Let's play 'Pretend'

Give my apo Kai a cloth diaper or a newly washed bimpo, and she can cast all her other toys away. When she learned to tinker with her mother's cellphone, she has been applying all sorts of funny faces on whoever held it. Her grumpa was no sacred exemption. I like how she rendered Rolly Fernandez into a Charlie Chaplin of sorts, herself she depicted as Catgirl. In real life, she dressed up Satchi as Superdog.

Rolly Chaplin

Kai Catgirl

Satchi Superdog

In the beginning of the lockdown, I imagined I was part of the story and cast of The Diary of Anne Frank. There I was, hiding away in an alcove with my red leatherette-bound Mercury Drugstore diary which I would sneak out when everyone else was asleep or busy and where I would write entries to help make mere survival bearable. But the Frank family's enemy was a palpable one--the German Nazis. This one that we have is invisible and just as deadly.

Well, this was my way of coping in the early weeks of the lockdown--to pretend, maybe a way of denial of the harshness of COVID-19. I've taken refuge in the patched up videos of choirs and orchestras and vocal soloists.

I've also begun counting the riches still available to us.

Jamie Tworkowskie named them for us:

Conversations will not be cancelled.
Relationships will not be cancelled.
Love will not be cancelled.
Songs will not be cancelled.
Reading will not be cancelled.
Self-care will not be cancelled.
Hope will not be cancelled.
May we lean into the good stuff that remains.

Despite my family's distance in Baguio, they can still manage to smile for the phone camera and clown around. Only Satchi has, what I imagine to be, a thought bubble that reads, "Bah! These humans!"

Self-care despite COVID-19

My head of black, white and gray hair looks like a nest fit for birds. Any day now when I step out into the garden for my few minutes of sun, I can half expect a mother sparrow to relocate her hungry chicks on top of my head. The image makes me chuckle inside, especially after I saw this illustration by Arli Pagaduan posted by Ang Ilustrador ng Kabataan.

Among the first things I will do after April 30, that is, if the enhanced community quarantine isn't extended again, is to get a haircut, a short, summery one, with my stylist, a flamboyant gay named Ruby. I entrust my head of hair to him/her alone and nobody else.

My sisters have been volunteering to trim my hair and lessen the volume (thus lessening the body heat I feel inside), but I've stubbornly refused their offer. Baka madisgrasya pa, and Ruby will be left to do major damage control.

Allow me this bit of vanity even in the midst of a worldwide pandemic. I found an old hairband, probably belonging to my late mother, and I've used it to tame my hair, push back the unruly bangs that threaten to cover my eyes as I stoop over this keyboard to finish my entry to the #LockdownDiaries series.

I'm sure many others have their own to-do list after the lockdown is lifted. A lot will be going to salons, I betcha, to get that overall feeling of well-being again. I dare not work on my cuticles myself--I'll leave that to the manicurist who's going to get a generous tip from yours truly. No, I'm not getting a facial--am not into that yet. I'm your basic scrub-your-face-with-soap-and-water type. But a radical haircut does sound good. That is enough.

Masked

There's a story behind this all-cotton face mask sewn for me by Aya Justiniani of Aya's Store. I needed such masks for my then repeated trips to the Medical City for the rehab of my new knee until the physical therapy sessions were suspended due to the COVID-19 crisis.

Still, I thought the family should invest in masks should we need to go out, eventually. The items available in the drugstores or supermarkets were the disposable, not eco-friendly, kind.

Under what Dr. Melendre Araos now calls "the new normal," masks will be part of our outfits, whether we like it or not. And for immuno-compromised individuals like myself who has to live with hypertension and diabetes, there's no arguing anymore about what's comfy and what's not.

Amy Tan, in her FB author's page, showed how stylish masks can be made to look even for someone in her late 60s.

And then I saw Aya's wares in Facebook. She was making and selling them for Pph25 each for the adult size, Php15 for the kid's. My sisters and I decided to commission her to sew 52 masks, some for shipping to Iloilo.

We received our orders yesterday, thanks to a quick online banking transfer and Lalamove PH Delivery. Aya carefully and lovingly folded her paninda in individualized plastic resealable packs. The packs can be recycled later to contain maybe one's fancy earrings or necklaces to protect them from dust.

When I showed my mask, one of six varieties in my collection, Martin Masadao had the capital idea of also bringing his retazos to some old gentlemen tailors in San Andres, Manila, to give them business during a difficult period. When Jennifer Patricia A. Cariño saw mine, she said friends in Baguio have also taken up sewing these things. Let's keep the sewing going.

I'm not saying a mask will completely shield you from the notorious virus. But with life's full promise still awaiting us after the lockdown, it's best not to take risks so we can sing, like Shirley Horn or Gou de Jesus, when we emerge from the quarantine: "So here's to life / And every joy it brings / So here's to life / To dreamers and their dreams."

The reluctant kitchen helper

Perhaps in the next life I'll aspire to be like writer Fran Lebowitz, described by The New Yorker as "the patron saint of staying at home and doing nothing. She is famously averse to working, and famously resistant to technology; she has no cell phone or computer."

After years of being on the work treadmill, I've slid into semi-retirement with joyful relief, looking forward to my monthly SSS pension--not much but enough to treat myself and loved ones to a special meal. In my broken cell phone are the numbers of favorite restaurants, especially takeaway places. Until the malls open and I can find a technician to save my SIM, I am phone-less. I can be reached through email and FB messenger.

Lebowitz doesn't suffer from writer's block but what she calls "writer's blockade." Like her, I hate to cook, let alone help prepare while someone else cooks.

Two days ago, my sister disturbed my reading to ask me to help her grate some carrots. It took me 15 minutes to rise from my chair and walk in slow motion to the door leading out of the bedroom and onto the kitchen. By the time I got there, the request changed to if I could separate the uncooked lumpia wrappers one by one. I told myself this could be a chance for a meditative exercise, and it was.

Our cutie

Sukiyaki by CHAYA Baguio

Toddler feeding herself

Sushi madness

Last night, my foodie apo messaged me on FB, inquiring what we had for brekkie, lunch and dinner. I answered straightaway: brekkie, champorado with milk donated by the barangay; lunch, lumpiang Shanghai; and dinner, salmon sinigang.

"Awwww," she responded. I realized those were all her favorites, prepared for her lovingly by doting grumpa Rolly Fernandez and her mother Kimi. Second realization was how blessed we were to have three filling meals a day as the quarantine continues to enhance hunger pangs among the majority.

I'm not promising a changed me who will suddenly embrace kitchen chores. But I vow to always have a clean plate after meals.

Photos show a younger Kai at our favorite Japanese restaurant, CHAYA Baguio, where we love the sukiyaki and sushi, where we cap our meals with matcha ice cream.

Here's to more unlocking of the pleasures of the palate while time is on our side.

Balancing act

I thought I'd put this old photograph here to remind me how woebegone this Wednesday has been. I couldn't dream up a topic I could passably write about.

My inner censor has been working double time, cancelling such subjects as My Mother's Paksiw na Pata, an ode to Mom's meat dish redolent with banana blossoms, laurel leaves and black pepper, with a thick soy-based sauce (censor said it's Holy Week, a time of fasting from red meat, and a rich dish may be offensive to those who are hungry); the unfinished bottle of eau de toilette, lavender scent, from friend Chit Santos (I couldn't possibly dress up, only to realize I have nowhere to go and thus dabbing the behinds of my ears and the base of my neck with lavender was out of the question); mastering the pressing of the snooze button which Bruno Lancelot Lolarga has done by napping in the morning, in the afternoon, then enjoying a full night's sleep, except for peeing time around midnight (see, El President, you are not alone, but Bruno is more handsome than you'll ever aspire to be even if you smoothen the pores on your nose).

Those are the subjects I ticked off mentally as I went about my day. But I did a Bruno--going on snooze mode at 10 a.m., then at 2 p.m. again until a compulsion to record my day impelled me to turn on the computer and attempt something.

I responded to the posts of friends like Pablo Tariman whose short tribute to Kerima Polotan triggered a memory of what might have been an encounter on the phone with the lady. Turns out I was speaking to her secretary, not The Kerima herself. But for many years I deluded myself into imagining it was the legendary writer whose voice I heard on the other end of the phone, inviting me over to pick up my contributor's fees. The fees were my first from a national publication, and I spent all the money on pocketbooks at the old PECO (Philippine Education Company) bookstore in downtown Manila.

If anything, this limbering exercise, a prelude to real writing, is a reminder for me to do more actual physical exercises--the mind loves a walk. Look at Elmer A. Ordoñez, the literary critic, novelist, essayist, who comes back from his evening walks with a Facebook status that reads like a haiku or a tanka. I imagine him with a mandarin painter beside him rendering the images of tagak and frolicking calf into a haiga to deepen the meaning further of the FB status.

My grandchild's pose states, yes, balance there, Booboo (her pet name for me). More walks, more sunshine to get the adrenaline running anew.

A pandemic dream

In this dream I am living in a bahay kubo that only has a roof and a floor. No walls, except for four bamboo posts. A strong wind hurls the house, like what you see happening in movies about twisters and tornadoes. As the house tumbles in the air that takes it higher and higher, I cling to one of the posts and cry out for my mother to help me, to save me. In my mind, I am aware she is dead, but nonetheless she appears, and like an angel, sets down my house on the ground again. Dream ends there.

In the article "Why Are My Dreams So Vivid Right Now?" in the April 2, 2020, issue of The Cut, writer Alice Robb interviews psychologist Deirdre Barrett who says, "“Changing one’s routine dramatically often leads to more dream recall.”

View from a window of the Peninsula Manila

Insomniac photographing her own image

I don't think I have to lie on a psychiatrist's couch or consult a psychologist to interpret my own dream. I know the house stands for myself, secure in the thought of a floor (groundedness?) and ceiling (brains? thoughts? literally higher self?) to shelter my body and soul, but open everywhere--perhaps I bare myself too much, huh? Being carried off by a twister is the opposite of being locked down and imprisoned in one's abode so there I am, unexpectedly freed from prison.

I call on a higher being, an intercessor to be my safety net. And indeed, someone familiar appears--Mommy--and she puts my house, myself down on our backyard, amongst the fruit-bearing trees.

A month of Sundays

"It feels like a lot of Sundays! And isn't that nice. (sort of) (not really) STILL MUCH TO DO- but yay, alive." ~ Gang Badoy Capati in her FB status

When I got out of bed, I had to declare to my siblings who were still in various states of sleep and semi-wakefulness, "It's Sunday!" I felt that I had to tell them as though the fact had to be declared loudly after our near-languish in this eternity of days that has the stupor of Sundays, that we shouldn't be in a great hurry to waken.

With daylight flooding the room, we had to get up even before eight, stand up, prepare brekkie (tuna salad with bread so it also felt like a Lenten Friday), talk again about the invisible war the world is waging against COVID-19, where to get a piece of palm to commemorate Palm Sunday.

I suggested a banana leaf since we had banana plants a-plenty. The suggestion was laughed off the table. I returned to sipping my Sunquick juice and munching my tuna sandwich and thinking how I'd creatively "waste" my day.

I skipped exercising and headed straight to my "office" space to check on my mail, deluding myself that there were still urgent messages that needed a response from me. But there was nothing but forwarded mail about staying healthy during this period. Nothing that I hadn't read in various permutations in other people's FB status. We're already being told to be wary of such generalized attribution of sources as "According to a Viber source I belong to" or "A doctor I know shared this. Please copy and paste."

Thank goodness for sites like Interlude and ParisReview.Org wherein I could bone up on the lives of my favorite artists like Maria João Pires, the Portuguese pianist and masterful interpreter of Mozart and Schumann, and Vita Sackville West who we shouldn't simply remember for her relationship with Virginia Woolf or the fabulous garden she tended. Sackville West was an author in her own right--by age 18 she had written eight novels and five plays.

But let me not get ahead of her narrative. The site I mentioned can be visited here:
https://www.theparisreview.org/…/the-fabulous-forgotten-li…/

As for Pires, you can follow what I want for my funeral music here: https://www.youtube.com/watch…

And you can sail my mortal remains down Bohol's Loboc River in a barge with palmeras covering my coffin. Photo gives a small glimpse of the river through the interstices of a palm.

Ahh, such Sunday thoughts and dreams when one is not sufficiently caffeinated!

Still life in Bohol

Pablo Tariman thinks I must've descended from the line of Francisco Dogohoy, he who waged the longest revolt in Philippine history. It comes from my attraction to the province of Bohol. I've visited neighboring Cebu just as many times, but there's nothing like the appeal of people and landscape of Bohol.

I've always envied poet Marjorie Evasco because she has this province to go home to again and again. On our last trip there with Rolly Fernandez in 2014, she brought us to the house restored by aesthete Ino Manalo.

Something clicked in my mind that I brought out my digicam and shot picture after picture. Everywhere I turned there was something worth preserving in digital memory.

The enhanced community quarantine permitted me time to go over these files. What was on my mind as I took them? Perhaps the wish that one day I'd show them to my painting tutor, Norman Chow, with the thought that he'd guide me through a series of works in acrylic on paper canvas. It was never to be. Norman died in 2018.

I don't know about the fate of Ino's house--if I can ever "go home" there again one day. Meantime, I'm left with these images.

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!