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