When cousins are friends

Cousin Henry with his retired man's pouch lends an ear to a niece.

To keep my sanity during this season's frenzy, I try to be selective about with whom to spend my time, with whom socializing isn't a strain (that is, I can be myself, especially where LOLs are concerned--hearty and uninhibited and damn Emily Post).

Every year, that's my December resolution, and so far I've managed to apply this with, I'm proud to say, some stick-to-it-tiveness. I've junked the Aunty Social stance--life's too short and too grand to be a grouchy hermit. The friends who I've managed to keep in the autumn of my life are way too precious for me to just email a Christmas letter to. If they're around and they'd appreciate my company, of course, I will run at the first summons. The same with family members who make up my first friends in life.

When balikbayan cousin Henry Romero (his nickname is also spelled Enri) called for a luncheon clan reunion, the turnout was good, although Baguio duties kept me away. Wala bang Take 2? Well, there was one open Saturday for a hurriedly organized reunion of absentees from that earlier reunion. Unless someone offers to host everything, the reunions of the Lolarga, Romero and Valdellon families are potluck affairs with no consultation, no declaration of what pot contents we will bring.

So we welcomed Henry again with homemade spaghetti, store-bought suman and sapin-sapin, siopao and siomai, ensaymada and oranges. Henry wolfed down two siopaos and half-laughingly told of how he brought his son Dino, who's returning to LA, on a nostalgic trip to Ma Mon Luk only for the younger man to complain that the food tasted like rags. I guess it's a generation thing.

It was good to see Henry talking, listening, giving advice, hoping aloud for another reunion even if it's 10 years down the road and our generation by then will be hard of hearing and of walking. He was natural in the role of family elder.

Meanwhile, we're grateful just to be together for a few hours with a December moon hovering over the snug condo where our niece Regina May de los Reyes had just moved in.

Blogging relative, Dino and Henry Romero, Regina May de los Reyes and Yonni Habulan

Gathered 'round the kitchen-cum-dining table with cousin Eileen Lolarga (third from left) and Yonni's fiance Lady (to Regina's right)

Walk proud, Ida gurl

The little girl I used to carry at a Halloween party at a friend's home in UP Village in 1990 before our family moved up to Baguio

"Definition of good, emotionally-adept parenting: that the child grows up with no wish whatever to become a writer."

"Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet."

Two quotes, all attributed to Alain de Botton, make me think of my two daughters who're beyond physical reach, except through their FB, Twitter or Instagram updates. The sisters are bonding in parts elsewhere while their mother reflects on times gone by and how swift the hands of time are moving to close that circle chuva la di la.

Maria Popova, another great curator of ideas like de Botton, shared through her blog, brainpickings.org, a letter that the poet Maya Angelou wrote to her younger self. Re-reading it for the fifth time today, I am struck at how her words have a force of truth that only mothers of daughters can relate to. I quote the letter in full by way of wishing  my younger of two girls all the best on her special day today:

You’re itching to be on your own. You don’t want anybody telling you what time you have to be in at night or how to raise your baby. You’re going to leave your mother’s big comfortable house and she won’t stop you, because she knows you too well.

But listen to what she says:

When you walk out of my door, don’t let anybody raise you — you’ve been raised.

You know right from wrong.

In every relationship you make, you’ll have to show readiness to adjust and make adaptations.

Remember, you can always come home.

You will go home again when the world knocks you down — or when you fall down in full view of the world. But only for two or three weeks at a time. Your mother will pamper you and feed you your favorite meal of red beans and rice. You’ll make a practice of going home so she can liberate you again — one of the greatest gifts, along with nurturing your courage, that she will give you.

Be courageous, but not foolhardy.

Walk proud as you are, 
Maya

And the girl whose fallback meal was Oreos dunked in a glass of milk when my home-cooked ones were wanting can now adjust to assorted situations in her new life. Ride 'em, cowgirl!