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.

Dangerous beauties

Brother Junic, who's out there in Calgary, Canada, poking around the neighborhood with his camera 'round his neck, sent us, his siblings, this image earlier today.

It reminded me of the time I took a different path during a morning walk in Baguio with Curly Kai and I ended up rushing home with a necklace of rashes.

Junic wrote about these harmless-looking flora:

"They look beautiful but good thing I didn't proceed to hike in this area. There was so much hogweed. If I had gone near, I would have ended up with rashes."

Send more hogweed, bro, but only images of these dangerous beauties, not the real deal. Scratch that itch!

Hogweed--do not touch or don't let one of these babies touch you. Photo by Junic Lolarga

The roses of April are here

A pretty song--that's how I remember Simon and Garfunkel's "April Come She Will." It's the month "when streams are ripe and swelled with rain." But I guess the boys were referring to spring in their hemisphere.

I used to spin S&G's greatest hits on my parents' stereo back in college until I had memorized some lyrics. There was "I Am a Rock" whose lyrics struck me to my very core at a time when I was over-sensitive and in need of much desensitizing from a world that I thought I couldn't understand.

I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor,
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries.

But years and decades have passed, I've somehow "moved on", achieved a certain amount of "closure", and the girl whose body I once inhabited is increasingly fading away. I put those words in quotes because they're, well, so current among those who would play psychologists.

One way of getting out of the prison of introversion is to take photos, to look at the world through a lens clearly. This I have discovered through the years of blogging and doing reportorial coverage for a living (correction: for survival in the big city).

I get near instantaneous results. These results make visible some inner conversations (more of monologues) I have with myself. Somehow I'm able to share the serenity or the turmoil (whichever I'm going through at any moment) with people out there. It does make me feel less lonesome, an alone-ness heightened when one is in the boisterous company of family and of friends.

Typhoon Chedeng is expected tonight or tomorrow. Weather forecasters predict that its tail end will pass through the province of La Union, not too far from Baguio. So before these pink roses are blown away, let them live through these images that I took two days ago while on a morning walk with my grandchild.

Photos by Babeth Lolarga

Locomotive in a bus

When I showed the LO (little one) our travel pictures from Thursday last, she asked if the series of pics of the rock shed along Palispis (formerly Marcos) Highway were of a "choo choo train."

As I look at them now, I tend to agree.

Photos by Babeth Lolarga

Road curves

On another trip to Baguio, I fiddled with the camera and waited for the bends and curves of the zigzag road leading to the city. The foliage changes from La Union to Benguet. Even the rain and the fog cooperated so I could get these shots.

Photos by Babeth Lolarga

Skywriting by my Maker

Today I head north to where I can step out again in the garden with a mug of lukewarm coffee and look up to sights like these. I thought a big jet may have left a trail of exhaust but impossible! So thank you, Sky Writer! How great thou art, indeed.

While chasing a sunset, we ended up with...

At a little past 5 p.m. yesterday, the Wee One and I tried to catch the sunset from a vantage point in our neighborhood. We've seen that big orange ball sinking slowly from the same viewpoint in the past. It had been a memorable sight, and she'd bring up the subject now and then. With no hint of thunderstorm, we thought we'd see the free Nature show, but a thick mass of gray clouds covered the sun. One image in the distance that I was able to bring home though was of the two radars atop Mt. Santo Tomas beamed at our Baguio. Another day, another chance of a sunset. Photo by Babeth Lolarga

25 random things about myself

Silly hats: Barney the purple dinosaur has a song about a silly hat. It was my niece Bianca's fave (she with the angel wings), and now it's the favorite of my apo, Kai/Butones, the most photographed and blogged baby in Baguio. In photo are (seated from left): Babeth Lolarga and Marga Susi. Behind them are Kimi Fernandez and Suzy Lolarga.

Tim Tomlinson, one of the co-authors of The Portable MFA in Creative Writing (Writer's Digest Books), recommended this writing exercise at the Read Lit District: Third Philippine International Literary Festival at the Ayala Museum in Makati City. The New York Writers Workshop helped put together this manual, the only term I can call it, to help those entranced by The Word "to improve (their) craft with the core results taught to MFA students."

Tomlinson's point was that this exercise could be an entry point for future projects, whether they be a poem, essay, novel, play, etc.

 I wrote this exercise at the crack of dawn.

1. I write at least 600-800 words a day, excluding sharing links in Google+ and Twitter.

2. I dislike persons who are unfair to people who work WITH them, not FOR them, then going about their merry little way using group, company or public funds for unofficial business, e.g., company car for private vacations to my personally beloved places like Baguio. Moreso, I disdain women tied to men announcing within hearing distance of employees that why can't her husband, a pipsqueak of an executive in a nationwide company, find a big enough, bright enough hotel suite for her when the company pays him a grand amount? 

Another variation of my pet peeve is watching ambitious, social-climbing persons who cunningly disguise their true motives by invoking Marxist-Leninist-Maoist words so they can steal others' works and others' ideas outright without so much as a by your leave because these sensitively confidential documents pertain to  women who had underwent spousal abuse in various permutations. Whatever they steal, these particular persons justify their act by saying that they are also  part of the , ahem, working class (sound of blogger dry retching at this point).

3. I also have a strong personal dislike for private entrepreneurs of so-called organic stores (beware of health food freaks who are worse than holier-than-thou Bible thumpers) who get some of their supplies from the countryside through connections like state universities and colleges and because of their national stature are able to extort/extract for their stores, or for their provincial rest house, the harvest of others like vegetables, fruits, tree saplings, decorative flower and indoor plants, dairy products, virgin coconut oil, for free or at wholesale prices that leave producers, especially farmers, gritting their teeth and smiling with forced gladness at couples like this.

4. Enough of dislikes and nega-trons (fresh word for people reeking with negativity). Let's move on to the things that I am ceaselessly grateful for. I like how my 28-year marriage has more than endured its trials--it has lasted and worked out in the true sense of "for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health" because my partner, not in crime but in shared ideals, and I chose to live geographically apart most of the time so I can work, even at minimum wage level, to keep what's left of my dignity intact. Sometimes though, I have to stretch out, in the spirit of a Buddhist nun's humility and negation of ego, my begging bowl. So in a large measure, he is my lifeline.

5. At our age (the autumn of our lives), I like that he and I have also agreed to throw sex out of the relationship when the act of love had become painful and uncomfortable as we moved into our 50s and 60s.

6. I love receiving tight hugs and an absent-minded kiss on my forehead or hair from him, and I love to get up from my single bed early in the chill of a Baguio morning and move to his, slip under the soft but warm flannel blanket, and "spoon" him, two aging persons whose romantic love has gracefully slid to comfort seeking and the occasional dates on a table for two at what we residents up there call The Hill.

7. I am proud of the fact that I married  a man of stamps (a serious philatelist), not a man of letters, many of who he dislikes because he finds them pretentious or members of the singing group The Pretenders. This way, I can encrypt messages and notes without his minding that he is a vital source of material for my younger-than-springtime eyes and writing fingers. He is secure in his person-hood so that when people ask if he minds that I don't use his surname in my profession, he quickly retorts, "May sariling pangalan na siya noon pa man."

8. I intend to have a glass of juice and a piece of banana for breakfast so I can line my tummy tum tum for the brunch friend Chit is laying out for one of my best chummy chum chums Pablo, and possibly his grandson Emman.

9. At exactly 1 p.m., I have to take a leave from our degustation to hitch a ride with a Benedictine monk so I and four other visual artists can make it to the San Beda Museum in  Alabang Hills for a five-person show called "Lima Lima" to mark the museum's fifth year under the able management and curatorship of Joseph Renta who, by the way, is a children's book writer, too. I was just too happy to accept his request to translate his short story, dedicated to his children, from the original Filipino to English.

10. I so love to work before the brightness of another new day when light slowly envelopes the room of my girlhood.

11. I will garb myself in an extra-large size cotton Pinangga blouse and black pants for today's event/s so I can maintain my reputation, such as it has become, as Ms. Cool as a Cucumber.

12. I am comforted by the thought that Marj Evasco once told a group of women writers that in our yoga group, I'm the only one who can touch my toes without bending my knees, apart from our instructor, of course.

13. Anent to that, decades ago, in his tiny office at the top of Solidaridad Bookshop, F. Sionil Jose, already potbellied, also told a tinier group of  writers that he would someday like to touch his toes, too, the way I demonstrated in front of the others when I weighed 80 pounds less. Can still do it, Manong Frankie, can still do. At that time (the 1980s), I was still enrolled at Julie Borromeo's Dance Arts Studio in Mandaluyong when it was still part of Rizal province.

14. I miss my grandchild Butones with a pain so acute, sometimes I feel my heart flutter as though it is about to shatter into a million tinier-than-tiny pieces. I am missing her because of work commitments in the lowlands. I miss witnessing, and actively participating in, her increasing grasp of verbal language. I've told her mom, my dearest Kimi, to please make Filipino the mother tongue of Butones and English a supplemental language later on. Also, I've requested our other family member Mackenzie who cooks like a whiz when not caring for Butones to speak to the little dear in Iluko, Mac's native language.

15. I love my mother more at 85 than when she was younger and busier than busy to help my dad (she was a real helpmeet)  make ends meet as they raised eight children because now that I am an adult, despite my disability of having the emotions of a child, we can talk quietly. I can confide to her how much I had learned from her and Daddy's example to give to the point where it really really hurts already, then quickly forget how much you've given. Mom and Dad believe in what is now a New Age-ish standard belief that one must constantly create a vacuum, a gaping hole in one's life, even if it means loss of expected income or material goods, because the Universe is kind and quickly fills up the gap and patches it up.

16. I love the fact that my seven siblings have come to appreciate me, their ate, because they've seen how all these years I've worked hard and denied myself luxuries, except for books and some art materials. I luv it, luveet that the example shown by our grandest mother, Telesfora C. Lolarga, is ingrained in all of us, in my cousins, too: that the true measure of a person is not his/her material riches but soul riches (the company of friends, application of education where one can be of service to others, finding strength in prayer in whatever manner it is expressed, hooking up to The Source when frustrated because one cannot do anything or everything alone).

17. I am trapped on this swivel chair until I finish this exercise.

18. I consider the role of a teacher an honor and a privilege. I believe that one does not enter a classroom of young minds when one is just fresh out of college. One must be hardened, even nearly broken, betrayed and marginalized in the real world, before stepping into a room. That way, the teaching is enriched with experience. And the young have no illusions; that it is indeed a jungle out there, and they have to steel themselves for it by learning to trust in the power of The Word.

19. I wish for more Mondays like this one when I can look forward to a brunch and an exhibit opening, thus making Monday a fun day in spite of looming deadlines.

20. I've accepted that I cannot work towards perfection (e.g., my drafts, even my published works sometimes, are riddled with typos and missing close quotes). I am happy to admit such mistakes because I am all too human.

21. During the rare parties I co-host with Kuya Fern, I like that I can drink scotch on the rocks as much as I want without my partner objecting because he, too, is inebriated with light beer and/or red wine.

22. I also like that Kuya Fern is not fond of using terms of endearment like "honey," "darling," "babe" or "sweetheart". The still hard-boiled newsman in him makes him say "Hoy, kain na tayo." 

23. I resent that he hasn't addressed me even by my nickname "Babeth" in a loooooooooong time.

24. Letter-writing is on  top of my few favorite things, up there with brown paper packages tied up with strings and the music of the masters.

25. I know that I am loved, and even much better, I know how to love. 

P.S. Good morning, world!

Wild talahib sea

At the risk of sounding technical (which I have to sound like to approach a semblance of authority), I looked up some basic info on the wild grass that is abundant in the month of October, and here's what I found from the Google search engine:

"Talahib is a coarse, erect, perennial grass, with stout underground rootstock growing to a height of 1 to 3.5 meters. Leaves are harsh and linear, 0.5 to 1 meter long; 6 to 15 mm wide. Pannicles are white and erect, measuring 15-30 cm long, with slender and whorled branches, the joints covered with soft white hair. Spikelets are about 3.5 mm long, much shorter than the copious, long, white hairs at the base." Source: http://www.stuartxchange.org/Talahib.html

Talahib has several medicinal uses, too, plus bundles of it can serve as materials to make pulp and paper. It even has an English name: wild sugarcane.

Talahib also has personal significance to me. I became aware of them in my college semestral breaks in the '70s when they streaked before my eyes as I took a bus to and from Baguio. Their sheer beauty lifted me up, oh, those white, almost silvery plumes dancing in the wind, the Central Plains' herald of the cool months. 

The online source describes them as "gregarious" and thriving in open spaces. There's a side of me that can be described that way. Other times I'm just a mold in a dank corner.

I consider myself lucky for having been able to capture these images with a digital camera as a JoyBus coasted along MacArthur Highway and Scitex. By the time the bus reached Scitex, the afternoon sky was dimming, and the sunset stole the show. There wasn't much of them anymore when we reached the toll gates at Nlex. Still the sight of the talahib's spin remains with me. Here then are postcards from that trip: the talahib ballerinas in performance.

 Photos by Babeth Lolarga