then head of the House of Prayer, was part of the attentive audience.

I would have other occasions to listen to Damodar, mainly at the Ayala Museum And particularly when the MSJO returned from its triumphant performance in the Summa Cum Laude Youth Music Festival in Vienna, Austria. It was at the homecoming concert that Maestro Jeffrey announced that Damodar was accepted at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg.

The good news is our Ilonggo countrymen and women will have a chance to listen and watch as this young talent performs with assisting artist Dingdong Fiel at Nelly Garden on Aug. 17, 6:30 p.m. This outreach project is made possible through the herculean efforts of Pablo Tariman, he who made it his mission to chronicle the rise and rise of another former prodigy, pianist Cecile Licad

Post-concert meet and greet with Damodar Das Castillo, third from left, Pablo Tariman, violinist Adrian Ong, me and little Kai

Photos by Babeth Lolarga and Kiko Cabuena