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)

Perchance to just read

Full moon over Wack Wack, Mandaluyong City, and Ortigas Center, Dec. 6, 2014. Photo by Babeth Lolarga

"... I don’t write every day. I can’t write every day. Sometimes I take a whole week off from writing to sleep and read and cook and clean and watch a dozen episodes of Justified, which is probably a necessary vaccine against burnout but makes me feel like I’m slacking.

"I don’t want to complain too much because, let’s be honest, this is a craziness I’ve chosen for myself, and a privilege. I’m not scrubbing toilets 12 hours a day, six days a week just to put food on the table, and I’ve got a partner who makes it possible for me to pursue my dream without completely losing my mind. But I still wonder how other writers manage it." - Liz Entman Harper, "Like Pushing an Elephant Into a Volkswagen", www.themorningnews.org

I like to fool myself into thinking that when I'm thinking, I'm also writing. Or when I'm taking pictures, I'm also composing in some way.

Aw schucks! I must admit that there are days when the high point is watching reruns of TV sitcoms like "Everybody Loves Raymond" or "Frasier." And then I got hooked on "House of Cards." I have a lot of catching up with "Game of Thrones." I lucked out when I caught three-fourths of the movie Julia with Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave (and Meryl Streep in a bit role).

When I grew tired of watching, I noticed that my Home Improvements-oriented brother had brought some method to the madness that is my bookshelf (thanks, Dennis!). I found myself reading best-sellers like Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol and Sophie Kinsella's Mini Shopaholic (not my choices, they're the stash of the other book readers in the family so we have quite an eclectic selection).

Didn't put down Pablo Neruda's Memoirs until sleepiness took over. He likes to use what to my limited vocabulary are unfamiliar words: mephitic, meretricious, calcined, volutes, hieratic, arborescent. The reader previous to me had the thoughtfulness to highlight these words so I can return to them and finally discover their meanings. Good thing Señor Neruda never had reason to use them in his poetry that speaks to all humankind.

Who said, "I could be social, but I could read (I'd rather read)". And that, dear and few followers of this blog, is what I've been up to these past days. Thus my public book of days that is this blog hasn't been updated.

I'm about to make up big time with a series of entries. I'm keeping everything short after I've been told that the ideal blog text should be 350 words long or less.

To be 90 and furiously writing

In one of his essays in his collection Why We Are Hungry, F. Sionil Jose, National Artist for Literature, wrote six years ago, "In a couple of days, I will be 84--a very old man. I have earned the privilege of saying what I please because now, I know so much--and yet, I also know so little. Indeed, the whole of living is a learning experience." On your 90th year today, Manong Frankie, I wish you a still hearty appetite for food, for life, for letters. Onto to next novel. Mabuhay! Photo by Babeth Lolarga

Gracious goodbye, November

November, the month that goes by so fast, ends at midnight. What follows is holiday frenzy. The invitation to cinnamon tea and squash pie couldn't be ignored. It was our chance to pause and be grateful for everyday blessings like a spate of good weather and recovered health. Toottee Chanco Pacis set up this vignette of a turkey figurine flanked by two balls of squash harvested from her vegetable patch as if to say that the Americans don't have a monopoly on Thanksgiving. Thank you for that shared afternoon. Photo by Babeth Lolarga

My gardening twin

I first met this woman in Pinterest, and she's pinned in one of my boards under the title "Pretty Illustrations." I still have to find out the artist's name. When I took a close look at the woman, I realized that she could be my doppelgänger. From the graying hair to the eyeglasses to the crazy quilt outfit to the stoop of her shoulders down to the Crocs-shod feet, she reminds me of my possibility as my husband's co-gardener. Sorry to say, I'd rather add more pins to my new board, "How Does Your Garden Grow." Pinterest has lately brought me to the garden of Castle Linderhof, Germany, the garden paths in Liverpool, England, jardins de Provence. Tomorrow I visit Versailles. Luv my online life!

Momentarily still

"Wake me up when the sun is here na, ha?" That request has been made almost nightly when The Wee One, I think, was able to figure out that with sunrise comes getting up and getting ready for nursery school. We've had to put aside our dark glasses and hats until the weekend when we resume our morning walks. I can think of no more poetic line than her utterance. It brought to mind this compilation of meditative essays, The Other Walk, by Sven Birkerts, wherein he opens his book with these words: "This morning, going against all conventions, I turned right instead of left...Still, going against the grain of my usual track, seeing every single thing from the other side, was suddenly welcome." We'll try that other track, hopefully without hidden dangers or surprises.

O light, o music divine

Looking pleased even from her side view, lyric coloratura Sumi Jo, a superstar in the operatic and cross-over music world, enfolds soprano Myramae Meneses in her loving arms during a master class at St. Scholastica's College in February this year. Photo by Anna Leah Sarabia

Ms Meneses (in white) and tenor Ivan Niccolo Nery (rightmost) at the Viva Voce's repeat of "Complicated The Concert" at the Lopez Museum in July Photo by Babeth Lolarga

The days are shortening, the nights are lengthening, and we just hurried past mid-November! I once wrote a former pen pal (Frank Cimatu, then on Friendly fellowship in Seattle) how my young children then wished that November could be skipped so that their eager hands and hearts could get on with the "business" of Christmas (unwrapping presents, receiving gold and red ampao envelopes and such).

Often and nearly forgotten during the lead-up to Yuletide are people for whom the merriment of the season feels like a stinging slap on the face, that is, they may resent it in their pain or lonesomeness. Is it any wonder that cases of depression are ironically high during this celebratory season?

And here comes the Culture Arts Events Organizer (CAEO) about to swing a balance between the celebration of the liberator Christ child's birth and putting The Beatitudes into action. Its concert, "Christmas Solstice," billed as an evening of timeless Christmas carols on Dec. 7 at 7:30 p.m. at the Ayala Museum on Makati Ave. will have for its beneficiaries children who need medical treatment for their cancer.

The three featured singers are among the most sought after following their respective professional debuts at the same venue in 2013 and this year: soprano Myramae Meneses and Stephanie Aguilar, and tenor Ivan Niccolo Nery. Pianist Greg Zuniega will assist them in their renditions of carols from the 17th century to the present. These songs include: Felipe de leon's "Pasko Na, Sinta Ko" and "Payapang Daigdig", the exquisite "Cantique de Noel" (also known as "O Holy Night"), Andrew Lloyd Webber's masterpiece "Pie Jesu," Cesar Franck's "Panis Angelicus," Handel's "Let the Bright Seraphim."

The Handel aria, which is from his opera Samson, has been interpreted, each in their lovely way, by sopranos Renee Fleming, Kiri Te Kanawa and Kathleen Battle (go to YouTube, my friend!). A bit of background on the lyrics is: "the aria summons the celestial hosts of seraphim and cherubim to hail the dead hero, with trumpet figures responding to the singer." (Source: http://www.laphil.com/philpedia/music/let-bright-seraphim-george-frideric-handel)

Let us go then, let us go with the angels as one imagines them descending as these are sung on Advent's first Sunday:

Let the bright seraphim
in burning row,
their loud, uplifted angel trumpets blow.

Let the cherubic host,
in tuneful choirs,
touch their immortal harps
with golden wires.

Tickets are available at Ticketworld, tel. no. 891-9999, or the CAEO, tel. nos. 782-7164, 517-3763, 0920-954-0053, 0918-347-3027 or 0920-465-5725.

Sunflower watching

"Oh my, oh my!" is the exclamation that repeats itself in a children's book that The Wee One is besotted with, Kate Toms' There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. I feel like echoing it, saying it over and over like a chant--"Oh my oh my oh my oh my!!!" Only because the sunflowers have sprouted in the crevices, on the sides of hills, any spot that still remains uninhabited or, to be more accurate, not yet built on in my adopted city. Whether admired singly or in clumps, the sight of the wild, native flora can gladden any woebegone heart.

Baguio has been called the City of Fumes by those dismayed at its over-development. This is where I say, "Come watch the sunny flowers with me. Watch how they drive away the fog from your soul."