Day 11; Forty Day Writing Challenge: Father

I'm glad I was the youngest daughter for 11 years, (then my youngest sister Sami was born). Being the youngest was a double-edged sword. Dad was easier on me, but my brother and sisters considered me the lowest in the rungs of the family.

But that was okay because my siblings loved me and I always had Terrie to play with. Alice made me feel special and Irene told me lots of stories that struck me as "sophisticated" because she was the eldest. My brother was nice to me. He often took me out on his bike, and we'd go to school together or he'd take me to a restaurant. I always felt safe with my brother.

Every afternoon Dad took his nap. While he slept Alice was in charge of pulling out his grey hair. Terrie and I had to walk on his back. I didn't know then that it's a common Asian therapy, but the walkers are usually grown women.

On other afternoons Terrie and I had to sleep on his arms. We never slept though, but he did. Sometimes Terrie and I would play on his tummy. We'd make our hands little walking people and walk around his tummy making up games and silent conversations. I wonder now if he liked that, if maybe he pretended to sleep a bit longer so we could make our hands go all over his tummy with the games we played.

I never asked for things that I wanted because mom always said no. There was a time we'd go to a market, and there was a bahay kubo. the sign said, "Make your child happy, give him a house of his own". I'd stare at that bahay kubo every single time. Then one day, Dad and mom picked us up, and mom said, "We have a very nice surprise for Mona". I was shocked when we came home to see the bahay kubo. It was the most wonderful gift I ever had in my whole entire life.

I used to always ask Dad if we could have a dog, and he always said no. So I'd say, "Okay, get me a cat" and he'd just keep quiet. Finally, he said "Mona, no dogs, and no cats". But one day my Lola Nanay Feling gave me a puppy. I was scared that Dad wouldn't let me keep it, but he came home, saw it, saw my face, and smiled. He said nothing at all.

Shortly after that, a stray cat came to our house. Terrie and I fed it, but we never expected it to come back every day. Knowing Dad's stand on animals, we tried to chase the cat away with a broomstick, but the cat was stubborn. For two weeks the cat kept coming. One day we were having supper, and Dad and Irene and I were looking out at the garden beside the lanai and besides which was our dining table.

We were talking about how nice and still the day was and how our garden was so lovely, not overly laden with plants, nor was it sparse. All of a sudden Terrie ran across the yard with a broom, chasing the cat away. Irene broke out in laughter and Dad looked at her and was amused. I didn't think it was funny because it was what Terrie and I did with that cat all the time.

But after that, it seemed as though Dad accepted the cat, which ended up living with us and found space in a storage room to give birth to kittens.

One day we lost our dog, and I cried and cried for days. Then one morning Dad woke me up very early. He brought me to the lanai, and there were 50 birds of different colors and shades in a very large cage. Dad loved to surprise me.

It seems that I never asked for things as much as possible but Dad would anticipate what I wanted, and he'd give it to me. When I finished college and pursued my career as a writer, Dad sent me to Boston University to get an MS degree in journalism. Dad was a great believer in education, from the time that we were small. Nobody is a perfect man. He wasn't a perfect man. But he was a good man.

Day 10, forty-day writing challenge, Dramatic Experience

I rode a jetski. I was in Cebu with Ed. We went to a resort that day. We were supposed
to go to a place where you can swim beside the whales. However, my cousin Mally said
that it was very smelly there, and Kat felt it was cruel to the whales because it prevented
them from taking their usual course through the waters as they normally do. And so we
were in a resort where I was disappointed by the small sharks, although we did have
a nice buffet.

I had wanted some very strong interaction with water animals, and I was just looking
down at the little sharks in a pond. Ed was grouchy as usual. I saw that a jet ski could
be rented for a full hour. I doubted that Ed would ride the jet ski, but I took a chance
and reserved it for one hour. We lay on the beach, put on sunscreen, and I walked
to the jetski.

I think the guy who rode the jetski had never had an experience quite like me. All I could do
from start to finish was scream. A jet ski isn't like riding a bike. The waters have waves, and
a wave can go any direction, from left to right to forward and backward, all at the same time.
Jetskiing is more like riding a motorcycle on an unpredictably movable road. And I am a
senior citizen and I didn't think about trying to understand the waves so I could just mow
through them. Instead, I just screamed.

To calm myself down, I sang “Magellan” by Yoyoy Villame. you have to sing
it with a deliberate Cebuano accent. "Martch seexteen feefteen hundred tweyntee
wan. Win felepeen was descobered by Mahgehlaaaaan. Dey were sayleeng
diy and night acorss dee big oh Shawn, until dey rich de smol Leemasawan
I lan."

Then I looked far down the waters and saw an island. I asked the man if the jetski could

take us to the island but he said no. I asked him to sing a song, and he said he knows
only childhood songs. I asked him to sing one and he wouldn't. He seemed however not
to like my singing because as I sang -- shouted was more like it -- he tended to interrupt
me with a question. I'd answer the question and then sing again.

With time I became more confident of my jetski skills although I was still frightened. I sang
Spiderman, the old fashioned version of the song which was my new anthem of
empowerment. This was the song when Spiderman was just a cartoon and there were no
Marvel movies then. Spiderman, Spiderman, friendly neighborhood Spiderman. I saw a
collection of red boulders with small water lanes between them, and I told my guide, "We
can go in and go out on the other side."

I realized, however, that we could possibly hit a rock and injure his jet ski, which is
his livelihood or injure myself or him. He calmly said, "Okay ma'am, let's go that
way" and his hand turned right -- opposite from the direction of the boulders.

I was a bit miffed, but it was my first time in a jet ski, and it was his jetski.
After 30 minutes Ed still refused to ride the jetski, and I didn't think I could
take anymore. I barely was able to get off the jetski. I had to wait a bit to do
it very slowly, then I walked straight to my chaise lounge and slept.

I heard him talking quietly to his other friends in Cebuano. I know he was amused
by the tone of his voice. What was he telling his friends about our historic and
cultural and enigmatic ride on a jetski? I wonder if he still remembers me now.

Here is the song of Magellan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUl3Yyxyjy8

Day 9: Forty-day writing challenge "Picture"

I'm exactly who I never wished to be. I'm one among a crowd of displaced people who were forced to leave their homes because of the war. The smell of sweat, of unbathed bodies around me, the dust that the wind spreads on our bodies, the pain on my feet and legs and shoulders, the tiny hands holding my skirt, the little one whose face gives me hope despite its unnatural stillness, all these forms the scenario I would never have wanted to be in.

It would have been less difficult if my husband were with me. I won't think about that. I can't have the convenience of remembering how wonderfully he looked in his long, uncut hair, his fine clean scent after a bath, the strength and largeness of his body, his loving arms around me at night. I won't remember the last look on his face before they took him away. I can't hope that we'll find each other again. I have to stay in the here and now.

I have two daughters, aged 6 and 4, and an infant in my arms. We have walked for three days. We started near the front of the crowd of people and slowly kept falling back, more and more. When someone offered us space on a rickety old bus, I was grateful. I could have walked forever for the sake of my children, but they wouldn't have been able to walk much longer. So by the time the bus had come along, it was like my husband was still keeping an eye on us somehow, being protective, as always. 

And here we are on day three, in a place where we're safe and thankful for temporary shelter. I see reporters, sympathetically walking around, looking for a story.  I used to be one of them. I used to work in a newspaper. But I didn't cover disasters. I wrote about restaurants, music, and fashion. Things of that nature.

Cameramen are looking about. My two daughters hide behind me. I hardly notice that they took our photograph. I'm looking around me, hoping that there will be food. My daughters are tired and hungry. My infant is extraordinarily still. If I eat something, I can breastfeed my infant.
  

Day 8: Forty Day Writing Challenge "Object"

Have you ever seen an object for the first time and felt so drawn to it that you would never forget how it made you heave and sigh and feel warm inside despite the snow of winter? That's how I felt when I saw that pine cone, the giant one in the bathroom of my sister, Terrie, who lived in Kansas with her family. That's when I fell in love with pinecones.

I like to think I'm scientific and sensible, even if sometimes I know there's more to this world than science, and that things unproven or declared a fantasy may be true. But I think I felt so mesmerized by the pine cone because there was some sort of airwave that made it touch my pineal gland, the gland in the brain that's named after pinecones.

The pineal gland produces melatonin, which helps us sleep, rest, and dream. And I have very vivid dreams. Sometimes my dream seems so real that at a certain point I feel distressed. Then, I walk my brain backward, realize I'm dreaming, and resume the dream reassured. At other times my dreams are so strong that I wake up thinking it must be nighttime. Or, I forget my address because in my dream I lived somewhere else. It's all a lot of fun when you think about it. Reality is good, but dreams can make reality interesting and exciting.

When our family went to Virginia, we lived in the house of our niece, Kara. She had a pine tree in front and she said Kat and I could get the pinecones. Of course, I didn't plan to get every single pine cone, but my then nine-year-old daughter kept telling me "this one" and "that one" and the needles pricked my hands and arms and before I knew it, we had every single pinecone from the tree.

When I remember that story, it reminds me of how she is now. She once told me a story about her and her travel buddy. When they visit a country, she wants to see all 22 temples that the country has. Her travel buddy wants only to see the top three. So they negotiate and may end up seeing eight temples.

I ramble. Because what I really wanted to say is, the pinecones were placed in a box and we brought them to the Philippines. When we opened the box, a magnificent aroma emanated. And I noticed when the pinecones are wet they close. But place them under the sun, and they open again, still fragrant. I still have some of those pinecones from 20 years ago. Recently, I told my maid that they would close when wet and open when dry. She was doubtful, so we wet a few and left them under the sun. Yes, 20 years later, the pinecones are still opening and closing.

When I was in New Zealand, I saw a huge pinecone in a chocolate store. However, it wasn't for sale. A few days later we went to a vineyard and then crossed to a field lined by giant pine trees. And there, on the ground, was a giant pine cone that was reminiscent of the first pine cone I saw followed by an airwave to my pineal gland. All at once, I remembered the first pine cone I fell in love with in the bathroom of my sister's home in Kansas. In fact, I found three of them that day and felt particularly blessed.

The other day I held the pinecone, the size of my hand, and placed it on my lip and nose, and inhaled. It was absolutely lovely.

Day 7: Forty Day Writing Challenge, "Aging"

As a child, I looked at old people and felt great pity for them.

They looked very different. Their faces were wrinkled as were their fingers and the skin on their arms and legs. They had false teeth that they put in a glass overnight. In those days, old men became distinguished with age. Old women seemed to be ebbing. I thought that beauty is probably important at every stage in a person's life. And so I felt sorry for old people, never at that time imagining that someday I, too, would grow old.

As a matter of fact, I'm a senior citizen. I have false teeth that I wrap in tissue. I have a double chin that I try to hide with my fat fingers by putting my digits on my chin. I continually gain weight and the clothes I love to wear don't fit like they used to. I'm currently in lockdown because the COVID virus is all around. Although many are susceptible it's the old people who die, those with preconditions like, in my case, asthma. My husband, on the other hand, is diabetic and a cancer survivor of his thyroid. So we choose to stay indoors even when the government is loosening up on lockdown. We want to wait two more months to see if another recurrence will occur.

I love being old. When you are old, marriage is lots better. You understand each other and can read each other's emotions as they are particularly predictable. You learn to negotiate and you can assess in advance what you can negotiate for. If in the end, he says no, you can decide if you will get away with sneaking that negotiating issue through anyway. Sometimes I slip it through and he turns his eyes away. Other times he gets really, really mad. But in the end, we are okay because we love and trust each other. If you don't have love and trust in your old age,  I feel very sad for you. Because it's when you're old that you're supposed to be relaxed and well settled in your ways (with room for the occasional adventure or two). It's the age when you should care for each other the most because you are both most vulnerable.

As of now, I'm 64. I'm considered "young old".   I still have friends my age and older. But I have two friends in their 90s. One is named Rupert, who is 92. The other is Tita Babes who is 94. I wonder if they have other friends who are alive and also in their 90s. I wonder if there are any entertainers of their age who are still alive as well. I wonder what it feels like to be that age and to have lost most of the people you know and love. I wonder what it's like to depend on your children. 

Day 6, Forty Day Writing Challenge "Fiction"

Mommy came from behind my back as I was looking out the window. "Don't look," she said. "Don't pay any attention." Then she led me away from the window.

It was the living room window that looked out at the garage on the side of the house. There were two cars there. One was our pretty, blue Buick. The other, a Cadillac, belonged to the Hellmans next door.  It was 6 a.m. and I was looking at a four-year-old child walk past the cars to a tiny home in the back. I was the same age. Mr. Hellman's tiny home was a dream house that seemed just right for me. I wanted to go there and play house with Mr. Hellman and Jessica, the little blonde girl who went there every morning. But mommy didn't even want me to look at Mr. Hellman's house.

Every day there were three children who visited Mr. Hellman. Jessica always stayed for two hours. She had blonde curls and lovely grey eyes and a smile that was rare but precious. I don't know why she always went there, but I presumed it was perhaps because her mother, Mrs. Fowler, who lived further down the road, needed someone to watch her daughter so early in the morning. I would wait until 8 am, then go to the window again. Always, Mr. Hellman stood at the door, letting Jessica out while holding his index finger to his mouth. Jessica did the same. Once, I managed to overhear what he told her, "Remember, it's a secret. Don't tell anybody. Promise." And Jessica would put her own little index finger on her mouth and make a solemn promise.

The second girl, Oasis Robinson, came at lunchtime. She was African American. Her mother, Birdy, worked as a maid to Mrs. Garcetti who lived across the street. Oasis, 5, wasn't allowed in Mrs. Garcetti's home, but Mr. Hellman very kindly offered to watch over Oasis while Birdy worked from 1 to 5 p.m. When Oasis entered Mr. Hellman's home, I would hear the clink and clack of dishes and cutlery. I imagined that Mr. Hellman and Oasis always had lunch together, and then spent the afternoon indoors in silence.

I wanted so much to knock on Mr. Hellman's door, look at his house inside, and play with Oasis, but my mother wouldn't let me do that either. Mommy taught me how to cook and made sure I did my cleaning chores. I loved the chug-a-lug of our laundry machine, and the sight of the clothes swirling round and round mesmerized me. Afterward, we went grocery shopping together. And every day, mom let me watch cartoons on TV.

After school hours, the most beautiful girl I saw, Valerie Ann Jones, would visit Mr. Hellman. Valerie was 6 years old and she had been visiting Mr. Hellman for two years, according to the neighborhood talk. At first, her mom would bring Valerie over. One day, we heard, Valerie's mother came early to pick up her daughter. She barely stayed a minute. She yelled and screamed and said, "You'll never see Valerie again."  Despite her warning, Valerie continued to visit Mr. Hellman alone without her mother's knowledge, or so the neighbors said.

****

"It's a strange arrangement" I once heard mom say. She was talking on the phone to Mrs. Garcetti. "His wife Sybil lives in the front house with their daughter Dorothy and their son Maynard, and he lives alone in the back house. The children never visit their father and Margaret acts as though he doesn't exist." Mommy was curious because we had lived in the neighborhood for only one year, and she was aware of the children that came to see Mr. Hellman. They were always other people's children, never his own.

Later that evening, over dinner with Daddy, she told him of the comings and goings in Mr. Hellman's home in the back. She sternly warned me to always keep away from him, because we didn't know him and he never bothered to befriend us despite our being neighbors for one year.

***

Mom and Mrs. Garcetti became fast friends. She also came to know Mrs. Hellman because her son, Maynard, went to the same school as my brother, Todd. They were both 10 years old. Maynard was a loner. He didn't talk much and wasn't friendly with anybody in school. He ate lunch alone and during recess, he stayed in the library. He walked home with his 8-year-old sister, Dorothy. They were close, and they were both very retiring.

Mrs. Hellman was the exact opposite. She was very active in parent-teacher activities. She was voted president of the PTA and held the position continually for the last five years. She organized bake sales and field trips and school carnivals. She was familiar with every teacher in the school, and she made every parent feel like they were important to her.

One day Mom decided to invite Mrs. Hellman and Mrs. Garcetti to our home. Mom baked a cake, some cupcakes, and lots of different finger sandwiches. She kept a bottle of wine in a bucket of ice. There was also hot tea and a pitcher of cold water.

Mrs. Hellman greeted mother and Mrs. Garcetti with a firm handshake for each of them. Her voice was delightfully musical.  Dad came out to greet the guests. He told Mrs. Hellman, "I've yet to get to know your husband," to which she replied, "Oh, don't you even bother." She flipped her hanky as she spoke and added, "He's like the children. A homebody."

"Well," Mom said, "I think it's wonderful that he gets along well with children."  Mom was shocked at the pure hostility that suddenly covered  Mrs. Hellman's face. But the hostility immediately changed into a wide smile, though her eyes were taught and hard. Mrs. Hellman said, very musically, "Yes, that's like him. He doesn't go to church with us, but he believes that children are God's flowers on earth.

"Children," Mrs. Garcetti asked, "Who are these children?"

"All children", Mrs. Hellman said. "On the few times he goes out, he goes to the playground to watch children play." Her musical voice suddenly seemed quite strained, so Mommy immediately changed the topic to something that Mrs. Hellman felt safer with -- the pending PTA bake sale to raise funds for charity.

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Day 5, Forty Day Writing Challenge "A room full of details"

In Los Angeles, as a child, I had my own bedroom. But I often preferred to sleep with my Nanny, Insi Dosing. I loved Insi because she talked to me and took care of me. She was my friend in the daytime when everybody else went to work or school. She would give me a bath and dress me up and take my picture. She allowed me to take a picture riding a horse in our back yard. Sometimes we went out. I thought she was very pretty. She'd wear nice pants with a top and a hat and sunglasses and sandals. Sometimes a man would come over and talk to her. The man would call her Dolores. I didn't know if they had prearranged the meeting or if they really met just then. I didn't know as a child that many times Filipinas worked overseas as maids hoping to marry an American who could give them a good life. I don't even know how old Insi was when she took care of all of us in Los Angeles. This was way before the OFW days. On those days when we went out, we'd always get back home before others in the family would. Insi also had her times of being angry, the way all people do, but at night she'd tell me stories before we'd go to sleep, usually about a man she was in love with. I remember at least two boyfriends that she loved very much. One came after the other.

I loved Insi's room. It was an attic room, very snug, and perfect for a child like me. I suppose she liked it too because she was poor and she would never be able to afford to live in a house like ours and sleep in such a lovely attic. I don't remember the furniture but I remember that I was always happy sleeping with Insi.

Sometimes she'd fall asleep before I did. At other times I'd wake up in the middle of the night. That was when I would see lights in the room. Little dainty lights like fireflies, only they were fairies. Usually, it started with just one fairy. Then there would be two, three, and more. They would dance for me, their lights blinking of different colors. Then there would be so many of them. They were like a carousel for me. I loved how they put on such a lovely show. They danced silently but beautifully. Today, I would compare them to a scene in Beauty and the Beast when the dishes danced for Beauty singing, "Be my guest". Only, the fairies never interacted with me, they performed for me. One time I woke Insi up in the middle of the night. "Look", I said. She awoke briefly and I pointed at the fairies. She said "There's nothing there" and went back to sleep.

But I knew they were real. I still know that they are.

Day 4B, Forty Day Writing Challenge "a person"

Maybe I don't really need to write about this person, because he is so typical of many others, a potpourri of disagreeability that manifests in ways that are toxic, making this person not worth the time or effort of writing about her.

You'll notice I used the pronouns "him" and "her" to keep that person's identity a secret. And besides, as I've mentioned before, they are a type. A person who has no steady sail, who self sabotages, and who sabotages those who dare come near to them if they can.

Most often, you will know from the initial meeting that this person isn't worth one's time. At other times you give in because from the start you know the type, and you have figured out their game, but you're willing to go with it to a certain point, beyond which you decide it's time to let go.

And so let me pose examples:
1. He expected the person he loved should be a mind reader. He felt there was no need to explain how he felt and it was a failure if the person didn't see that something was wrong.
2. She clung to you immediately and you became fast friends. You simply chose to control the time spent with this person who wanted money from you. You had a small budget for people like her and never let it get past that. When she wanted far more than what you were willing to give, it was time to let go.
3. They seemed to be okay to hang out with. From the start you knew because it always follows the same pattern -- you become fast friends, the chummiest of chums. But they do that because you fill a need. You tolerated them because they were entertaining and all they got from you were free meals from cheap restaurants.

Oftentimes the relationship is spelled by predictable emotions. When I came to know my first person of this type, I was often bewildered, confused, lost, felt small, and cried many, many tears.
After understanding this type, I knew from the start how it was going to end, and I knew what I was willing to give, and when the inevitable occurred, I wasn't sorry.

When this type is very extreme, the person likes to feel they have power over you. They like to put you down and try to humiliate you publicly. They also think they can lie about you to others, and that the others will believe them.

When this happens, I feel sad. Not because of the put-downs or the attempts at humiliation. I feel sad because the one person who can actually contribute something good and positive in their lives are the ones they are pushing away by belittling you to yourself and others right in front of you. I feel sad for them because I know who I am and I know my value. So, all this negativity doesn't bother me. I have true friends and it's easy to know the difference. You know their game. You feel sad because in the end, they will still be who they are, and they will still be where they are. But they will have lost the free meal that was so important to them. They could have done better.

I once tried to test one of these people by confiding to them about something. I noticed that the person wasn't interested in giving me sympathy or making me feel better. The person was only interested in getting usable gossip that they could apply by telling it to others in their attempts to snare those other people so they could rely on them for something more than what they make themselves worth. The last words were so descriptive about this person themselves.

There are people who are lazy about life and use the least of their skills to feed what is empty inside themselves whether it's material or emotional. They are the sad bottom dwellers who don't look inside themselves to see what is truly good and great and to work on what is truly good and great about themselves.

I have seen one of them discover their greatness and use it to eventually build a good and fulfilling life for themselves. They began as seekers from a dark place, but they were willing to work for the good that they wanted. They built a home and a happy family.

And then there are those who only want the bottom part, and will only reach as far as the bottom part. They lack the desire to develop insight and to examine themselves. They never change.

Day 4, Forty Day Writing Challenge "Another place"

Tagaytay isn't my favorite place in the world. But I'm always happy when I'm in Tagaytay because all the people who've been there with me are people I love. 

I had one great ambition that, despite our many trips, I have never done because my husband is very protective. I have always wanted to ride a pony on the volcano -- the smallest volcano in the world. You have to cross a lake to get to the island where the volcano is. And I have never done that.

However, one day (in our latest visit to Tagaytay), I was happy because my sister Alice said she'd ride the pony with me on the mountain. My husband can never refuse my sister. We went to a restaurant for breakfast before our volcano visit. However, at the restaurant, the waiters warned us that they had stopped allowing pony rides on the island of late, because of some activity which the volcano had been displaying. The most we could do is ride a boat and see the volcano from afar. So that ended my almost attempt to ride the pony there.

Ed, my husband, always refused to let me ride a pony on the volcano because he knew it wasn't very safe. A friend of mine said she almost fell into the volcano when she was a child. She'd been to the island many times with her family, but this time she ran so fast she slipped in. She tried to climb back up, but instead, she was slipping downward. Fortunately, her uncle rescued her.

Incidentally, after our last visit to Tagaytay,  a couple of weeks later the tiniest volcano in the world erupted on January 12 of this year, 2020.  

The last time the volcano erupted was 43 years before. This time, the ash was unusually wet, affecting the entire island, vegetation, fields, forests, animals, and inhabitants of the island. Ashfall also hit the surrounding waters and the coastal villages of nearby lands. The ash, because it was wet, appeared first as mud, then later dried up to resemble cement. Damage to plants and animals totaled some US$11 million, a huge bill for a provincial tourist hub. 

I don't know when we'll go back to Tagaytay. But it is a place where I recall going to first as a field trip, and later, many times, with my husband and our daughter. I remember the Christmas holiday Ed and I celebrated with our daughter Kat and her fiance Julian, my sister Sami and her husband Rex and their two sons, Martin and Franco. They own property in Tagaytay Highlands, which is the Forbes Park of Tagaytay. Rex and Julian did a round of golf, and then we had a delicious lunch in the clubhouse. I totally felt the strongest Christmas spirit of my life at that time, because they had a wonderful chorus group that sang Christmas songs live as we ate. And then there was the time when Ed, Kat and I went to Tagaytay with our two dogs, Mocha Barney and Winniechurchill. I remember how Winnie crept up the mattress and slept in Kat's arms the entire night. The dogs were fascinated because they had never been on a road trip before. I suppose for them, the world was a much larger place than they had realized. And I remember going to Tagaytay with Alice and visiting the Orlina museum. The museum was far beyond my expectations, it was a true learning experience. If ever you go there, get a guide because then you can fully appreciate the glassworks that he does. This museum was quite sophisticated and lent a new dimension to the meaning of art. I hope that when the volcano spewed its ashes, it didn't reach this museum.

Day 3 Forty Day Writing Challenge "an unforgettable place"

Ed and I were a young couple with a two-year-old daughter, and it was the first time we went to Taiwan. It was also the first time that my daughter rode a plane. At that time I didn't realize that my husband was wrestling with anxiety and that he was fearful of riding planes. Still, he embraced the flight and waited with anticipation to see how our daughter Kat would respond to it. The plane rose so smoothly that Kat didn't know that she was flying on air, and she was perfectly well with the whole experience.

We rode on Eva Airways which was, then, a new airline in the Philippines. It had a great reputation that it lived up to when we rode it. It was a family trip -- Sami, mom, Ed, me, and Kat. It was the smoothest ride I'd ever had on a plane. And it was special because we were all together and we were going to live in Alice's house in Yangmingshan.

Today, if you mention Yangmingshan it is largely known for its beautiful park and the experience of trekking. It's so popular that you need to get a three-day advance pass to go in there. This made it hard for the dwellers there and now foreigners live in Tienmu. When we were in Taiwan in 1994, Tien Mu was a place where you could buy cheap clothes. Now, it's a swanky neighborhood.

But when we were in Yangmingshan it was a lovely, upscale neighborhood with many houses. The wind softly embraced me, and it was genuinely cold. I prefer cold to hot weather at any time. Although, I wouldn't like to be too cold. For example, I loved the snow in Boston, but when strong winds accompanied the snow, my ears would freeze regardless of the tam I wore to cover them.

My sister drove a small, smart sports car to pick us up. My husband, being the biggest among us, had the front seat with her. Sami. Mom, Kat, and I had the back seat. It was a rather crowded ride and I recall hoping that it wouldn't be a long ride to get to her home. When we arrived Mom told us "Look I want all of you to see something". So we all stayed obediently in place while she got up to get off the car. "That is what I sat on," she said. It was a very tiny space that could probably support a little less than one butt cheek. I couldn't help it, I had to laugh because, throughout the whole ride, mom had kept stoically quiet. But mom understood my humor and she wasn't offended. Now that we were finally at Alice's home, she laughed too. Maybe she felt very proud of herself for managing to ride so long in that horribly uncomfortable way.

We gathered our luggage and entered Alice's beautiful home. It was a four-bedroom house and Alice said she had asked the Embassy to prepare extra beds for all of us. Alice lived in an enclave that was shared with other US diplomats. All the houses were alike, but they were spaced well apart to permit privacy.

As newlyweds, Ed and I were still trying to find the right mesh that could carry us well into the future in a happy way. He was raised in a Filipino-Spanish home in posh San Lorenzo Village in Makati, with five maids and 14 dogs. When we weren't married yet, I would call him on the phone to talk to him. The maid usually answered the phone and when I'd ask for Ed she would say, "Senorito Ed?" He wasn't raised to do work around the house, and neither was I, since I lived in a house in Greenhills also with five maids.

So when we were in Taiwan I learned to clean Kat's pee if it leaked from her diapers and to take care of her without a Yaya. The good part was that our entire family loved Kat, so I wasn't short of help. Kara would take out her Mickey Mouse doll and play with it in front of Kat, who brought her own Baby Mickey all the way from the Philippines. When Kat waited for me on the floor while I ate on the dining table, she fell asleep so mom gave her some pillows and a blanket. Alice always laughed because Kat was scared of Tito Ted, Alice's husband. Kat was so scared that whenever he took pictures of us her face was turned away from the camera.  Even one month after we returned from Taiwan, every morning Kat would wake up and say "I don't like Tito Ted." Her Yaya asked her why, and Kat would jut her chin forward and make her eyes very big, which was a pretty close resemblance to Ted's face. When I told this to Alice in a letter, she laughed very hard. Sami always doted on Kat. Sami used to work in Makati and in her free time, she would get Kat from San Lorenzo and take her to the mall. So Kat was surrounded by love in Taiwan.

There's such a great sense of romance that I feel when I see Chinese architecture well done. When I lived in Hong Kong I loved the pagodas and the buildings that always curved upwards at the ends like a graceful mustache. I loved the bridges that would curve upwards then down, forming a perfect circle that you crossed a lake with. Everything was beautiful.

My clearest memory was visiting the tomb of Sun Yat Sen, which resembles the Lincoln memorial in Washington DC. Sen was the founding father of the Republic of China on the mainland. He died in 1925, and mainland China became the People's Republic of China.  Sun was succeeded by Chiang Kai Shek whose Kuomintang forces brought the ROC to Taiwan in 1949, at the end of a civil war with Mao Zedong. Chiang Kai Shek died in 1975.

Stillness is not something that I ordinarily associate with myself. But looking back, I remember the mountains I loved to climb in Hongkong, which always had lovely surprises such as lakes with tadpoles, charming pagodas, sandy pathways, and lovely boulders suitable to sit on and just imbibe the stillness all around you. And when I think again of the beautiful park outside the tomb of Shang Kai Shek, I recall a natural stillness. I could talk to everyone around me, but in the center of myself, I felt still. This is something I realized only now while writing this. I'd always felt you had to meditate to be still, and I never really felt fully still. But now I know that natural stillness can occur just by being around the very lovely, curvature parks of Hongkong and Taiwan, where surprisingly, a Scottish proverb comes to mind, "Better bend than break". It happens like magic.

Day 2, Forty Day Challenge "A place"

I was a fifth-grade student at the International School of Brussels, Belgium. The school was fun because the subjects were most interesting. I also loved its location, on top of a hill with lovely, seemingly wild gardens and the smells of fall, a mysterious potpourri of scents carried by the wind all about. I loved the wind as it washed my skin as we climbed up the hill at the start of the day, and going down the hill when school was over. I thought then that the International School of Brussels was the most beautiful and captivating school of all the schools I had ever been to. And as the daughter of a diplomat, I had attended seven of them. Seven different grade schools in seven different countries.

After school, there was always this unfailing anticipation rushing through my heart that the day would end fantastically. This is because my sister Terrie and I would drop off our school books in our home on posh Franklin Roosevelt Avenue, then take a short walk to Bois de la Cambre, a historic park in Belgium. The park was located behind, but parallel to where we lived on Franklin Roosevelt street, and it was just a short walk away. The winds became magical hugs and for a child in grade school, Boix de la Cambre was enchanting.

I've never been to  Central Park in New York, but I bet it doesn't have that storytelling nature of Boix de la Cambre. In the fall we would sit on the perfectly manicured grass on an even wider field of green and stare at the pond, where there were swans, ducks, and geese floating past. There were also tiny rowboats.

I never tried to ask if I could ride a boat because I always presumed it was too expensive.  I rarely asked for anything when I was young because nothing I liked seemed to be important. At least, nothing that I ever asked for. I could hear my mother's sharp "No" whenever I asked for anything. There were five children to feed in our family. The youngest child would be born 11 years after me, making her the sixth. So I never asked for anything that I truly wanted. And many times, I made myself not want anything at all.

One day some friends of Terrie were riding a boat and they invited her to join them, so she did. I never asked her how the boat ride was because at that time we were with Terrie's friend Sherrie Walsworth and her younger brother. Sherrie looked a bit strange, the kind of girl that the mean girls at school would pick on. She had a head of curly brown hair, and her eyes were hidden by very thick eyeglasses that, from outside seemed to be magnifying glasses, making her eyes look bigger than they were. And her lips were full. I imagine Sherrie became a great beauty as an adult, but in grade school, she just didn't fit in because of her looks.

First Terrie got into the boat, then Sherrie. But in getting into the boat her foot slipped into the water up to her ankle. Someone told her to get off of the boat, so she did. As Terrie rode with her friends, Sherrie's younger brother kept talking and talking to her, as though he was trying to cheer her up because he knew that she felt bad. I was very quiet because I think as a child I was emotionally challenged. I knew he was trying very hard to cheer his sister up. I couldn't understand why, but it interested me that he cared about her and was protective of her.

Sheree's brother made it a game to get sticks that were floating near the edge of the pond. He'd use another stick to get it. He went on and on and I looked around me. Suddenly there was a huge splash. He had fallen into the pond up to his waist. He simply got out of the pond and we continued to watch and wait until Terrie came back from her boat ride.

Finally, the boat approached the dock. Sherrie was trying to get the rope to tie the boat to a post. She also yelled at her brother to help. In trying to get the rope, Sherrie fell into the pond head first. I saw it and she looked so comical, landing in the pond head first, followed by her rubber shoe on her leg flying over her head. Splash.

Sometimes things happen in threes. First, Sherrie's ankle was caught in the water, making one of the girls tell her to get off the boat. Then her brother fell into the pond up to his waist. And finally, Sherrie fell in head first, all in one afternoon. I laughed, which was a very unsympathetic thing to do. I really laughed. And then Sherrie cried.

Terrie consoled Sherrie and we brought her and her brother home. She let Sherrie take off her clothes and shower and loaned Sherrie her own clothes and her own jacket. This made Sherrie feel better. Her brother seemed relieved that Terrie was taking charge. Terrie gave Sherrie a bowl of warm soup. We stayed at home together until Sheree's parents came to pick her and her brother up.

I had no feeling, and at that time, it didn't bother me. But now, as a senior citizen, I realize that there was something emotionally wrong with me at that point in time of my life.

Day 1, Forty Day Challenge "When I write I"

When I write, I do so mainly as a job. The joy I get from writing depends on what I'm writing about. There are so many things I want to write about. Some topics keep me engaged from start to finish. Others bore me in the middle and then I slug through it paragraph by paragraph, writing for 15 minutes, and then watching a movie on Netflix or YouTube to relax. In this way, an article can take up to 10 days. I refuse, however, to write about anything else until I finish it. That's probably the most disciplined thing about my writing.

When I was a young professional, writing embodied a lifestyle. There was the office where you meshed with other journalists. The interviews, the press conferences, the swag, the ability to show up at formal affairs wearing jeans because well, you were a writer. Meeting other writers and getting close to them all, and free meals while interviewing people who needed the publicity.

I was never, however, in a position where the gifts were huge. The business pages would get extravagant sums of money deposited in the person's bank account. And there were free trips abroad, all expenses paid. Plus, there was the luxury of having someone who knows the place you visit to show you some of the nicest things their country has to offer.

I didn't get many free trips, but I'm thankful for those I had. Because when you're in a press jaunt they put you in five-star hotels and feed you the most expensive meals in the poshest restaurants. I always felt like a very important person when I was on a press jaunt, just because of the hotel room I was in.

I'm not going to say which of my trips were press jaunts, but I will say where I've been. In the Philippines, I'd been to  Baguio, Tagaytay, Cebu, Palawan, Albay, Ternate in Cavite,  Carmona in Cavite, Lipa in Batangas, and Ilocos Norte. Overseas, I'd been to New Zealand, Hongkong, Macau, Taiwan, Thailand, Laos, Singapore, and Bali, Indonesia. I've also been to Boston, California, and Kansas. Plus Spain, France, Italy, Luxemburg, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, and Amsterdam. Some of my travels were media trips, while others were taken with family. This paragraph is actually a humblebrag. Pardon me, I simply could not resist.

I miss writing fiction. When I was in grade school in Madrid, Spain, I kept a notebook of poems that I wrote. I never thought that writing made me special. But when we moved, afterward, to Brussels, the new tenant of our apartment in Madrid found my notebook of poems and told my parents that I was a poet. Mom and Dad often repeated that story. I guess they were proud of me but I wondered why. Because really, I never felt that anything about me nor anything I did was special. Still, their pride in me made an impression.

In Mercy High School in San Francisco, a poem I wrote was published in the school newspaper. In college, my first short story was published in Focus Magazine (now defunct). I liked the money and the thought of being paid while being a college student. And so my writing career began.

When you get old, you realize that writing is very different, mainly because of the internet. It's so much easier to do research and write something using what you researched. Here's the difference. When I wrote for publication (before the internet) I learned a lot from my interviews. I wrote entertainment articles, lifestyle pieces, business articles, political pieces, etc.

Now, I feel more comfortable writing because I can research online and get all the information I need to write a credible article. It is a matter of choosing good, reliable sources, and getting both sides of an issue, and double-checking your facts, and quoting your sources. These are the things that matter. When you write, you have to make sure that your article is well written and true.

My watcher: I don't get blocked now like I used to. I do get bored, my new form of blocking. My watcher also takes away from me the comfort I used to have writing fiction. I started out as a fiction writer and now I can barely get started doing it. I think it's time for me to tackle that again.