Good-bye, Bing

GOOD-BYE, BING

OMIGOD! I thought the minute I read my daughter's text that told me her Tito Bing had died two nights before.  Bing was the youngest brother of my ex-husband (marriage annulled) and once he was quite close to me.  On the very day I received the text at 1:00 pm he was going to be cremated.  And I had many things to do.  Had to write my column. Had to finish and deliver some jewellry.  So I rushed to finish both and got there late.

But never mind.  I was really there to condole with the rest of the family.  I could have said good-bye to Bing from home.  Once you die you belong to a bigger larger cosmos and are available from anywhere.  These days I don't grieve so much about people dying.  I feel they cross over to a new life so we should wish them luck and joy.  They will once again see their parents who have gone before them.  They will adventure into a different kind of world and once again discover the magic of something new.  Sometimes I envy them and actually look forward to my death too.

When I got married I think Bing was around twelve.  We were an instant click, good friends.  Then I tried to teach him math.  He didn't learn and I know I didn't teach well. But nevertheless we were still chatty together.

My sisters-in-law -- Chini, Chit, Jamie, Didi, Bochi -- and I were quite close.  We were childhood friends who had met before I even met (and married) their older brother.  I remember an afternoon I spent with them at their home in UP when we were all seated in the garden gossiping about their older brother and what a playboy he was.  We were joined by Winky Collas, who I later confused with her sister Winnie.  I don't know why that moment never erased itself from my memory.

Okay, the inevitable question.  Why do I still remain connected to my in-laws when I am no longer connected to the husband?  I don't know either.  I think it's because I was an only child and did not have a big family -- just my mother and me.  So when I married into a big family I embraced them all.  Also in the case of the Tapales family, we were friends before I married.  I was closest to Jamie, who was like my sister really.  She was my maid of honor.  We both once worked in advertising.  We had so much in common.  But I was also close to all the other sisters.  I love them all.  And there is one more brother Boldy, who is as funny as Jamie.  I love him too.  

The last time I saw Bing was maybe three years ago.  I went to the Loudes fiesta in Quezon City.  Mila Santos-Viola (I don't know her married name), their first cousin, invited me so I went.  Only Bing was there and we sat together and talked and laughed together all that time.  Bing was wonderful company and I loved him.

Love is what connects us to a family, I think.  Special memories and quips.  A comfort in their company.  Shared laughter.  Sad and happy memories that are not erased by distance or time.  Something we can pick up at any time and then always find ourselves happy for each other.

Now we live far from each other.  They live in Alabang.  I will be moving to San Juan.  But never mind.  We will be getting in touch again.  I am sure of that.

So much time has passed since I last -- what is the correct term -- blogged?  Two years, almost.  I cannot believe it.  It feels like something serious must have happened.  Maybe I died.  But in truth, I have been alive -- in varying degrees, yes -- but breathing anyway.

I don't really remember why I stopped.  But never mind.  Maybe now I can continue to write a blog whenever I feel like.  Like tonight.  Tuesday night, 14 January 2014.  I came back from a StemTech training meeting with my new StemTech friends.  Had fun, laughed a lot, but that's not what moved me to write again.

I decided to leave at 4:30, whether or not the meeting was finished, to avoid coming home at rush hour.  The thickness of the traffic from around 5:00 pm upward drives me mad.  I am growing old, you see, and now realize that as one grows older her patience goes the other direction.  Have you ever seen a patient child?  There is no such thing.  I have about as much patience as a five-year-old these days.  A small provocation can bring on a tantrum.

As I was waiting for my car a young lady who I saw attending the conference came out and called, Ms. Gonzalez, Ms. Gonzalez . . .   I turned around and smiled at her.  She took my hand and shook it.  I just wanted to meet you.  All these years I have been reading you.  My children are grown up now and I'm a widow already.  I read your articles and your book How Do You Know Your Pearls Are Real?  My name is Leah.

Thank you, I said.  Still smiling.  I wanted to say more things but since she surprised me I found myself tongue-tied.  Do you sell Stem Enhance?  I ask rather recklessly.  I mean, that's where we were, at a training session.

I'm just starting to.  I arrived late.  I will try to.

Yes, please try to.  It's a great product.  I would have told her about my experience with Stem Enhance, how I found it, how it helped me.  But my car arrived and she seemed in a rush to return.

She took my hand again and said, My name is Leah.

Yes, I said, and watched her return to the training.

So I came home and decided to look up my blogspot, found it and decided to write in it again just to discover what it's like.  I write for the Star on Saturdays, every Saturday, but these days sometimes I think I will quit.  The only thing preventing me from doing that is what will happen to the money I earn from the column, not much but enough to pay my driver's salary.  But it gives me a voice and I kind of enjoy receiving texts of agreement or disagreement.  At least I have people to connect with.  

I thought maybe I should also revive my blog and talk to a younger audience.  So here I am once again, hoping I won't bore you.

So that's the news.  Once Tweetums disappeared but now -- watch out -- the funky old lady is back!

FRUITS OF MY LIFE

A friend of mine sent me a quote from For I Have Tasted the Fruit.  A poem?  An essay?  What was it from?   The line captivated me so I decided to write taking off from that line.

They were small.   When they were just ripening they were crisp, sweet, almost cloying.  It was a joy to jump and try to pick them from our neighbor's wild tree. I don't know if they were ratiles or aratiles, the signature fruit of my childhood, reminding me of the fights between the neighbor's children and me, making faces, sticking out tongues at each other for no reason in particular except ordinary childish hatred, which we haven't gotten over till now.  It’s a strong childhood memory.

Down the road two houses away lived my grandmother's youngest sister and her tall dapper husband.   They were my alternative parents – a complete set.  He made up for my father, who was killed by the Japanese. She made up for my mother, who was always working or teaching.  They had no children so I became their little girl.   I loved them so much and they loved me without question.  To this day when I think about dying I think I would like to be buried in the niche with them so we can be close forever.

They had a tall starapple tree with the sweetest fruit.   Under their big trees they had chili plants, which I played with once when I was small. I got the sap into my eyes and cried and cried until my tears washed the hot painful sap away. Starapples and ratiles – those were the fruits of my childhood.

Then I remember luscious plums and pears and marrons glaces, sugar-coated chestnuts, my favorite candied fruit in Switzerland, where I went for a brief time before I came home to roost. I wanted to go to the United States for college but my mother would look blankly at me. One night I overheard her tell a friend she did not want to send me to a proper college because I was smart and she knew that if I did then I would never marry. Oh so, she wants me to marry, I thought. I promptly got married at 18.

When I think about marriage, I think it is a strange cluster of fruits. In the beginning they are delicious, then slowly as the husband takes you for granted they become tasteless, and finally bitter. We get married because we think it's the right thing to do.   Everyone tells us that.  Then immediately we have children, whose wonderful baby days encourage us to have more, until we realize that our husband treats us like furniture and our children, as they grow, put us through some terribly difficult times. I did not enjoy being married.   I often think about the whole marriage business and realize that I enjoyed most falling in love and being desired.   Be a mistress, one of my gay friends advises, amidst a lot of laughter.  I think he might be right.  A mistress is desired longer than a wife.  But anyway all the falling in love and romance end so why bother to think about it?

Motherhood is the most difficult thing I have done.  I adored my children when they were babies, took care of them myself.  But when they hit puberty, at least one of them drove me up the wall.  She still does.  I am afraid she might do so forever.  However, in the end I enjoy my children and their children I enjoy even more.  If it were a fruit, what would motherhood be to me?  Atis, I think, sweet and thick sop but with just as many seeds.  I love eating atis and put up with the inconvenience of the seeds.

My children have grown up.  Their children are grown up too.  I am alone at last but more than being alone, I am free at last. I am no longer forced to eat this fruit or that, no longer compelled to swallow what I do not like. I am free to be me, to do what I like and enjoy it.  To me my writing classes are Atlanta’s peaches.  I love those fruits, their velvety peel.  You bite when they are just about to turn overripe and the juice runs down your chin. This is the joy I get whenever I conduct a writing class, where I share my knowledge and watch my students turn into better writers as they learn to add creativity to their craft.

Another fruit I love is the makopa so deliciously crisp and fresh, like making costume jewelry. I enjoy making those.  They fill up my time, no more emptiness in my days.

I guess you could represent my life as a basket full of fruit made up of my wide assortment of friends – my classmates from the days of yore, my friends from my writing classes, my more recent masteral classmates, my friends who worked with me.  Included in the basket are my cousins from both sides.  My children, of course, my classmates from jewelry class.  My Sunday breakfast group, the most recent – and most intellectual -- group I’ve joined.  And my two closest friends who don’t know each other, Emily, and Lisa, who lives in San Francisco but comes home often to visit.

The basket is tied with a bright red ribbon that doesn’t fade and never disappears.  That is the ribbon of laughter that ties us all together, that characterizes our friendship and our joy in each other’s company.  I hope it lasts forever but I know it won’t.  We are growing old.  We will stay together until it’s time to say good-bye, happy that together we have tasted the fruits and enjoyed them all as best as we could.

A WOMAN'S AFFLICTION

 Maybe two weeks ago I ran into one of my bosom buddies. She and I are really close friends. Eons ago I helped her elope and later helped with the disengagement so we are tied together in knots. We decided to have lunch and before I knew it she was taking me to her doctor that weekend.

Actually I asked her to take me to her doctor who is one of these new medical doctors who have turned alternative or homeopathic. She does not prescribe chemical drugs and she is younger than I so (I hope) I can tell her what to do. First she attaches me to a computer and there we visit my flawed heart, which beats irregularly most of the time. It's inherited from my father's family. She says the front of my heart is good, but the back is not so good. That doesn't bother me. Since my stroke I've had enough time to adjust to that fact: I have a bad heart.

Then we go to that part that's been giving me a problem lately. She examines me and notices that I have quite a few red moles. “Those mean you have hormonal imbalance. You must get an ultrasound” she says.

I plan to ultrasound on Thursday but my cousin Didit invites me to go to a bazaar, lunch then jewelry class. That's sounds like fun. So finally on Friday, without make-up and looking like a limp rag, I go to Makati Medical Center and head for Information. I hand the girl my doctor's slip. “To The Breast Clinic, ma'am. Turn left, take the escalator, then turn right. . .”

I don't want to go to The Breast Clinic, I find myself telling me. So I head for the shop that sells magazines. I see an attractive magazine titled Psychologies. It is a British magazine with an article on ageing. That's how they spell it there. In America they spell it aging. How interesting. I buy it. P750, the young lady says and I gasp. It is expensive but I pay for it anyway, a treat. I carry it upstairs holding it close to my breast.

I enter The Breast Clinic. It is pretty. There is a counter on your left with three young ladies behind. There are plastic seats, similar to airport seats, against the wall. Behind the three young ladies there's a TV set showing chefs and later Kris Aquino. I have to fill up a sheet and even indicate where I have a lump. There I've said it. I have a lump in my breast. Like so many women but I have been in denial for a long time. Maybe I have had it for six months to a year. I don't know but this ultrasound required is driving me up the wall.

I sit and look around. The clinic is really pretty. There are a lot of natural-looking fake flowers. There is something like a plugged-in aromatherapy thing scenting the air. I read my expensive magazine but don't understand anything. I look at the article on ageing/aging and realize it stops at 50. What happens when you're 60? You just disappear from this world? You just die?

Finally they call my name. I am escorted to a small dressing room and given instructions on how to don the ultrasound coat. Then I am told to wait in another waiting room with more fake flowers, aromatherapy and a TV set until I am summoned for my ultrasound.

First there is a verification of my identity. Are you Barbara Cruz Gonzalez with two z's? Yes. Born on August 8, 1944? Yes. I have to put hot ointment on you. Occasionally I gasp – Ouch! Aray! Then she tells me to get dressed and wait at the inside waiting room.

The med tech approaches followed by a doctor. “Are you the friend of Gon and Beang?” The doctor asks.

“Yes,” I say, with trepidation.

“I recognized your name, they are my friends too.” Then she disappears. I am told I can pick up the results on October 5. Okay, I shrug, grasping at indifference but I am not the least indifferent. I am superbly anxious.

On October 3, my friend Emily and I get together. I tell her about my ultrasound. The next day, she texts me. She is at a meeting and meets this doctor who is Gon and Beang's friend. Later that same day the doctor texts me, requests me to return because there are things in my ultrasound she wants to clarify. My anxiety goes up.

I return the next day, this time fully made up and glam. I ask to see her and don't have to wait long. I go through the whole ritual again. Finally in the ultrasound room she comes in and looks again at my lump. “The next step is a biopsy,” she says. “You can either have that surgically or through a needle.” I don't think she realizes the panic that rises in me. “Then you can go to a doctor who will do the surgery if required.” I just look at her. I don't want surgery.

Finally the report is done. I read it but don't understand a thing. I pass by Floating Island and look at the cakes on display. Oh, they have butter cake. I love butter cake. I walk away five steps then turn around. May I have a slice of butter cake? May I eat it now? I go down the stairs, down the escalator eating a slice of butter cake, thinking, I should have bought the whole darn cake. I have a huge lunch followed by about six, no eight, oh well I finished what was left of the oatmeal crisps.

I wondered – should I write about this? Women always find lumps in their breasts and men always have prostate problems. I guess we all have problems with the organs we have two of. Anyway, is that tamarind candy I see? I love tamarind candy... please. . . no surgery.