Peevish PV of the unwrinkled spirit

Dear PV*

87 ka na nga ba? Owws? Hindi nga. Yung tutuo?

We always love saying this, the UP ISSI staffers of my generation – "PV was looked up to as THE grand old man when we were young and callow and foolish. Now that we are old and jaded and foolish, PV has remained as he has always been." Time has seemingly stood still for him, and allowed us, alas, to catch up with him -- in a manner of speaking.

What is the secret of his youngish looks and longevity? Only he can say. But I can surmise (and I mean surmise beyond the clean, healthy, disciplined life he lives that is for all to see):

PV has amazing energy and vigor … a passion for being productive and creative … an obstinate refusal to be shunted away from the mainstream. He constantly makes himself better, looking out for opportunities to contribute, to help, to get involved, to guide, to lead.

Over the years, over the infrequent zig-zagging of our friendship, over our occasional "political" differences -- -- I have glimpsed love, warmth, sweetness and compassion inside that usually peevish and tough exterior. Malambing at mapagmahal si PV.

PV took me to his former classmate, then Philippine Constabulary Chief Fidel Ramos, when my father was detained at Camp Crame in the early days of martial rule. PV would buy oversized remote control cars for each of my five boys during his trips abroad, never taking them out of their big boxes -- never mind if they took up all the space of a big maleta -- the better for me to wrap them for Christmas.


When I rocked his boat and unwittingly created a leadership crisis for him over what I called "a matter of principle," PV sent me flowers.


I thought I had lost his friendship then ... but it didn't take more than a few months for us to shake hands, hug each other, and make up. The "I am sorry(s)" did not have to be said.

He understood even when we were standing poles apart on some issue or other.

PV has kept his soul unwrinkled.

Tough act to follow for all of us. But we can always try. I know I try.

* Message to be delivered in tribute to Dr. PV -- former boss and mentor at the UP ISSI, and now friend and fellow-SME advocate -- on the occasion of his 87th birthday.

Photo: “01-14-08- camelot” by Frank, c/o Flickr. Some Rights Reserved

So they'd know whether to plug or unplug: buhay na habilin

Nang mamatay ang aking best friend na si Arthur, nang madama ko kung paanong nagdusa ang kanyang pamilya noong kanyang mga huling araw, sinabi ko sa sarili ko na hindi ko papayagang mangyari ito sa aking mga mahal sa buhay pag ako'y nakapila na sa dakilang pre-departure area ng buhay.

Si Arthur ay mahigit na kuwarenta anyos lamang nang dalhin sa ospital na agaw-buhay, biktima ng traydor na hemorrhagic stroke. Massive daw ito -- ang mula sa utak na pagdudugo ay umabot hanggang batok. Tatlong araw na walang malay o nasa coma si Arthur; ang humihinga para sa kanya ay isang artificial respirator.

Ikalawang araw nang magsimulang magtalo ang kanyang asawang si Beth at ang mga kapatid niyang babae kung tatanggalin o pababayaang nakakabit si Arthur sa makinang siya lang nagpapatibok ng kanyang puso. Hindi sila nagkasundo, kahit binalaan na sila ng mga doktor na kung sakaling mabuhay pa siya, hinding hindi na babalik ang dating si Arthur na matalino, mapagisip, mapagbiro, masiste, malambing, masipag, maaalalahanin-- bagkus mananatili lang sa isang estadong walang malay at hindi kayang tulungan ang sarili. Sa Ingles, "vegetative state." Mala-gulay.

Lihim ko siyang pinalakpakan nang si Arthur na mismo ang nag-desisyon para sa sarili niya. Huminto siya sa paghinga kahit nakaplug-in pa din sya sa breathing machine sa ospital. "You go, boy," bulong ko sa kanya. Ikatlong araw noon ng kanyang pagkalugmok.

Matagal ko ding pinagluksa si Arthur. Wala na akong makikitang kaibigang lalaki na kasing-bait at kasing-sensitibo niya. Pambato siyang lecturer sa opisinang pinapasukan namin kapwa, ngunit wala lang sa kanya and papuri, walang ere, walang yabang.

Napraning ako para sa sarili ko dahil sa nangyari sa aking best friend. Lumuhod, nagnobena, nagdasal, umiyak. Sinabi ko sa Kanya na handa akong gawin ang kahit ano, ipamigay ang lahat ko, “basta, Lord, pag time is up na para sa akin, bawiin mo ako nang mabilis at kung maari’y walang gaanong kirot at kuskos-balungos. At pinaka-mahalaga, Lord, huwag mong pahirapan ang aking mga anak at asawa.” Gusto kong makipag-negosasyon, makipagareglo sa aking Diyos -- x-deal kung maari. Ngunit, pwede ba talagang makipag-bargain sa Lumikha?

Tutuo ngang binibigay ni God ang lahat ng ating pangangailangan, dahil hindi nagtagal, napag-alaman ko na meron palang tinatawag na living will.

Buhay na habilin. O habilin ng isang buhay.

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Ang aking lihim na buhay onlayn

Ako daw yung laging kulelat. Chronic latecomer at late bloomer.

Hindi lang sa pagpasok sa eskwela at opisina. Hindi lang sa pagdating sa mga sosyalan at mga miting. Hindi naman daw dramatic ang entrance ko, bagkus kiming-kimi. Mas puno daw ng embarrassment kaysa drama.

Kulelat din sa pagsunod sa mga bago at uso – sa pagbibihis, sa pagsasalita, sa pag-aayos ng bahay o sarili, sa teknolohiya.

Nuong kapanahunan ko, hindi ako nagsuot ng mini-skirt hanggang pawala na ito sa uso. Ngunit nang magamay ako dito, hindi ko na ito hinubad – nang 15 taon. Ako na yata ang pinakatalyadang buntis na naka-mini nuon. Nag-mini ako hanggang tatlong kabuntisan. Kaya’t inabutan ako ng ikalawang pagkabuhay ng mini nang naka-mini pa din.

Naalala nyo ba ang shoulder pads? Natagalan din bago ako nagsuot niyan, siempre. Aba, bagay pala sa akin. Lumalapad ang aking mga bagsak na balikat at lumiliit ang aking puson – siempre, ilusyon lang yong huli, pero yun daw ang mahalagang “total look.” Wala nang nagsusuot ng shoulder pads ngayon – bukod sa akin at, marahil, mga PMAer. Wala akong magagawa -- nagsumpaan na kami ng aking mga shoulder pads na hindi maglalayo – till death do us part.

Mahirap akong hindi makilala ng aking mga kaibigan kahit dekada na kaming hindi nagkikita. Kasi kung ano ang ayos ng buhok ko 30 taon na ang nakalilipas, eksaktong ganoon pa din ngayon. Pabilog ang gupit – apple cut ang tawag -- may bangs na nakalawit sa nuo, pinasabugan ng kaunting hair spray upang hindi magulo. Faithful ako sa aking "do" -- through thick and thinning hair.
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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.)

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."

OUR MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN LIFE

Have you ever woken one morning to discover you have become the person who's not really you?

Rebecca, an Anne Tyler heroine ("Back When We Were Grown-ups") was horrified to find out late in life she has turned into the wrong person.

In her youth, she was known among friends as "The Queen" -- dignified, serene, quiet, regal. In college, she was all set to major in history and to run for honors, too.

When she met Joe Davitch, 13 years her senior, a divorce' with three daughters, she jilted her"half-baked" boyfriend Will, sacrificed a college degree, and let herself be swept off her feet into Joe's life, his ready-made family, his whacky party-hosting business.

Before she knew it, she has become a professional party-giver, outgoing and cheerful, frivolous and funny, on the outside, given to making toasts as inane as:

"A toast to the bunch of us gathered together
In this glorious spring weather
And to Zeb for scoping out the site
And Biddy for cooking with all her might.
And most of all to Nono and Barry
We're delighted they're planning to marry."

At 53 and a grandmother, and having just hosted a disastrous picnic, Rebecca suddenly wondered: "Am I an impostor in my own life?" She looked at the mirror and gasped at the "bag-lady" she saw there with chaotic heaps of cornflower hair, a ramshackle face, and a loose flowery smock.

It was then she began to live on the stealth an imaginary, could-have-been life.

Now comes my friend, Vicky, a full-time University professor and part-time writer, married to a stable, devoted husband, with four grown-up children, being badgered with the same question. She was halfway reading the copy of "Back When We're Grown-ups" I gave her on her birthday two months ago when she called.

She identifies with Rebecca, she says in her plaintive voice.

Yes, Anna, she whimpers. "You blink, and whoosh! There goes your life. Where has it gone to?"

She used to fancy herself a bohemian, she elaborates. Someone who doesn't have a care in the world. Who does things that pleasure her -- and the devil may scratch its head. Not the obsessive-compulsive mom and wife and teacher that she has turned out to be, who worries over duty and responsibility in all her waking hours.

In the early years of our friendship, she had second thoughts about marrying Ben, her boyfriend of eight years. "I have outgrown him, I think. He seems so immature." I remember chiding her: "At least he knows what he wants. You don't." for at that time someone new and exciting had entered her life. Eventually, she married solid, stolid Ben just the same.

Nowadays, Vicky has sedition in her mind. She has to bite her lips to stop herself from barking at her husband, kids and other people around her: "Go away! Give me a break." They seem unable to do anything without her, she frets.

In the last 10 years, she has been bringing her students to Boracay. "When we get there, I just tell them to enjoy. Then I leave them alone. What they do not know is ako talaga ang mas enjoy." Walking, swimming, eating, sleeping by herself, she is herself, if only for a breather.

Her psychological age stopped at 23, she confesses. "Physically, well, another matter" -- this while chuckling.

She apologized for taking up my time, even as she "threatened" to call again and again. "So sorry, you're the only one I can talk to about angsty and irreverent topics." She made me promise not to make "sumbong" to our other amigas who all seemed so content, balanced, religious, and family-centered.

I told her I enjoyed our conversation. And added, how can I make sumbong? "For all you know, I am as out of the box as you are."

That's why I talk with you, she repeats. "There is an aura about you that is girlish and helpless and angsty."

Angsty? Yeah. I think there is a Rebecca in me too that wonders what might have been if I had taken a different road. Different job, different country, different partner. But that is not the predominant me. I can usually convince myself I am happy with my imperfect life and the not too simple, not too complicated person I have become. And when I get the blues or -- uhmm, okay -- the angst, I simply look at the person next to me to know he or she is sometimes bugged, too, by his or her own imaginary, might-have-been life.

Who was it who said that God designed man to be ever hungry, thirsty, craving, and yearning? All because He wants man to at last learn the vacuum cannot be filled by food or water, nor persons or things.

POST SCRIPT TO A REUNION

50 years musn't have inflicted too much havoc on me. They remembered me at our high school reunion.

Whyever not. I took extraordinary measures to look girlish -- blow dried my hair, suffered a girdle to melt my middle, applied an extra layer of goo on my face, and smiled, smiled, smiled if for no other reason but to lift ooopsy-drooopsy skin.

And I recognized most of them too, if not by face, then by some manner or inflection or gesture or simply by gut feel. And I clasped them to my chest and held their hands, as though by hugging and touching I could bridge the chasm of the years.

At the Tondo penthouse (owned by an affluent and generous classmate) where the first event of the week-long reunion was held, the air was thick when one came in. The excitement was so palpable it crackled like burning wood in a fireplace.

Even as one got immediately engulfed in a flurry of embraces and digicam flashes, one craned one's neck out looking for special faces -- the high school best friend, barkada, crush. The partner at the senior's prom. The comrade in "crime."

When at last you find her or she finds you, it was all you could do not not to jump up and down But you try to keep your cool. You remind yourself: "Shush, you're an old woman now." Still you let out with an occasional shriek: "Omg, omg, there you are. Let me look at you. Oh my, you haven't changed a bit."

But we changed -- all of us. We did change.

Occasionally -- not too often -- I'd get an eerie feeling a strange someone was pretending to be a familiar someone else. How could this glam lady be the Juliet that she insists she is when I don't see a hint of the long-ago Juliet in her. Where have the unruly curls gone? And where the little-girl-lost look?

They looked for my pigtails too and I replied the louse-infested pair had been pruned long ago. In the same way I looked for Renato's killer lopsided smile, Dolly's nerdy eyeglasses, Pining's whistle-bait shape, Fely's copper coloring. Rocky's quiet, brooding ways. Gone. All gone.

It's not just the lines and ridges and the extra poundage. Not just the loss of lush in the hair, rose in the skin, sun in the eyes, spring in the limbs.

We changed inside and out and at the same time there were things that kept constant.

Anna for example is still as shy and as unsure of herself as she was in high school. The difference is that she has learned to affect poise and cool.

Medy still blushes when paid a compliment. And she still wets her lips in the fetching way she was wont to do as an adolescent.

When he met his first love again in the reunion hall, something inside Emiliano broke loose and he had to tell her he had not stopped dreaming of her.

But it takes more than a big reunion event to get in touch with the variables and immutables -- those that do not meet the eye. One tries to circulate from event to event, from table to table, spreading self thinly to cover as many classmates as possible. It was impossible to talk beyond the level of who, what, where, when, and how many, even as the more important why, why not, how, and so what questions remain unasked.



















A week after the reunion, three of us took a trip from Manila to Los Banos to visit a classmate who lives there. In the three hours it took to go there by car, we probed into each other's lives and psyche. We continued to talk at the level of hopes and fears and losses and gains and leftover dreams when we reached Guia's beautiful home.

In that single trip, Guia, Milette, Myrna and Anna began to truly know each other for the first time. Never mind if they didn't get to soak into the hot springs they thought they went there for. As they all agreed before they parted, they were together that day -- talking soul to soul -- for a reason.

It was to them a potentially life-changing postscript to the reunion.

(To be continued, I hope)

THE HOUSE OF MANY ROOMS

My house has many rooms
I lock or unlock at will.
Some brick-walled
Fortressed, forbidding.
Others with swinging doors
Where I wraithlike slither
From room to room
In the order of the moon's
Waxing and waning.
Or shuttle in reverse
In the quirky fashion of dreams.
Or flit from end to end
Edge to center and back again
Omnipresent in every which corner
In my house of many rooms.

My house has a charmed chamber
A treasure trove
Of mysterious joys
Of things old
And half forgotten
That I visit often
When the rains pour
And joints grow cold
And eyes mist with tears
Of remembering and forgetting.
The sun ever shines
Brooks gurgle
Birds twitter
And embers smolder
In that charmed chamber
In my house of many rooms.

You have this charmed place too
In your own house
Of many rooms
However far you have gone
To whatever clime.
The lark still sings
Teasing our shynesses
Awaking strangenesses.
When we cried over everything
And everything mattered
And laughed over nothing
Though nothing was funny
But not when it melted
Into the silence of goodbye.

Soon we will meet
In that chamber of charms
Where we all began
And to which we will come back
To know each other
For the first time.

(Written on the occasion of our high school grand reunion on February 7, 2009)

REUNION JITTERS REPRISED

Let me reprint this old, old post, now that my grand high school reunion is really approaching.

I have signed up to attend my high school grand reunion .. and things have never been the same again.

All because I will have a fit if no one recognized me when I entered the reunion hall.

I have begun to work out and diet. Although there’s no way I can get back my lampayatot look way back when, I should at least get rid of my spreading middle spread. I need to recover my waistline — even if I had to hire D.I. Trece or the NBI to find it.

I am letting my hair grow. I have months to get back my adolescent hair style — waist length, twisted into pigtails. I’d like to dare frisky Nelson Pangan to pull them again — the way he used to before Homeroom. And surely, I can whack him one — now that he shouldn’t be able to run as fast. I have a tiny problem though. My hair has gone from “betcha-by-golly-wow” thick to “son-of-a-gun” thin. And shall I wear my bangs again? Someone, please tell me if there’s a law against a golden girl trying to look like Tessie Agana when she was Roberta.

I have toyed with the idea of wearing my old Torres High uniform. Not that I could squeeze into any of them by any contraction of the imagination. But well — a modista should be able to sew a maroon skirt and a gold blouse to fit my present XX size, but sorry, sobrang sorry — though I am willing to die for my alma mater — well, almost — I’d die first before I wore that sorry color combination again.

I now look at my reflection every which way, 24/7. Now, if mirrors could complain! I see tell-tale lines and ridges even if I didn’t turn the dresser lights on. Shall I call them laugh lines? But they don’t go away when I am through laughing.

My mirror says I am no longer the “tiny wisp of a campus leader” Rolly Lampa wrote about in the graduation annual. Nor the apple-cheeked girl Romi Mananquil sketched once for a Torres Torch story.

Oh, well! Who will recognize me now? I have gone to pot.

Or have I?

I probe deep into myself, the essential me that mirrors do not reflect.

I am still the same person who loves sunsets, sunflowers, the smell of mangoes ripening and adobo simmering, who loves to read a good story and to write one. My favorite people are still those who are bubbly and witty and funny — like my Ninas barkada Tessie, Pining, Cora, Lolit, Jing and Sol — as I can never be.

I still don’t know a lot of things and have disappointed my kids by saying “I don’t know” so many times. I still can’t swim, dance, sing, ride a bike, or drive a car to save my life. I am still searching for the meaning of life and only know it isn’t just a big house or a sleek car or an impressive title or trophies or plaques.

I am still shy and clueless and sometimes clueless about being clueless. The only difference is that I have learned the art of not showing it.

I am still lampa. The one who the other team left for last at touchball games because she was slow and bungling and easy to hit. The one who always got to be “it” in tumbang preso and patintero games. The quintessential Binibining Atsay. Only that has evolved today as the “Quintessential Pulot Mom” from the badminton and pingpong games I still try to play in a huffy-puffy way.

I am still the girl who can never find the X in the simplest of equations. Over whom Miss Tienzo — for all her awards as outstanding Math teacher — shed tears of frustration. But also the girl who loved to paraphrase Shelley and Byron and Dickinson and was the darling of Mrs. Timario, Mrs. Alejandro, Mrs. de la Cruz, and other English teachers.

I am still hungry for affection, praise, approval, still pikon over slights — real or imagined. Still trying to be the best mom, wife, sister, friend, worker, neighbor I can be. Still working on relationships that have gone awry.

And yes, I am the person about to attend her high school reunion with a mixture of breathlessness and dread.

(My dear buddies: This is why I am on a semi-sabbatical from blogging -- working on "JUBILATION 2009: the best is yet to come" -- meant to be a yearbook like no other. Will see you all soon.- anna)

Food Trippin' ala- Gagalangin (Tondo), circa nevermind

Bibingkahan at the Manila Hotel began by the Pritil Bridge.

In my young and maiden years in Gagalangin, I’d munch on a cob of roasted corn while reading Liwayway magazine, curled up on the sofa. If it rained, I let it. That was my idea of a perfect day.

Great food then as now came in binary pairs – dinuguan at puto, mangga’t suman, tokwa’t baboy. Mine was gatas ng kalabaw at tapang baka. You pour a cup of the rich milk over a plate of steaming, pandan-fragrant rice, add a sprinkling of rock salt, and top the caboodle with chunks of fried tapa just slightly fringed with golden fat. You close your eyes involuntarily with every spoonful -- feeling all is right with the world. Though I didn’t know the phrase then, it was to me the quintessential comfort food.

There must be farms near Gagalangin for the milk was delivered to our doorsteps still mainit-init, with the top cream two inches thick, in a coke or gin bottle, stopped by folded banana leaves twisted screwlike.

My Tio Kulas, a wealthy hatter, lived in a big house on Cavite Street three or four streets away. They did not only own the only phonograph (the only place I could play a vinyl record some relative sent me) but also the only authentic lusong that side of Gagalangin, with which they made authentic linupak every month or so.

I’d hop-skip my way over to Tio Kulas’, though it was 20 minutes away, if it was “linupak day,” for it was more eagerly anticipated than an official holiday. Authentic linupak is not mashed cassava but saging na saba pounded on lusong, with fistfuls of grated coconut and sprinklings of sugar quickly tossed in between the rising and falling of the giant wooden pestle. Since the banana is semi-ripe, the linupak is not sweet and soft but tart and springy. This delicacy is rarely commercially available in the city, then or now.

(Years ago, in a fit of craving, I tried to prepare linupak using only persistence and a kitchen almires. To say it was a disaster is an understatement.)

I have other scrumptious memories of Gagalangin.

Sunday morning would find us youngsters sitting expectantly by Aling Tisya’s food stall in the talipapa. Aling Tisya opens only on weekends and was worth waiting a whole week for. She served the best goto in the world -- the bowl big, generous and steaming, the porridge freshly cooked and not yesterday’s bahao, the tripe and bituka pieces succulent and just a bit softer than al dente, and the calamansi-patis sawsawan slightly more sour than salty. Followed by ginatang bilo-bilo with langka strips and a curlicue of kakang gata on top, which young heart could ask for more?

One didn’t even have to go to the talipapa for a food trip. If you waited patiently at home, the treats would come.

Itinerant vendors would stroll by with puto-kutsinta, taho, and fresh produce in the morning, including the freshest talangka my Lola would magically transform into the most savory buro, inside which was red-black sinfulness called aligue. Never mind how she did it. (The SPCA did not go after people who tortured tiny crabs by salt-treatment, did it?)

By three o’clock, other vendors would come in succession, bilao perched on the head, basket tucked in the arm, shouting out their ware. We were always in a dilemma which merienda to buy. Corn on the cob? Binatog? Bitcho-bitcho, butche-butche, sapin-sapin? Kalamay, maja blanca? Turon, maruya, lumpia? Carioca? Sometimes, it could be halo-halo, ginatan, or sweet beans with crushed ice – a stall was always a dash away.

Later in the afternoon, a different set of vendors would be passing by, with fresh saging lakatan and latundan, tuba, and paros, a sweetish kind of shellfish we scalded and ate as appetizer.

Nights are stormy when you don’t hear “Baluuuuut….. penoy, baluuuut.” It took me some time to learn which end of the egg to crack so that it opened fetus- side up so I could drink the savory broth-like liquid – never enough, always bitin -- before gulping the whole egg in two bites. No, I didn’t have to close my eyes and we didn’t have an expression then for “yucky” or “gross.”

Mendoza bakery was where we ran to buy galletas de patatas and Marie-like biscuits by the hundreds, at 35 centavos per, when a horde of children was waiting to be fed.

Botika Santos, a pharmacy-cum-PX store, had Horlicks, Baby Ruth, Lifesavers, and Cadbury chocolate bars with fruits and nuts when our sweet tooth craved for something imported and our father was home to give us extra spending money.

When unexpected company came, my mom didn’t panic. A Chinese panciteria at the corner of Solis and Juan Luna, opposite Torres High School was open 24/7 – well, maybe 16/7 –which whipped up miki-bihon, hototay, and sweer-sour meatballs faster than you could say yi-er-san-si- go.

At the Torres High School canteen, there was cake I never could get enough of. It had a chiffon base and a custard-caramel topping and tasted to me like a prelude to something ... uhm .. sublime. Anyway, I would nibble on it morsel by tiny morsel, trying to prolong ... uhm ... heaven. At 25 centavos a slice, and my baon usually only 30, it was often unreachable as the ... uhm ... sky.

Around the school were hawkers unlimited who broke into smiles as soon as the bell rang to dismiss throngs of youngsters. Most of us Gagalangin girls literally ground our teeth on manggang hilaw at bagoong, papayang manibalang at heko, and singkamas marinated in salted water. For the sweeter-toothed, there was ice cream sandwich, tira-tira, belekoy, and Milady (pronounced mee-ladee).

Later, when we were a bit older, after a late-night double-bill movie at Scala Theater on Avenida Rizal, there was no way my sisters and I wouldn't stop at this bamboo restaurant at the foot of Pritil bridge, home of melt-in-the-mouth bibingka galapong and to-die for chewy puto bumbong. Put up in 1938 by Ceferino Francisco, it grew so phenomenally that by the 60s it had outlets all over Metro Manila, including one in the Manila Hotel. Its name: Ferino's Bibingka.

Light years away were Jolibee, McDo, KFC, Pizza Hut, Goldilocks, Greenwich and Shakey’s.

Photo credits: The amazing picture was filched from "Sa Likod ng Bahay Kayumangge," (on which I tried to post a comment to ask permission for use of the picture but couldn't as there was a registration process beyond my ken) which gives a more detailed account of the history of Ferino's Bibingka.

I hope the blogger behind "sa likod" will not mind my taking liberties with the picture. But if he/she does, I will delete the photo as soon as he/she lets me know.

Apologia: Tama ka, Rolly Lampa, it was Ferino's Bibingka! -- not Aling Nena's. Wow, what a memory!

More credits: Salamat po, Mario Silva, for reminding me there was a delectable bibingkahan a jog away from Pritil bridge. Ferino's po pala yun!

Conversations With Myself

1.

I can't write good fiction.

You don't say.

I have weak imagination. I can only write about what I have gone through and known and felt. Sure, I can exaggerate, understate, embellish, take liberties. But I need a solid floor of truth -- no matter how thin or ramshackle -- to lovingly polish, mess around with, stamp my foot on.

The next thing you'll say is you're a poor liar, too.

I don't have a good liar's imagination, creativity, and diligence. I am too lazy to try to remember lies or note them down. And I hate being caught up in the maze of one lie after another. I'm not saying I don't lie.

For a while, you haven't written. Write something, anything.

You don't when you are empty. When there's no kindling in the head. No fire in the belly. When you're dry in the heart, and elsewhere.

Some people hate to be angry or afraid or lonely. But the saddest thing to feel is nothing.

It is sad not being able to write.

Come on lighten up. You're too old to take yourself seriously.


2.

It's funny how others think old people do not feel as they do. Or are not entitled.

People say, shaking their head:

Really, now -- you STILL sleep eight hours a day? Love chocolates? Swoon over Piolo? Go kilig over someone guapo? Smile at yourself in the mirror? March at EDSA?

And, oh wow, you STILL play games online? YM-chat? Blog? Giggle? Sulk? Dream dreams? Take yourself seriously?

As though one is transformed by the wand of old age into a eunuch -- calcified, barely moving, bereft of dreams and appetites. Or at least someone who doesn't do much beyond read newspapers, watch television, dote on grandkids, complain of aching joints, and go nostalgic over lost youth.

Have I joined the ranks of the disenfranchised ... or will soon do?

I need to have a fall back for that "someday soon" when I would be shunted from the mainstream to the edges of life. Or, God, let me just drop out from it.


3.

Before I forget, I can STILL skip-hop ...

And can still write feeling poems too:


I have forgotten the fire
The fire that spreads like a blanket
And takes the nip out
Of a rainy night.

I have forgotten the spark
That spangles the eyes that glimpse it
And scalds the hand
That reaches out to touch it.

Yonder smolders a bonfire of dreams
Whoa, heart,don't go.
Heart, heart
Oh ...





(My 100th post, celebrated with all the angst I am capable of.)

The Scarlet Letters

For months before R-Day, I walked around with scarlet letters virtually seared into my forehead. It's nothing like the “A” – for “Adulteress"-- which the Hawthorne heroine was fire-branded with to flog her for her femme-fatale ways. Rather, mine was an insipid “A” and “R” – for “About to Retire.”*

For a while, “A.R.” defined what I was. AR slowed down my walk, gave pause to my talk.

An example:

Office friend: Hey, have you heard the news?

Me: What?

Friend: The new UP Charter has been approved.

Me: So, what?

Friend: We’re no longer under SSL (Salary Standardization Law)

Me: Oh, wow. Will we get a raise?

Friend: But of course!

Me: Oh, finally, ha? Goodbye, starvation wages. Goodbye … Teka, when will it take effect?

(‘BOINK-TOINK” – the scarlet letters blink.)

Me: Uh-oh. About to retire na nga pala ako.

I got mushy over things. Events were prepositioned with a “last.” My last Christmas in the office. Last lantern parade. Last sunflower season. Last outing. Last ExecCom meeting. Last Christmas bonus/clothing allowance/productivity pay. Last project. Last hurrah.

But then, it made me look at things with a fresher, keener, more thankful eye.

More than ever, I savored the tree-lined campus, the old but trusty building, the lush landscape, the murals on the ground floor atrium, the airy second floor plaza, even my topsy-turvy room.

I relished how fortunate we all were who work there: cubicles for everyone, one computer-one-telephone per person, flexi-time, kitchenettes, and lounging places.

It is here where I found the unbossiest of bosses, freedom to take initiatives and make my own instructive mistakes, opportunities to lecture, write, research, get computer-savvy, train abroad, earn honorarium.

It is where I made fabulous friendships that sometimes teeter under the weight of office intrigues, committed myself to our development mission, fought – and sometimes went into hot water -- for what I believed in.

As I walked about with the blinking virtual letters, I thought it would really be hard to let go.

I didn’t know the office wasn't about to let go, either.

The other day, as I signed a retainer contract prepared by AO Din .....

Clink, plink!

Ooops, there go the scarlet letters.

*An allusion to the classic "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Paper Chase 1: THINGS I WOULDN'T HAVE KNOWN IF I HAD PAID A FIXER AND HADN'T BRAVED THE LINES AT NSO

·

That people density and air humidity tend to increase in direct proportion to one’s proximity to NSO.

·

That NSO doesn’t have a car park for its public but a block away is a gasoline service station with two or three spaces that seem to be (miraculously) always available.

·

That NSO has bred, around its vicinity, thriving micro businesses that deal in sama-lamig, snacks, ball pen and abaniko, as well as – don’t ask me why -- vegetable and plant seeds, all of which I bought (yes, including the seeds); but that there’s a market demand yet unfilled for smelling salts, tranquilizers, and – now seriously -- “how to transact at NSO” information manuals (hmm … teka nga).

·

That you might really need an abaniko as the old and decrepit and frail have been known to collapse inside, in spite of misting devices at areas where crowds are densest.

·

That going to NSO can sharpen your cunning, resourcefulness, and information seeking -- for how else would you know how to proceed, without information posters, handouts, or desks you do not have to line up for an hour for.

·

That, even as guards valiantly double up as information officers, the best way to get information on how to get your records – especially if you are a special case like I was -- is to get out, call their delivery service number, and talk with a well-informed officer not necessarily only to get your records delivered.

·

That the queues of people are so long that if you come after mid morning you might be given number 4999 when the one currently being served is No. 409.

·

That they will refuse to serve you when you come at mid-afternoon but you won’t know it, if you didn’t ask, until you have already braved some lines.

·

That guards would permit you to enter almost anywhere the place and people would allow you to cut any which line with a smile as long as you brandish a senior citizen’s card, but you won’t know of this happy privilege until you have begun to grow more wrinkles. In other words, seniors don’t need a number, so what was I doing with number 4998?

·

That, in my case, I had to apply for my record, wait two days, and come back to confirm I do not have any record (which I have known all along) and thus what I got was a certificate of “no record” which I carry with me to the city (hall) registry of my birth which in turn will search for my record in their own archives and when they confirm what I tried to tell them (that I don’t have a record) will proceed to late-register me (I am told this will take several months) and then send that late registration to NSO where I have to queue all over again. (I felt – hingal -- rundown writing this, so excuse the run-in clause.)

·

That NSO must like their customers around for why else – instead of flinging the exit door wide open -- do they make it so difficult for them to get out of the premises?

·

That NSO can be an efficiency expert’s dream project.

·

That Filipinos are normally a patient people and that I am not normal.

Watch out for the “city hall” episode on part 2.

Good Riddance Day -- or so they thought

I knew it is traditional to say goodbye formally and I had long ago accepted I had to go through the ritual -- and in style!

But I had a couple of stories to go before I finish the UP Centennial book project my director touted as my "last hurrah." Plus he sounded me off on a part-time retainer engagement to go on handling publications and publicity.

So I told HRD it was premature to hold a good riddance party, as I will still be around for some time. I made AO Din promise to hold his horses and spring no surprises.

Thus have I lately fallen into an unharried, unhurried, "ah, this is the life" rhythm of going to work twice or thrice a week, after lunch.

Last Friday afternoon, I was enjoying a leisurely glass of iced tea in our office kitchenette when JP, president of our foundation, came in. He had a meeting downstairs, he said, and had time to kill, which he seemed to want to kill by discussing his arthritis. As I gamely listened, the secretary appeared by the door to tell JP his meeting was about to begin. I stood up to go back to work but JP gripped my arm. "You have to accompany me to the meeting," he said. "I can barely walk."

Strange, I thought, as he had walked in without help. Is JP making lambing? When he tightened his grip and led me through the door, a bulb finally flashed and I began to say: "Oh, no, no, no, oh no!!! Don't do this to me. I said no surprises."

When we reached the darkened Red Room, lighted only by a projector screen with my picture on it, shadowy figures began to sing. When the lights came on, the shadows transformed into smiling co-workers, former colleagues, and members of my family.

Aloud I kept yelling: "Ang sama nyo! Hindi nyo man lang ako pinag-lipstick."

Inwardly I kept groaning: "I should have prepared a speech. Omg, how come they didn't let me prepare a speech?!"

They said a lot of good things about me that day, but how come nobody said I was beautiful and sexy?

There was a "deal-or-no-deal" quiz between kapuso (my office mates) and kapamilya (members of my family) which focused on my late-rising, late-coming-to-work, nagging-pressuring ways, and other foul deeds.

The office counterpart of Michael Buble serenaded me, but why oh why did he sing "Only You" by the Platters?

I moved my chair nearer the projector when they showed a power point presentation. Even without my glasses on, I knew those were pictures of me evolving -- from very young, to not quite young, to getting old, to absolutely old. Which reminds me I still have to find out how they got my grade-school photos. And those of Apo Andeng. They even showed pictures I didn't know existed.

They made me cut a huge cake, significantly 40 x 40 inches big, thankfully without candles.

When I stood to respond, I hemmed and hawed as is my wont, when caught flatfooted.

But I managed to say the office has been good to me. That it was not just another workplace, but the source of professional, psychological, economic, and social fulfillment. That because it trusted my meager skills, I was encouraged to develop them. That because it believed in me, I had compelled myself to lecture and speak even in international conferences -- incredible for someone who has never gotten over a chronic stage fright and public speaking jitters.

I said that in the years I'd been with the office, I had coordinated and presided over countless goodbye parties, tributes and roasts and toasts. And that now that I was for the first time at the receiving end of one, it felt fabulous. But masama pa din ang loob ko, I insisted. "Kasi hindi nyo ako pinag-lipstick and hindi nyo ako pinag-prepare ng speech."

I served notice I'd still be around for some time to come and that if they expected good riddance they were in for a disappointment. For it would take a dozen hunks and a straitjacket to yank me out from my room. I ended with my favorite cliche: "And that's a promise as well as a threat."

I didn't say publicly I had fancied myself attending my goodbye party in style.

That I fancied entering the room dramatically, in gala gown, swept-up do, and vivid make-up, having finally gotten the day before the professional facial I have never treated myself to.

That, most of all, I fancied myself standing by the podium, ready -- with a torrent of choice and unforgettable words -- to shake and rattle the tiny universe that was my office for 40 years.

I didn't get to stage the goodbye I fancied. But why was I feeling so moved and thrilled and happy?

Dropping Years

Phillis Greene tells us it can be done.

To feel younger as we grow older.

She herself was rejuvenated when she wrote her phenomenal first book Moonglow. When her second, Shedding Years, became another hit, she must have dropped a few more from her 80-plus years. She felt young, she said, while she sat by the pc writing her manuscript, as she autographed copies of her book at its launch, whenever she received fan mail from readers who identified with her musings.

I don't have to take Phillis' word for it. And I don't have to wait for my own first bestseller to come out; it is not likely to happen in this lifetime.

I have learned a few tricks of my own in dropping years.

Oh yes, I pit myself against the (young) standard and go through some of the rituals -- diet, work out, color, moisturize, tone, cleanse, and otherwise try to conceal the bulges, the lines and ridges, and the grey. I try to stand and walk uprightly, springily, tummy sucked in -- never mind if I get blue in the face.

But the years show in more ways than meets the eye.

One can drop years by learning new lifestyles. For me, it is entering a new world called the blogsphere, where I have found a new voice to talk to the world.

It is connecting with new friends -- including those as young as my own children.

It is doing things I've never dared to do before. Snorkel, skin-dive, sing without fear of offending eardrums (though I offend eardrums), drink one too many, walk in the rain, see a movie by my lonesome, wear a duster to go shopping, pick a neighbor's rosal flowers while she's not looking,

Most of all, dropping years is looking at the outside and inside circumstances of my life with a fresh eye.

Like someone greets me "How are you" and even as I reply "Fine" without thinking, deep inside I know better. That I am not just fine, but superb, having just woken to a beautiful sunrise, drunk a perfect cup of coffee, received a parcel notice from a faraway friend, and won successive games of scrabble the night before.

I hear something that bewilders me, intrigues me, and I dont run to a book or a guru anymore but instead look inwards for confirmation -- for a chord that will sound off a "ting-a-ling" response or a "boink-toink" alarm.

"Hitler went to heaven," Neale Donald Walsche tells me for example, and I am outraged at first. It goes against the grain of all I have been taught to believe about heaven and hell. But wait -- knock, knock -- I tap into my inner wisdom, which doesn't take too long to answer: "Why not?!" God is so big, even the likes of Shylock who insisted on his pound of flesh couldn't have missed Him.

I guess, like Phillis, I shed years when I watch a beautiful sunset, when I read a good story or write one, when I bury a seed and it shoots up greenlike in a few, when I look up at night and hear the laughter of stars, when I reformat predictable family reunions, when I teach my Apo Andeng how to "close-open," and "high-five" and "eat-bulaga" and she responds gurgling.

I drop years when I discover what I was born to do, and to do it with a passion I thought I had lost with my youth.

I drop years when I learn to be tolerant of other's follies; to listen to reasons why I can be wrong sometimes or most of the time; to laugh more, especially when the joke's on me; to accept temporary setbacks and not feel it's the end of the world; and to work on relationships that have gone sour.

In our highschool yahoo site where I sometimes get caught in the crossfire between sniping ole classmates-- I grow older when I get trigger-itchy and shoot out my own venom; I feel younger when I find a way to disarm antagonists and broker a deal resembling a truce.

In fact, it is basically in the relationships.

Our relationships to the god within, to our own fallible self, to every person and bird and bee and flower and tree and brook and river around us.

A positive attitude to others -- both fellow humans and lesser creatures -- can add bounce to our steps as we walk those final miles before we sleep.