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!"