Nevergirl’s

Hello whirlwind love, won’t you sit down, have a cup with me? I know the roads are unfamiliar and sometimes the streets change names but how was the trip, anyway? Did you get a map? Did you get lost? Did you stop to have lapel pins custom made so you can always wear daisies or the face of your love on a buttonhole? Did you learn an odd verse or two while you swam with purple dolphins? Did you stop to take photos, and will you show them to me – tonight, perhaps, over margaritas and music? I’m glad you found me. I’ve been waiting for you, you see. I’ve always known you’ll come and whisk me off someplace where I could wander for days without ever reaching the end of the universe.

Happy 27th, dearest.

It’s all Mark Twain’s fault, it really is. All the husband did was ask what I wanted for Christmas. I’m sure he’d have given an eyeball to hear me say, “very sexy lingerie“. But feeling flippant, I said, “To wander without a compass” and then quoted Mark Twain: Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

He loved the idea – and that was how the Mark Twain project was born. Every other weekend, we will travel to an island we have never been to. We will start this 15th with Dumaguete, and then maybe Siargao or Bacolod later on, and perhaps an undiscovered island after? I can’t wait. For the first time in almost five years, I will finally have the time to wander. ‘course, we won’t be taking the kids along. Alex will only spend three-quarters of the time talking and Charlie will sleep through it all. Besides, we plan to make the most out of every trip by doing some of the things on our ‘Do Before You Die’ list. So yeah, it will be just the hub and me and the huge sky above. Fun!

We played with marbles and rubber bands and snacked on mansanitas we picked ourselves. We made up words and fought over who invented which word first. We ate bread, Japanese corn, Bazooka, and mud pies but we never got fat and the mud didn’t turn us into swamp creatures at all. We had no toys and personal computers but we had bikes and skipping ropes. We skipped all the way to our friends’ houses and practiced riding our bikes handless. We never wore helmets and sometimes fell onto ditches. We got bruised; we broke bones; we punched each other black and blue but we always made peace afterwards.

Today, all we do is tease each other mercilessly. We pick on the brother’s girlfriend of the moment and make fun of Allaine’s hair. We give each other ridiculous nicknames (bingka, bayot, super love) and discuss the miracle of toilet paper. We ask Jonah if she still has elf’s ears. We give each other bangs – and if the haircut don’t turn out as we’d hoped it would, we shrugged it off. Hair grows; siblings don’t – not from follicles, anyway. Years from today, we will grow grey hairs. We will acquire charm along with eczema. We will lose our looks, eyesight, agility, and libidos. But as long as we have each other, who cares about bedpans and dentures? A part of us will always remain the children we were back in ’93.