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!

Gray casts a lovely light

Not my kind of Sunday when the sun is absent, the world outside garbed in gray, the rains dampening one's plans and the two days of wash hanging like a semi-permanent installation on the clothesline.But rain has a way of not only driving me indoors but inwards, too.

I've been re-shooting photos and letters from my grandmother Telesfora C. Lolarga's albums and scrapbooks off and on this summer. Off and on, too, my grand-daughter Butones would come in to interrupt this self-imposed work that the rainy season has caught up with.

Upside down viewing

Yesterday, curious Kai, as we also describe Butones these days, got a hold of the scrapbook, looked at some images, but when she turned to the page where old letters and drawings done by cousins and siblings when they, or rather we, were learning to handle language and draw with crayons or color pencils, I had to pull her away and store the album for a revisit on a day like this. (I think of her as fifth-generation Lolarga who carries a bit of Lola in her.)

 On the last page of the blue album is an image of Lola and a quotation that she must have copied from elsewhere written in her own penmanship.

"Don't be ashamed of your gray hair, wear it proudly like a flag. You are fortunate in a world of so many vicissitudes to have lived long enough to earn it. One really ought not to be ashamed when one's hair turns gray."

Our lovely light who continues to speak to us through pictures and documents left behind

Lola wore her gray hair proudly as she did when the same hair was still black and lustrous in her prime. She wore that head of gray with dignity even in the months when she lived by herself or with companions in her old house in Baguio's Lower Brookside and was visited by the same weather I'm whimpering about.

Lola by her dining table

What's my point apart from underlining that well-earned gray hair is beautiful? Let me put it another way.

Last night I caught the TV news with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton giving an official statement about another hotspot in the world. I recognized the voice but what I didn't was the un-made up face. But she held the reporters' and my attention.The sight of her devoid of stylist's touch and makeup was refreshing counterpoint to the always urgent bad news couched in diplomatese.

I'm hoping Butones grows into that sort of woman our Lola was, devoid of vanity once she reached that very interesting stage when she realized what mattered more was what she had done with her life--for God's glory and the good of others-- than what she looked like, what she wore, what kind of face she presented to the world.

Yesterday once more

"As long as we have memories, yesterday remains..."--this  quotation had no source at its end and came from a forwarded email a cousin sent when she shared a video of horses running free.

I found it the apt intro to this series of photos of ex-Brookside babies in various locales from Baguio to Los Baños to Malumanay street, Teachers Village, Quezon City. The last was where the yearly Christmas reunion of the Lolarga, Romero and Valdellon families used to be held, hosted by Uncle Esting and Auntie Linda (Col. Ernesto and Dr. Erlinda Lolarga).

Lola encouraged family fellowship, a tight-knit one. The closeness was forged in Baguio. So not only were our cousins cousins, we were and still are friends.

All these photos are from Lola's scrapbooks and photo albums.

Shown are Auntie Pacing (standing center), her six Romero children and an interloping niece. From row from left: Sonny, Babeth Lolarga, Tessie, Ferdie and Henry. Back Row: Toots and Rose. James Dean must've been at height of his fame, which explains Sonny and Henry's pose.

The Romeros again (from left): Ferdie, Tessie, Henry, Sonny, Toots and Rose. Behind the younger ones is Auntie Pacing.

I imagine this scene on the hill behind Lola's house. The girls are Allyn and Telly Valdellon, the boys Henry and Sonny.

The young girls are Aunties Grace and Shirley Cariño with Lola Purang behind, an unidentified woman and Apo Loly (Flora Cariño), Lola's younger sister who served for decades as a nurse at Baguio General Hospital.

Sonny was a good declaimer at Lourdes School Quezon City and was our pambato at impromptu programs at the Brookside house.

That's cousin Tess with the flowers of May behind her and what can only be a pair of Gregg shoes on her feet.

Sonny and Henry by the lake with their wooden swords

In another Baguio located in San Juan, Rizal,  a birthday party at the Valdellon residence in Little Baguio with (from left) Tess Romero, Telly, Beng and Allyn Valdellon

When her grandchildren would reach their cutie pie phase (toddler-hood), Lola would sometimes borrow them for a few weeks or months as in the case of my second of three brothers, Dennis. Here he is in Lola's garden.

A startled-looking Dennis (he must've just woken up that morning) with his yaya and older sister Babeth in cut-off shorts

Lola enjoys a dip in a hot spring with Tessie, Ferdie, Henry and Sonny.

By this time the older cousins Rose and Toots were in college but still spent their summers in Baguio. Dig those eyeglasses! That's the main door to the house. Unknown little girl there

Lola also welcomed her grand-kids' friends into her house. Here she poses with Rose (second from left) and college gang. The house was unfenced and directly faced M. Roxas street.

Christmas season was also when Lola would visit her children and their families in the big city. Here she's carrying baby Eleanor. On the wagon is Boysie, now Boise, Lolarga, surrounded by his sisters Minnie, Eileen and Louie.

The big Christmas lunch on Malumanay street was always followed by a program before the distribution of gifts. Here the Romero children sing accompanied by Henry on the guitar. From left are Tessie, Toots, Ferdie, Rose and Sonny. Eleanor Lolarga is held protectively by Ferdie.

Lola (third from right) with her children and daughters-in-law in Teachers' Village (from left): Uncle Celso, Daddy (Enrique Jr.), Mommy (Nene), Auntie Fe Valdellon, Auntie Pacing Romero and Auntie Linda Lolarga

Lola with daughter Fe and our younger cousins Nini Valdellon and Jing Lolarga

Naalaala Nila si Uncle Junior

From the cousins (Lolarga side) scattered in North America came these reactions to "Diary," the recent episode of the ABS-CBN television program "Maalala Mo Kaya," based on the life story of Enrique C. Lolarga Jr. He was better known to them as Uncle Junior. The Lollikins referred to are his wife and children.

From Erline Valdellon Mendoza of McLean, Virginia:

"MMK was recently added to our ‘must know’ set of acronyms. Rudy and I and Mommy and Beng drove to Maryland to watch MMK last Saturday at Nini’s house since they subscribed to TFC.

"Maalaala mo kaya…Opo, naalaala ko ang kabaitan at kagandahang-loob ni Uncle Junior.

"Naalaala ko, the mornings when he came and checked on our Mommy after Papa died. Pinky reminded me when she visited us last May - when she and her siblings quietly and patiently waited in their car parked outside our gate in Little Baguio – before being dropped off at school when Uncle Junior came to see Mommy with his doctor’s bag – checked her blood pressure, etc.. Later, our Ninang Ening also consulted with him. Naalaala ko that those morning visits were very assuring and comforting to me as a young teenager.

"Ako – naalagaan din niya – can you imagine being almost 18 years old, starting college in UP, being more independent and taking care of my own hot bath and falling whole holding the caserola of hot water to the banyo – second (maybe third) degree burns on my face and neck – Eby rushed me to Trinity Hospital – before I knew it – Uncle Junior was there. Naalaala ko when he carefully put the dressing on my face and neck with the medicine and when he carefully removed it later. In his soft manner, he assured me that I was going to be ok. Naalaala ko, I did not even think of being concerned about my face. I started my freshman year in UP two weeks late and wore a scarf over my neck.

"Ayan, your Daddy, Kimi’s 'Lolo Daddy,' our Uncle Junior, so beloved, not only by family and friends but also by others not known to us.

"Maraming salamat for sharing your Daddy with us.

"Maraming salamat, Lord, for dear Uncle Junior.

"God bless the Lollikins! Our warmest regards to your Mommy!

"Take care always."

From Telly Lolarga Valdellon of New York City:
"yes, maraming salamat.

"the MMK episode was truly a tribute to uncle jr. & whoever watched it will learn something. no matter how life is there is something we can share to others. and that it'll make us happy.

"all of us (lolargas) have been under his care for a long time. from birth till we were working. no need for health insurance. we could always rely on uncle jr & no matter how sick we were, he was always calm & assured us we would be ok. home service pa.

"pinky & i studied in baguio together in lola's care, and i don't recall nagtigas ulo siya. hmmm? aside from uncle jr., im also proud of lola. she took care of us, too. alam ko na kanino nagmana si uncle jr. kay lola. i'm proud to be a lolarga.
as erline has said, thanks for sharing ur dad to us, lollikins.

From Ramon L. Romero Jr., better known to us as Sonny, comes this email from Windsor, Ontario, Canada:

Today is Sunday 4:30pm . Yesterday at noon Baby and I had lunch before we watching the tele-movie about Uncle Junior’s diary. As we were having lunch, I told Baby that I'd bet that it wwould be about the vow that he took after medical school that he would help the sick and those who would ever need his services. Baby reminded me about Uncle Junior’s letter which had written us when Junic lived with us briefly in Windsor. Baby remembers how touching it was and how appreciative and sincere his words were which ended with 'Thank you for taking care of my Junic.'

"As we began to watch the movie, the scene where he said what would be happier than to fulfill life’s mission brought a tear to my eye. There were more scenes like that until Baby and I emptied Nanay’s box of tissue. The scene where they were playing mahjong, I still remember as a young boy. Now I understand.

"I have always respected Uncle Junior and Auntie Nene, how they were able to raise a big family, and I admire them more for their forgiveness and the sacrifices they made.

"I called Junic after watching the movie and told him the scene when he got home was probably when he was out with Ferdi and Melito. Uncle Junior did not have a moustache, and he was better-looking than Christopher de Leon, but kidding aside he did us proud in his portrayal of our Uncle Junior.

"I will watch the movie a second time. It will be a few days before I feel normal again. We did not have a MMK party here in Windsor, but I felt like we had one.

"Love and regards to all,

"Sonny"

Response from Daddy's pet, my youngest sibling Gigi:
Dear Cousins,

"Thank you so much for all your kind words about Daddy. I'm sure wherever he is, he is at peace and overwhelmed by the thought that he was able to touch our lives in many ways.

"At a young age I already knew that Daddy was not ours alone. That we share him with other people, too. Sometimes it was difficult to understand, but as MMK creatively put it in one of Christopher de Leon's lines: 'Hindi na niya kailangang ipaalam kung ano ginagawa ng kanang kamay sa kaliwang kamay.' He never owed us any explanation; what he left behind said it all.

"Maraming salamat sa pag-gunita sa lahat ng kabutihang ibinahagi niya sa inyong lahat. Life is short indeed. It is never enough to fulfill one's aspirations. But all the kind words, the sharing of one's gift of talent and love shall sustain the lives of other people he left behind.

"Again thank you and may we never forget Daddy's legacy to us, his children...and that definitely includes all of you, dear cousins. May we learn to live following his example, even in our own little ways.

"Love & prayers,

"Gigi"

Inset photo shows Eric and Pinky Lolarga with our Lola Purang (Telesfora C. Lolarga) at the old family residence in Lower Brookside, Baguio City, in the 1960s.

Top photo is the last taken of Dr. Lolarga alive (in striped shirt and dark glasses) and together with his children, grandchildren and sons-in-law taken in Pasig City, July 1991, after he survived his first heart attack.

Pahabol from Rose Romero de los Reyes, the oldest grandchild of Lola Purang and Daddy's oldest niece on his side; she is based in Ontario:

"Uncle Junior introduced me to a hobby of caring for love birds. He encouraged me to raise love birds, which i did. I was able to come up with 16 different colors of love birds which I later sold to pet shops in Manila. Your Dad really loved pets and nature. this is why I miss him."

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!