Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow. ~Melody Beattie
I am right now in Cebu. I am beginning to love this place. There is still something missing about Cebu that makes me sad. Perhaps because I often travel to Cebu just to bury a family member. Just when I made peace with the deaths of family members, another chaos ensued after a class reunion, then a death of a classmate. Making sense out of a chaotic situation is futile especially if the door is shut in front of you.
A conversation from a dear friend tonight jolted me out of chaos when she said that “there are more important relationships that need responding to just like what you have just done; gving comfort to parents who lost a child.” Read More →
Halloween Trick or Treat is a tradition that my husband started with the kids when they were around four years old. As a kid, I never grew up in the Halloween tradition of the Western world but hubby did. Halloween Celebration through the years is a memory that my kids treasure because of the yummy treats and magical costumes.
My two girls who were 5 and 4 years old then
Yes, happy childhood memories next to Christmas and birthday celebrations. Now that my kids are over twenty years old, they have their way of celebrating Halloween.
It’s my first time in the US without my children during Halloween day, a first trick or treat here too. I enjoyed my day. The kids were so cute or scary in their costumes.
There were not that many kids though. According to my brother-in-law, not a single candy is left after Trick or Treat. We had three huge bags left. I think the Giants game prevented some parents from driving their little kids around the neighborhood.
There are times I find my husband too gooey and sweet for words. For many years, I always thought that he just wants to flatter me. I won’t bother placing the cute nicknames and code words we give each other in this blog. Our daughters have been brought into it also especially when we use a phrase that makes sense only to the four of us.
They say these sweet-nothings pave the way to a playful, resilient, and satisfying relationship with each other. I thought it was crazy when he deliberately mispronounced my name that I followed suit a few years after we got married. One study on couples’ “insider language” published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships reported that the more goofy nicknames, made-up terms a couple used, the higher their relationship satisfaction tended to be. So all those lovey-dovey words uttered on my ears are healthy for a relationship, huh?
“Using nicknames and made-up language is an easy way to inject positive communication into everyday life,” Jamie Turndorf, Ph.D., a New York City relationship therapist. says. In fact, it’s probably the single easiest thing you can do to keep your romance going strong.
Our secret language remains a secret.
A weekend trip to Kota Kinabalu just before the hostage crisis was an opportunity to be just by ourselves without our adult children admonishing us for PDA. You can really tell your kids are adults when they start to lecture you on proper behavior.
Anyway, thanks to those seat sales, and for only 1,250 pesos for the plane fare , Butch and I spent 3 days and 3 nights in Kota Kinabalu. The sight of lush green cover on the mountains and exotic flowers seemed a wonderful respite from the city jungle. I keep telling Butch that we needed a vacation, just the two of us. August was the preferred month to travel, fearing another Ondoy would strike our home. It is not easy to leave home after Ondoy flooded my home when I left for Singapore . Butch felt the same fear but I said we have to let go because the weather is never predictable. I left word to my daughters to drive the cars to their dad’s office for safety, which is just nearby in case the flood water rose on one side of the street.
So there we were in Kota Kinabalu, just the two of us, our first vacation in a place with no relatives or friends, without the kids tagging along. Just the two of us uttering our pet names and secrets codes that build a connection between us.
Do you use cute nicknames and code words to your significant other?
And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. Abraham Lincoln
Butch turned 51 years old today. He is two years younger than me. As in all birthdays in my family, I celebrate it with food. The more we praise and celebrate life, the more there is in life to celebrate. This time around, I feel bad for waking up late and not preparing a special menu as I used to do in the past before my life became so busy. I love that he did not complain though. He even bought his own birthday cake for lunch. It makes me think that birthdays are nature’s way of telling us to eat more cake. (kidding!)
We spent the afternoon at the resting place of our beloved son watching the pretty blue dragonflies hovering nearby as well as the white-speckled butterfly that fluttered by the flowers on the basket. Just watching the wonders of nature was enough joy.
Earlier, I bought bright orange and pink flowers to brighten our living and dining room. I added a pale violet orchid plant to add the final touch on my antique writing table. He loved the flower arrangement and I hope that made up for my laziness today.
The Groovies, my high school classmates (circa St Theresa’s College Cebu 1974) once again got into the groove of bonding moments. There were reasons to celebrate. Our class salutatorian, Deirdra came home from New Jersey for a visit. Birthday celebrants needed to make a wish and the groovies from Manila missed Cebu. You know, I look forward to these small reunions. Groovies remind me that we are still cool and awesome despite the passage of time. I draw inspiration from classmates that still manage to look good.
Marget Fernan-Villarica not only hosted the party but our stay as well in her lovely, comfy home. Our current president, Nerissa Soon-Ruiz gave this brilliant idea of auctioning off our give-aways to raise funds for our batch project. What fun!
Tess, the preceding batch president told me to write an article for our Coral reunion last year. It is only this year that I got to read the printed version of the STC Annual 2009.
Here it is:
Is there life after high school? To be honest, I was relieved when my high school graduation ceremony ended. In high school, I was a painfully shy, mediocre student with average grades (as in 81 to 85). I often felt intimidated by the smart and outspoken girls. You know how it is in high school – there are the popular girls and the invisible girls. I was one of the invisible girls but I was lucky enough to have a few friends who made me feel like I belonged to a group.
So do people ever recover from that intense high school social experience? Some don’t. They spend the rest of their lives trying to justify what they were, or were not, in high school. This is why high school reunions are so emotional, especially the first one. I declined to attend the 25th High School class of 1974 reunion because I was not ready to face that dreaded high school experience once again. Coupled with five deaths of family members in Cebu, I felt Cebu was just bad news for me and going home was not an option at that point. Read More →
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe says that “When a wife has a good husband it is easily seen in her face.” I believe the glow comes from loving herself first. Her contented and happy looks show because she learned to love herself first . When love overflows, there is much love to give and it will show in her actions.
My husband will never get to read this entry but I already thanked him for the small things in person:
1. for putting up with my erratic schedule.
2. for doing the groceries
3. for bringing me chocolates at my bedside table
4. for rubbing my back and neck during my breaks
5. for calling me “sexy” and meaning it.
6. for being proud of what I do even if it means late nights
7. for being the funniest, smartest person I know.
8. for not complaining that I have not cooked a special dish for quite some time
9. for trying to laugh at my jokes even if he doesn’t find it funny.
A long marriage is two people trying to dance a duet and two solos at the same time. ~Anne Taylor Fleming
The news did not surprise me , that James Yap will fight for his marriage and even tells Kris not to give up . He read his statement in Filipino and in a humble demeanor ““I believe in the importance of having an intact family…That’s why I will fight to keep my family with Kris intact whatever happens.
““I know that every family encounters tests like these,” he continued. ““Kris and I have made it through such tests before and I don’t think that this would be the right time for us to surrender [to such tests].”
So why was I not surprised? I have told you before that just like Kris, I too gave up on my marriage. Really, I would not have taken a second chance if my husband didn’t work things out. Uh, he literally wooed me back.
““Remember that a successful marriage depends on two things: (1) finding the right person and (2) being the right person”
It must be hard being both public figures. Only Kris Aquino and James Yap know their situation. I cannot count the times I, too, gave up on our marriage. Butch never gave up even at the time I gave up on our marriage.
That’s how our married life is. bati, galit, bati, galit and probably will always be, hopefully more good days than bad. The reasons behind some of our spats are immaterial. I believe that more marriages might survive if the partners realized that sometimes the better comes after the worse is hurdled. Then, again coping mechanisms vary among couples.
I pray for all those in the same marital situation as Kris.
Life is good. I am 53 years old today. I’ve never felt so great, so young and happy! I know the past had come and gone. I know I wasted parts of it. Once upon a time, life looked gloomy. The clouds always looked grey. The sun never shone. The birds never sang. The colors of the world was just black and white. I never knew there was life after a death of a precious child. I forgot how to smile. I guess in each one of us there resides some survival or coping mechanism… or perhaps I was just touched by my angel. We get touched at some point in our lives if we allow it to happen.
Like my age, I don’t mind if people ask my age. After all, age is an issue of mind over matter. “If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter” said Mark Twain. I think it is a compliment when college friends tell me that I look so much better now than before. I can say that confidence played a role. Taking care of oneself is important. Love yourself first before you can love others.
Smiling is easy now even as I wake up with the sunlight streaming down my face and the birds chirping by the bay window. It is the smile that adds sparkle in my heart and the twinkle in my eyes. It is what makes me who I am today that I could not achieve in my youth.
I am out of words today yet grateful for all the blessings God has given me. I am thankful for the second blooming in life. Life at the age of 53 is indeed just the beginning of a new life that has opened before me.
To celebrate the smile and the laughter, here is a 10-second video. Thank you Nuffnang for the lovely birthday birthday present (the LED billboard for this blog)
““You’ve got to dance like nobody’s watching and love like it’s never going to hurt.”
I guess nobody is perfect. My husband is handsome, cute, romantic, passionate (hot-headed too), smart, crazy, weird…and that’s just some of the reasons I fell for him when he “drooled” all over me in 1978. When we were seated at the restaurant as the disco music played in the air, he’d sway his body left and right or shake his head. Wow, this guy can groove, I thought. When we were finally steadies, I brought him to “Birds of the Same Feather”, a small disco place in Timog ( it was Ozone a few years later). As I dragged him to the dance floor, he sort of stood there, with his left feet stuck on the floor. With a sheepish grin, he confessed ” I don’t dance, eh. ”
