LIKE AN ANGEL SHE WRITES

One unforgettable day last year, Intsik, who used to read my blogs dropped in to say he thought I wrote like Anne Tyler does!!

That was enough to send me running to the bookstore to grab my first Tyler, The Accidental Tourist. I have since read Patchwork Planet, Dinner at Homesick Restaurant, The Ladder of Years, St. Maybe, Morgan’s Passing, Back When We Were Grown-ups, The Amateur Marriage, Digging into America, and Breathing Lessons.

There are at least seven more books I haven’t read in the Tyler list and I am not in a hurry to finish them all. When you like something very much, you don’t consume it in one gulp. You prolong the feast, relishing word by delicious word, phrase by succulent phrase, page by exquisite page.

When a book hits me hard, as a Tyler almost always does, I virtually go down on my knees at its end, kissing the book, blessing the author, and wishing her "Long Live!" that she may forever write and never stop filling and refilling the treasure trove of her works.

Tyler neither writes of heroic exploits, power plays and gothic romance, nor the ransom of kings. Her characters are never the rich and famous and powerful. Tyler novels are abou ordinary, slightly crazy people like you and me -- belonging to ordinary, slightly crazy families, and doing ordinary, slightly crazy things. But now and again, Tyler gives them tiny explosives to throw to jolt things out of kilter.

You do not get caught in the crossfire between good and evil in a Tyler story. There are no bad guys in the Tyler world. Neither are there irreproachable heroes. Her main protagonists are endearingly fragile and flawed, inflicted as they are with more than the normal quota of eccentricities or misfortunes.

There is Rebecca Davitch (Back When We Were Grown-ups) who found out late in life she had turned into the "wrong person" by marrying an older man with a ready-made family. She was horrified the dignified, scholarly young woman she once was had become a "bag lady" at 53, prone to laughing a trifle too loudly and delivering inane little speeches that rhyme. She scrambles to reclaim the self she feels entitled to and in the process finds out she never really strayed from it.

Delia Grinstead (A Ladder of Years) is the quintessential "ordinary housewife," so ordinary she is often invisible to her own husband and almost grownup children. In the middle of an ordinary beach vacation, Delia ups and leaves her family and reinvents herself in a strange town, as though it were the only way to get the attention she seeks. Though lonely and insecure, she resolves to stick to her decision to move on and away.

And what about Macon Leary (the Accidental Tourist), the most famous of Tyler’s blundering heroes? Macon is a geographic dyslexic, wandering constantly "in a fog adrift" – scarcely able to tell left from right, north from south -- who paradoxically does well as a travel writer. He also fumbles in his personal life, throwing away a still salvageable marriage, retrieving it, then junking it again. He finds diversion in the arms of a fuzzy-haired dog obedience trainer as loud and kooky as he is quiet and stodgy.

Tyler has a knack of creating outside-the-box jobs for her characters to make their living from. Rebecca is a professional party-giver willing to host any gathering -- from a date between an engaged pair to a convention of mobsters. Macon is a tourist writer with a twist – he writes for people who, like him, hate to travel but have to. Barnaby Gatlin (A Patchwork Planet) snubs his birthright to a family business to work for a company called Rent-a-Back doing odds jobs for the elderly. Rita Bedloe (Saint Maybe) specializes in fixing other people’s clutter while Emily and Leon Meredith (Morgan’s Passing) mount puppet shows.

Tyler writes like an angel, a critic once said. I agree. An angel with a sense of humor! Mirth – now sardonic , then impish -- lurks in every other Tyler page, pouncing on the reader when he least expects it, evoking a half smile or a throaty chuckle. A religious fanatic is Saint Maybe; a confused 50-year-old wants to "go back" in time to when she was a grown-up; a diner owned by a dysfunctional family is named "Homesick Restaurant;" a mother is so busy she "didn’t have time to think;" a protagonist is chronically lost, constantly "praying that just by luck he might stumble across his destination."

Tyler’s characters are textured, fleshed-out, and familiar. They are us, our families, our friends, our neighbors – struggling to find our way out of the humdrum of our lives. Tyler lets her characters fall but picks them up, gives them second chances, and allows them to forgive themselves. In that sense therefore, she, angel-like, helps us readers find our own redemption, too.

These are a few of the hundred reasons I love Anne Tyler. And it helps that she’s 60- something like me, is named almost like me, confesses to being shy like me, and writes, according to one and only one person in this huge planet, a bit like me. Even as I recognize that as blasphemy, I still can’t help but pick it up as flattery and hang it on a wall somewhere inside me.

DECLASSIFYING DASTARDLY SECRETS

We were lingering over dinner at Kalye ni Juan -- my certified platinum amigas and I -- when we got to talking about terra incognita. We agreed that though we go back many years and trust each other more than anyone else in the world, there are still things we keep from each other. Indiscretions. Intimate secrets. Deep, dark, dastardly episodes of our lives.

May these be now declassified? -- we wondered.

"Well, I plagiarized when I was in high school,” I began, feeling absolutely bold and wicked.

This opened a flurry of cutesy confessions.

“ I read my daughters’ diaries.”

"I sent Valentine's Day flowers to myself."

“I hid chocolate from my children.”

“I used to pad the family expense account.”

Someone yawned out loud then heckled : “Are we all so dull? Can't we talk of more exciting stuff?”

Such as what?

Such as – amidst giggles – did any one of us have a face lift or a nose job or a lipo?

Lipo? Uhmmm – an amply endowed amiga demurred – maybe this year maybe next year or just as soon as the clinics guarantee the bulges would stay deflated forever. Face lift? No, never, we chorused. Too invasive. Too much down time. Too hard to disclaim. Too expensive. Husbands will not allow it or will never stop throwing it to our -- uh oh-- faces when we complain about money. Children will tease and laugh. Children-in-law may gossip. And nose jobs? What for?! -- was the consensus, as each lifted her own proboscis a bit higher, regardless button-cute or just short of Grecian.

The only coy admissions that part of the session produced were to an eye job (by two amigas) and to re-landscaping in that region where babies pop out from (by almost all).

“Those are still so lame and tame,” the heckler complained again. “Don’t we have stuff rated X or R?”

“What about ... did we love someone we shouldn’t have?” Emma volunteered primly. Did I just imagine she blushed?

“Oh, you mean did anyone of us ever have an affair?” Lyn shot back as the heckler sat back with a smile that said "now we're talking."

We looked at each other, half expectant, half afraid of what we might be about to hear and not knowing how to deal with it.

No one should have worried. Nothing scary was forthcoming.

Jane broke the silence by persisting: “Such as what else?”

“Such as getting rid of someone we shouldn’t have?" -- this from me.

“Like an old flame?” Emma asked.

"A lover?"

"Or a baby?"

"No way!"

When do we take old skeletons out of cupboards? -- we speculated before we stood up to go home, none of us the wiser. Will there come a time they wouldn't shock nor embarass anymore? When we get to 65? 75? At our deathbeds?

When we have forgiven ourselves?

Maybe never.

THE TRUTH ABOUT RETIREMENT, ACCORDING TO AN ATYPICAL SENIOR

A year into retirement, am I having the time of my life?

From the depths of my heart, I wish I could say: "Yes.”

I thought I owed a happy answer to Princess Parungao who once thanked me for making her feel it was "perfectly alright to retire and get old." And to Gibbs Cadiz who called me an “inspiration for seniors” to embrace (computer) technology and who assumed he wanted to live his life the way I do mine when his “time” comes. I thought I owed it, too, to a handful of others who think I am still one hip and groovy and hot babe -- regardless I no longer hot-flush – and that I can still pull and tickle and rock and kick ass -- in spite of impending muscle atrophy.

But on second thoughts, Princess, Gibbs and company deserve a more honest answer, don't they? And I want to be a harbinger of hope, yes, but not of the false kind.

There are days, in fact, I cope magnificently and days I do miserably, but more days I feel so -- uhmmm – so so.

Taking time out to smell the flowers is great but you do it a few whiffs at a time and not make a fetish out of it. Getting fixated on sunsets is okay, too, except they last only a few minutes and are precious and few and elusive these rained out months.

And can one really make a career out of grand mothering? I love my Apo Andeng to death and it is terrific to be loved unconditionally in turn and be at the receiving end of milk-laced kisses and chocolate-coated hugs. Sure, I get all soft and gooey when Andeng climbs into my lap or thrusts out a hand trusting me absolutely to lead her where it is safe and happy. But those are the good days, when the Apo has woken up on the right side of the crib. Andeng, like most brats, I mean, toddlers, has horrid moments as well, capable as she is of throwing the most spectacular of tantrums, and -- oooh, see if I’d dare come within 10 meters of the Apo when she’s in the middle of one. Yes, thank heavens for the freedom of choice grand moms are entitled to.

I sometimes make much of virtual pleasures. Can you blame me? The online trove is a rich and enchanting wonderland that can suck in any unsuspecting Alice, Dick, or Mary. There’s e-mailing, scrabbling, blogging,YM-ing, G-talking, Face-booking, Farm-towning, plurking, twittering, photo-bucketing, You-tubing … with more digital delights out there one can never fully explore in one’s lifetime. One has to be cautious about living one’s life online, though. The dangers are many and real; and I don’t just mean back pains, butt sores, head aches, detached retinas, and cabin fever. Worst, all the logging and clicking and buddying and chatting can -- uh-oh-- put one in indefinite quarantine from the real world – not too unlike living in an opium-induced daze.

Sure, there is more time at post retirement for the things one has always enjoyed doing. Like baking, cooking, going out with ladies who lunch, reading, bookstore browsing, writing. Pingpong, badminton, walking. All these, in measured doses.

What I am trying to say is one still has to fill one’s days with a balanced fare -- enjoyable and dutiful ; fluffy and solid; physical and cerebral. What I call the three Ps: Poetry, Purpose and Play. And, not to forget -- Passion!

Purpose pre-occupies and fulfills. Play distracts and tickles. Poetry ennobles and recharges. While passion overwhelms, consumes, sends one outside oneself.

To me, smelling the flowers and marveling at sunsets are poetry. Baking, cooking, and gardening are usually purpose. Scrabble and Farmtown are unadulterated play. Reading and writing can be both poetic and purposeful -- and for now the closest to being my life’s passion. And Apo Andeng can be all 3 Ps, alternatively or all at the same time.

I guess I am getting more than the poetry and play I can use or am entitled to. What I need is more purpose and, I guess, passion. More sense of urgency. More deadline-chasing and “gosh , I’m gonna be late” get- up- and -go -- staples both of my working life. Also some sharing. And some paying back and forward. I am looking for these. I am going to find them soon.

So – once again now -- how am I coping these days?

On top of the heap today, groveling at the pits tomorrow, and neither here nor there most days.

Which, come to think of it, is the exact same way my pre-retirement days used to zig and zag.

(TO NGOs and PVOs who might chance upon this blog piece – would you have need for a volunteer writer/editor/proofreader/publicist/website coordinator/promotion person to work part-time? Please contact the author at myrnaco@gmail.com if you do.)

THE BIG WAIT

The hour of make or break for the doktora-not-yet had come after three months of reviewing for the boards. Imminent too was the moment of truth -- was she really studying or merely snoozing behind the "do not disturb sign" permanently posted on her locked door that only opened when she wanted to yell for food or drink? Was she really browsing the Net for medical science updates or was she playing doctor to the virtual characters I knew she has been creating stealthily on the SIMS II game board?

And will all the preparations -- both heroic and absurd -- work? The expensive review manuals? The topic outlines she painstakingly wrote for the more critical subjects? The fish oil and ginkgo biloba capsules she swallowed each meal to sharpen her remembering and thinking caps?

And why should this mom protest when asked to buy red undies and Red Ribbon ensaymadas that are supposed to work like a charm for any board taker? Didn't she herself wear something old and new and borrowed and blue on her own wedding day? (And don't nobody ask if wearing those 40 years ago worked -- or else).

Each time daughter came home from the exam, I asked if she remembered to kick the last chair in the row she was seated on her way out of the test room. Even if it didn't kick in more good luck as it was touted to, it could've at least been good for releasing some of daughter's pent up tensions.

We also looked heavenward for help. We went to Pangasinan to burn candles at the miraculous shrine of Our Lady of Manaoag and vowed to go back -- passed or flunked. I prayed two novenas to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and promised to pray a third -- win or lose.

The night the results were expected to come out was a long one. I kept vigil with my daughter and other doctors-in-waiting at the pinoyboardresults.com chat room. I was almost certain there were other moms of takers in the room but I seemed to be the only one anxious and audacious enough to actively participate in the exchange. When the youngsters asked each other about their waterloo subjects, I volunteered it was Prevmed (preventive medicine) for my daughter and fretted when no one else agreed. We argued about the passing rate reports that rolled and coasted from a low of 25 per cent to a high of 75. Not a few loudly wished it was 100 per cent and I had to bite my lips to keep from saying there would be inevitable passers and flunkers. We collectively held our breath every time the results were rumored to come out -- first at 10 pm, then at 11 then at 12 midnight, finally at 3 a.m., even as more rational voices tried to persuade the rest it was really more sensible to go to sleep and stop torturing themselves. It was well past 4 a.m. when I -- the most stubborn in the chat room -- finally gave up and tumbled into bed.

The next day could have been another stretch of agonized waiting but for a merciful appointment Bonch and I had with the eye doctor at 6 p.m.

On our way home at about 10 p.m., our phones beeped in succession.

I braced myself as I read my eldest son's message:

"Mommy, hwag kang malulungkot ha? Kalamayin mo loob mo. May anak ka nang doktora. Pasado si Mayet!"*

**Pandemonium in the car!!**

And that is how Dra. Mayet has ceased to be Dra. not yet.


*Translation: Mom, don't be sad. Compose yourself. You now have a doctor for a daughter. Mayet passed!

LOST! (Geographic Dyslexia)

... He wanders in a fog adrift upon the planet, helpless, praying that just by luck he might stumble across his destination.

- Anne Tyler (in Accidental Tourist, describing main character, Macon Leary)

“Where am I” is a question that has confounded me all my life. A life in which I have lost and found self many times – and not in the existentialist way of philosophers and romantics I would have preferred.

I didn’t know till lately there was a medical term for what afflicts me. For decades, I’d simply call myself the most “ligawin” person in the world. Then I’d add, as though it was the cutest thing to say, that, alas, it had nothing to do with being attractive to guys – unless I count the young men who’d call on an almost daily basis with yet another credit card deal or some other telemarketing proposition.

I am so ligawin I still lose my way around the UP campus after 30 years working there. I am so ligawin I'd enter the main door of an unfamiliar office, transact my business, and then try to let myself out through the door of a conference room right smack at a dozen people all gaping at me. I am so ligawin that when I eat out, I can get lost going back from the comfort room to my table at a big restaurant till my friends are about ready to page me. I am so ligawin I break into cold sweat when I take a cab from a strange town and I can't give the directions the driver expects to get me home.

Aside from board rooms, stock rooms, and other spaces I shouldn’t have entered, I have also tried to climb into cars not ours.

When I am in a strange place and I wish to explore it, I walk a straight path. When I reach a fork, I turn back.

Three times I got lost in Antipolo in May time. Twice in Divisoria during the Christmas rush. Once in a subway in Nagoya, Japan while on official tour. No big deal. I took a cab back to home or hotel, where the first thing I did was to scold my companions for losing me.

I got lost big time in Agoo, La Union at a time only rich and important persons had mobile phones. My sister, her children and I braved humongous crowds and horrendous traffic to witness the phenomenon of the dancing sun and to gawk at Judel, a Bernadette-wannabe. I like to think I saw the sun spin out of orbit for a minute, unless it was just my eyes obliging my overwhelming need for a miracle. I also thought I caught an uncanny whiff of sampaguita flowers, unless someone sprayed bottled scent all over the hillside. Anyway, when the crowds dispersed, we inched our way to where we were parked. Suddenly, my companions sank into the sea of people, whereupon I spent the next two hours trying to fish them out -- them or the car which seemed to have plunged, too -- whichever surfaces first. When it got dark and my limbs were about to crumble, I found a house that offered meals and later agreed to put me up for the night. I made friends with the lady of the house who accompanied me to mass the next morning at the Agoo Cathedral, and thence to the PT & T office where I phoned home, and finally to the terminal to board a Manila-bound bus. After we hugged and said goodbye as though we had been friends for a thousand fortnights rather than overnight, Manang Nida handed me a small box. I have kept her gift rosary made from shell to this day.

At Divisoria Mall, when I gave up looking for friends who strayed as we panic-bought for the holidays, I stumbled across an obscure store selling old inventory of Pollypocket dolls at give-away prices. The finger-sized dolls in compact-shaped doll houses were to-die-for gifts for little girls, of which there were plenty among my grand and god children. When I finally reunited with friends at the end of the shopping day, they drooled over my buys.

"Wandering in a fog adrift" is releasing control, letting the fates take over. It can spring wonderful surprises.

Come to think of it, there have been adventures, not all of them unpleasant, I would have missed if I didn’t have this condition I now know as geographic dyslexia or dysgeographica.

It has given me cold comfort to put a name to this chronic disorientation that follows me about. Warmer comfort is finding out from google searches I am not the most ligawin person in the world. Odd comfort is realizing I am not stupid after all but only minorly impaired in the way that the reading dyslexic and the color blind are.

I don’t know what caused it or if it can be treated. I just know I went to school, held a job, raised a family, and built a social life little encumbered, though sometimes embarrassed, from not knowing what direction I am facing or whether I am coming or going. People around me, except the closest, are none the wiser I am afflicted. Of course, I had to abandon pretensions to be tourist guide or pilot or driver or navigator or traffic policeman. But hey, I can be a travel writer like Macon Leary, the vulnerable Anne Tyler hero (The Accidental Tourist) who can get lost on a road map.

I can even be president, like the world’s most accomplished dyslexic, George W. Bush.

(For more on dysgeographica -- also known as directional dyslexia, also called geographic dyslexia by Anne Tyler -- log on to the exquisitely instructive site of someone similarly afflicted -- poet, writer, editor, and blogger Dr. Metablog.)

Over the Hill and Blogging

On the edge of retirement, I became a blogger.

When I began my blog, I thought I’d write about the truest thing of myself I could think of -- that I was growing old, miserable, and afraid.

My first blog pieces rankled with pre-retirement jitters. I made fun of my fears at best, fed on them at worst with dramatic flourishes.

My sister, a government lawyer, died 10 months after she retired. Technically, it was a conspiracy of diabetes, asthma, hypertension and depression that did her in. But virtually, she stopped the clock herself with her own obstinate refusal to live empty days with husband gone, work done, and children flown from the coop.

I had reason to be paranoid, hadn’t I?

As I kept blogging, I was surprised the negative vibes eased.

With its requisite introspection, blogging could have put me in touch with higher wisdom, an inner guru that tells me I would have arrived exactly where I am now without worrying – and more pleasantly.

With its requisite raising of external awareness, blogging made me watch out for opportunities to try new things, meet new people, and to look at experiences with a sharp eye for the instructive, comic, unusual or O. Henri-esque twist, with which to hug, tug or at least nudge the reader.

Can it be true that once you put down toxin on paper or -- uhrrmmm -- onscreen, it stays put there?

Most obviously, blogging became a hedge against my fear of a life bereft of purpose. It was something I could do with a passion well into antiquity, as long as rheumy eyes can still peer and squint and gout-stiff fingers touch-type.

I have since retired.

My blogs no longer brooded as unrelentingly as before. From one day to the next, I could be distraught or upbeat or just lackluster, and the temper of my blog pieces could swing with my inner pendulum. By turns, I reminisced about lost youth, paid tribute to someone important to me, philosophized about my losses, made mountains out of little mounds of achievements, laughed at my spotty record as mom-wife-sister-worker-friend-neighbor, celebrated the first- time wonder of being grandmother, vented disappointments and frustrations and leftover dreams and aspirations. I also narrated stories of women who confided in me their hurts for an aborted book project a decade ago.

In short, I blogged chunks of my life and pieces of my mind.

Two and a half years into blogging, I have yet to discover the secret to being old and happy. Nor am I that convinced that the best is truly to come. But I now know without doubt that when I learn to love myself, I wouldn't care how old I got. I am getting there both in years and in self- esteem.

I also know now that much like youth and the middle years, old age is what we make it. Getting old does not take away our capacity to laugh (or cry), to be passionate (or nonchalant), to get involved (or stay detached), to grow (or atrophy) . And it does not completely disenfranchise us from making the usual life’s choices.

We can choose to be old and hopeful.

Sometimes, I still forget. But as I blog on, I am constantly reminded.

(Draft intro to a prospective book that's half reality and half in the realm of dreams)

What If ...

What if you had a barkada of certified platinum forever friends who go back with you to your maiden days, and the dearest of them had to leave for distant climes and couldn't come back and visit though she sorely wanted to and neither could you fly where she was though you had tried to put on wings and you didn't meet for 15 long years, except online, by phone, and in each other's dreams?

What if you learned the absent one could finally come home --"soon, very soon, in a month or so" -- and you began to count the days, while psyching yourself you shouldn't mind the waiting, now that you could glimpse its end, and you sometimes slept smiling, imagining the sweet day you finally see her face to face and press her close to your sun-drenched heart?

What if the barkada -- all ten of you with that one dear exception -- gathered one night ostensibly to celebrate the college graduation of one of your kids -- and then talk among you swerved inevitably, wistfully to the absent one's imminent homecoming and you desultorily began to plan a reunion itinerary, and then: suddenly, wonderfully, incredibly, the one being talked about walked in, as big and vibrant as life -- face glowing with anticipation, arms open to engulf you like a rising tide?

Here's what happens if all that happened -- and, believe me, it all happened.

Please click here to see what happened and please don't forget to turn up the volume:

http://upissi.multiply.com/video/item/2/Arrival_of_a_Balikbayan_BFF

If I Didn't Take a Walk

The things I would have missed if I didn't get out of the house and take a walk.

It is not just the walking, but taking in, breathing in the surroundings. Paying attention to the houses and gardens and roads and byroads and commercial places. And best of all, squinting-- voyeur-like -- at the folks that animate the spaces.

The subdivision in Pasig where I live is typical of a lower-middle income community. No uniformed man stands guard at the unprepossessing gates that are always flung open. There are no truly majestic homes, neither are there too ramshackle shanties. Upward economic mobility is, however, apparent in a house being expanded here, another being repainted there, still another being landscaped further down the street. And the vehicles, ah! The buying of cars cannot seem to keep up with the building of driveways so that night after late night, one sees the no double-parking ordinance being blatantly ignored.

Folks here dislike being cooped up inside their homes.

Women visit each other's yards or meet halfway across the street to talk about, I would imagine, the knock-out terpsichorean style of Aling Dionesia (or Dionisia) Pacquiao, the latest medical advisory on swine flu, the bumper harvest from their avocado or cayomito tree, or -- God forbid -- that strange woman who never went out for years except to go to work but have now taken to daily walks ("Weird!"). In my paranoid, self-absorbed moments, I am thinking that would be me.

After five or thereabouts, when the stabbing summer sun begins to relent, children and children-at-heart would tumble out from their doorways to do their thing alfresco. Badminton rackets with or without nets, balls with or without baskets, monobloc chairs and tables with or without San Mig bottles on top would make their appearance on spaces that one would hesitate to call sidewalks, so precariously close they are to pedicab routes.

Around this hour, too, I put on capri pants, padded sandals, and wrist bag to take my long walk -- well, long in minutes but short in distance-- from my door to what I call the community mall and then back.

There will be others taking it with me, most of them more purposefully. Guys with a leash on hand at the end of which is a frisky beagle or an imperious-looking dalmatian. Housewives out to get some fresh stuff for dinner. Children scurrying to get their mother's errand over with. Senior citizens, about my age, taking a slow, effortful step at a time, doubtless complying with some therapy regimen after a stroke or some other medical episode. Obscenely fit for my years, I am sometimes loath to overtake them. And when I do, I occasionally whisper, when I remember to, a prayer for them in lieu of what I really want to do -- gloat I am still somewhat lithe and limber on foot.

Sometimes, when I walk, I ask myself over and again what I am walking for.

I walk to put some structure to my post-retirement life. I walk to treat my eyes to a break from a computer screen or a book. I walk to savor the breeze blowing my hair. I walk to keep from losing my mind or getting cabin fever. I walk to make sense of my life or parts of it. I walk in lieu of a boring 30 minutes on the treadmill or the 500 crunches I have wearied of doing.

Lately, I walk to see a guy.

This special person -- I do not even know his name. I began to notice him years ago, usually on the way to my office. He was always sitting on the pavement, deep in thought, asking for nothing, giving nothing, and bothering no one.

On the way back home, I would sometimes see him again, in almost the exact same place, as though he had not moved.

I have wondered about him then. My sons couldn't tell me much except that he was a fine basketball center they used to play with who got hooked on drugs. Apparently, substance abuse has addled his mind.

Someone must be taking care of him -- or used to -- because he looked well scrubbed and well fed -- or used to.

Nowadays, he looks grimy, emaciated, and hollow-eyed. His long, curly hair is untrammeled and his beard unkempt. When I asked around, I found out he had a kind sister who used to keep an eye on him and feed him but that she died a few months ago.

He no longer sits quietly at the usual spot. I see him dredging canals and scavenging trash cans in search of who-knows-what. Once, walking close on his heels, I watched him bend down again and again to pick up some stuff to put into his mouth.

I think I will call him Danny. By giving him a name, I might figure out what to do for him other than dropping a small bill by his side when I pass him, which he would acknowledge by looking up, his soulful eyes almost smiling. Then he would mumble what I could only make out as -- "Manang, Manang."

Vivid Vignettes of a Vincible Childhood - 2 & 3

2. SOMEONE TO BEAM OVER ME

We couldn’t have been more than 13 -- my classmate and I -- when we espied the man and a woman inside a taxicab. Both were dressed up to the nines. The woman wore a shimmery gown, French-twisted hair, and vivid makeup. The man was dapper in a barong tagalog.

“Look at her” -- I cried aloud from our seat in the jeepney we were riding -- “she’s so beautiful! “ My friend gushed just as volubly: “Parang artista!”

The traffic was stalled by then, as it always was on that hour in that part of Juan Luna Street. This was circa 1950s when vehicles were not yet fitted with ACUs and car windows were often down. So the couple heard us – every effusive word we said.

I don’t exactly remember how the woman looked, whether she was fair or morena or slim or amply-built or if she blushed at our unabashed admiration. But I have not forgotten how the man tightened his possessive grip on the woman’s shoulder and beamed very happily and proudly at us.

I thought in my girl heart I didn’t have to be that beautiful. But I wanted some guy to beam like that for me, too, when I grew up.

3.

MY PROFITLESS LIFE AS A SIDEWALK VENDOR

Summertime and the living was easy ... and lazy. Except my mom had other ideas. She wanted me to work to earn pin money. And what better way but to be a market peddler. And what better product to sell but the molido (camote-coconut bars) her Kumareng Luring prepared so nicely.

Why me? Why not my Ate? Oh, no, she’s too old – dalaga na -- to do that. Why not Zeny, our bunso? You guessed it, she was too young and couldn’t yet count money. Go, now, she shooed me away, handing me a heavy basket-tray and reminding me to rearrange my unprintable, rage-contorted face.

So there I was, all of nine years old, pouty and about to cry, standing by the talipapa entrance behind an apple crate on which perched the basketful of molido. Throngs of people passed. A few would eye what was in the basket but most went past it without as much as a glance.

I was instructed to shout out my merchandise. “Molido, molido kayo dyan. Masarap ... bagong luto.” But the halfhearted tindera couldn’t bring herself to open her mouth. Her anger soon gave way to boredom, and boredom to near panic when the morning passed and nothing happened.

Two or three women stopped by to ask “how much?” They must have found “dalawa singko” too expensive and turned away.

A kid younger than me was the one who hovered around the longest. Then she was joined by two more. They looked and looked but didn’t buy. “Penge?” the littlest one asked shyly. I had the urge to give it all to them -- molido, basket, and crate -- and be done with it. But I wasn’t gutsy and angry enough.

By lunch time, I had zero sales. It was time to go and face the truth.

It was my first and only foray into selling. It must have spoiled me forever for entrepreneurship.

(Years later, I taught entrepreneurship, researched and wrote articles and books about it as a “fake it-fake it - never made it” expert.)

Vivid Vignettes of a Vincible Childhood - 1

The Nether World of Our Silong

We used to live in a ramshackle house we had the audacity to call a chalet. Looking back, its only legitimate claim to being a chalet is a six-step stair leading to its front door, posts on its four corners, and a silong less than a meter high.

I loved-hated our silong.

We had slatted floors in parts of our house where coins, keys, and sundry small items would go through accidentally and very often. We, children, had to make a dash for under the house to retrieve whatever fell through the slats, at our elders’ say so. On rainy days, the silong would be puddled with water and mounded with mud. We were obliged to go there, when asked, and get ourselves dirty. Even when it got dark, we went there just the same, if there’s something to retrieve, with a flickering candle and a pounding heart.

But the silong was also a magical place where we let our imagination fly with games of fantasy. We pretended it was prison, and we were all counts of monte cristo. We pretended it was the pit with a pendulum where we mock-tortured each other and from which we foiled each other’s attempts to escape. It was also the place some Count Dracula might sleep and wake thirsty for plasma and the “dungeon” would reverberate with blood-curdling screams.

More placidly in summer, we would spread mats on its earthen floor, and take cool naps in the company of its denizens – lizards, spiders, beetles, snails and – who knows – maybe even little snakes?

Best of all, the silong was a place to gather the cutest little eggs you ever did see – lizard eggs about the size of oval MMs. Better than easter egg hunts, I swear! -- anyhow unheard of then. We gingerly put the fragile little thingies in tiny bamboo baskets and later boiled them in small clay pots. Some boys in the neighborhood might also help us look for the eggs but mostly they hunted for spiders which the silong likewise bred abundantly.

When we girls grew too old to play house and cook lizard eggs, the boys seemed not to weary of spider hunting. “Oh well, boys mature slower than girls” was how we excused them. Until my Ate Mila, always the feisty and smart one in the family, figured it all out. The boys were actually no longer so much interested to catch spiders as to catch a glimpse of skirts and things that skirts are supposed to hide!

Soon after my Ate’s brilliant detective work, our slatted floors gave way to wooden slabs. There was no more reason to go to the nether world of our silong.