Bianca, class of 2014

Got a text before early bedtime last night from my sister Pinky announcing that her youngest child Bianca graduated yesterday from grade school at Assumption Antipolo and that my birthday and congratulatory letter sent by old-fashioned mail arrived just in time. Pinky directed me to her Facebook page where she wrote a loving and proud mother's tribute to a beloved daughter.

Bianx, it isn't only your Nanay who feels swells of pride. I doff my imaginary cap and lend the space to your Nanay's words:

Bianca Susi on Burnham Lake, Baguio City, summer of 2013 Photo by her Tita Babeth

Thoughts on BIANCA YSABEL on her graduation

Congratulations on your grade school graduation, another milestone in your school life. Thank you for being a diligent and persistent student. I don't have to post your report card, something I'm not comfortable and compelled to do. Your excellent grades to me is nothing new ever since you started going to school. The good person you are becoming is our work in progress. So you only have to look back to thank the people who have formed you through the years.

While others have KUMON tutors for Math and academic subjects, you have no less that your tatay's forthright teaching. For your literary needs no less that your Tita BABETH LOLARGA and cousin blogger, Ate CARLA ARRIOLA. You have your Ate MARGA SUSI creating beautiful and interesting ideas for arts and crafts and your Ate JAJA SUSI who never fails to glamor you up. Of course MAMA MERMAID and Lola INES fervently prays for you. Also those who indulge to spoil you, Kuya PAOLO SUSI, Nanay MELY ARRIOLA, Tita EMBEING TRINIDAD, Tita SUZY LOLARGA, Tita GIGI LOLARGA and Tita RUTH TERANIA. Tito DENNIS LOLARGA takes care of your health. So many to mention but we lovngly remember.

But mostly I am grateful that you have come to love your music. Even your ordinary practice of piano exercises warm my heart. So that when you read and play your classics, I am like listening to a concerto at home. It doesn't matter that you're not CECILE LICAD. Years of bringing you to weekly piano lessons, recitals and attending music concerts have paid off. Continue the passion, anak.

Welcome your high school life. The best years are yet to come. Much as I'd like to be your out of the box mother, IDK, but I'll try. So if you see me SMH on your OOTD, just think I'm still your nanay, lol. You will meet your BFF's here so treasure them for life.

Be careful of your choices, even if it means taking the road less travelled. Make sure it is always the good and the right one. There will be days when the pains and heartaches come, I'll be here…ready to listen. Remember our small white pillow? A pillow talk to share our joys and tears.

Lastly, as you also grow in your faith, make sure to lead others especially little MAX and JARED. Let the motto be your guide, ONE in faith, we love and serve and be part of your school's vision…Women of faith, women in action.

Like the favorite childrens's book that says… "I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, As long as I'm living my 'baby bunso' you'll be."

When doing nothing means something

Just before we all boarded a rowboat at Burnham Lake yesterday, I captured the look of my three girls under the noontime sun. We were about to spend an afternoon of doing nothing that concluded with something of meaning. Huh?

Remember what doing nothing was all about? This was how author A.A. Milne defined it in the book Winnie the Pooh:

“What I like doing best is Nothing."

"How do you do Nothing," asked Pooh after he had wondered for a long time.

"Well, it's when people call out at you just as you're going off to do it, 'What are you going to do, Christopher Robin?' and you say, 'Oh, Nothing,' and then you go and do it. It means just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering."

"Oh!" said Pooh.”

The wee one earlier begged, "Sige na, boating na tayo!" So we all did.                          Photo by Babeth Lolarga

First of a Series of Brookside Babies

When word went around my immediate family circle that I had just put up a blog, the question from all was: “Why Brookside baby?” Friends and colleagues who don’t know my Baguio background commented that the blog’s name sounded like I was abandoned beside a body of water, like Moses in a basket among the river weeds.

My siblings and first cousins on my father’s side knew better. Our childhood summers and later, as we became college students, our semestral breaks were largely spent at 18 M. Roxas street, Lower Brookside, Baguio City. Our widowed grandmother, Telesfora Cariño Lolarga, built her retirement home in what was once a 1,000-square meter avocado grove.

The three-storey house was of modest dimensions. As the years went by and whenever she had enough savings, a room would be expanded or a roof and a fence added.

And yes, there was a brook behind the backyard. There was no budget for landscaping—my lola knew by instinct where this tree, that bush and those clusters of flowers should grow.

I am hoping that as I add more entries to this blog, I can recover more stories about those Brookside years. Meanwhile, among the first to get excited by the possibilities of this site in tying the scattered branches of our family together is my sister Evelyn Lolarga Trinidad, Embeng to us. We have a family code for “cute”; it’s “cute-at.” Embeng rang me several times, instructing me to open my G-mail and check if her cute-at photos were all in.

So for our buena mano Brookside babe, here she is, a few inches away from falling into Burnham Lake. She must have been five or six years old. Note the background. Yes, the boats then had real sails!