Nevergirl’s

Thanks to Frances’ post, I’ve been thinking about my wedding, and how nice it would have been if I had my mom to plan it with me. But, my mom died three days before my 10th birthday. So, no, I didn’t have a mother to help me take care of my wedding. But, my mother-in-law (to be, then) got us a wedding planner who took care of everything, including helping Wett find an acne treatment as he was breaking out badly by then. All we had to do was sign forms, go to fittings, and show up to the ceremony. How convenient was that?

Still, I can’t help wishing I had my mom with me then. It would have been the perfect opportunity for us to bond as friends, not just as mother and daughter. That little sadness aside, I came up with this list of reasons every bride-to-be needs a mother – biological or otherwise.

1. Your mother is the only person who will willingly work unlimited hours doing such menial tasks as making lists, licking envelopes, calling suppliers, and answering phone calls from suppliers for no pay whatsoever!

2. Your mother is the only person ASIDE from you who really cares that the swirls on your cake don’t look swirly enough, or that the lace on your dress isn’t ivory enough, or that the flowers on your bouquet is the poo-like yellow instead of buttercup.

3. Your mother will go to 45 shoe stores with you so you could find the PERFECT wedding shoes no one will ever see under your wedding dress.

4. Each time you turn into a bridezilla, your mother is the only person in the world who knows the state is temporary and won’t hold the mutation against you.

5. After your wedding, your mother is the only person in the world who will willingly watch the wedding footage at least 12 times in the first month — and still marvel with you about every little detail.

Oh, and finally, your mother is the first woman to understand that you were born with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and a long, beautifully scalloped, white wedding dress.

Posted in Harking back, Lists | 1 Comment »

I march to my own beat, especially where music is concerned. I can’t sing Gwen Stefani’s latest (whatever it is) but I do know the lyrics to Max Surban’s and Yoyoy Villame’s songs. I have my grandfather to thank for this. Every day, rain or shine, and at precisely 7:00 a.m, he’d have Bisdak music blaring from speakers.

In the old days, I loved the songs because I found them funny. Today, I listen to them because they bring back tons of memories.

There’s something about Bisaya and I won’t say “Bisaya, the dialect” because the hub would call me on it. He insists Bisaya is a language because from a socio-anthropological perspective, it has a syntax that’s different from all other languages (geek tip: sinebuano is a language; Binol-anon, Surigaonon, and Ilonggo are dialects). I say whatever. Whether it’s language or dialect, I’d feel the same way about Bisaya songs. They’re songs that break down time and space; and wherever I may be at any given point in time, they never fail to bring me home.

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Posted in Harking back, Wee wonderfuls | 1 Comment »

I have a confession – and it’s one that I could lose friends for. As Mariel puts it, I’m baduy – they’ve come to accept that as a given – but I’ve no business crowing about it to the world. After all, she is my best friend; that, by association alone, makes her baduy, too. Nonetheless, I really need to get this off my chest because it’s 3:29 in the morning and I’m sitting here overflowing – simply overflowing - with love for Queen.

I love Queen – that is my confession. I’ve loved them since I was 10 and I loved them so much I had the lyrics of Bohemian Rhapsody memorized long before I learned the wordings of Awit sa Bohol, which we had to sing every Monday and Friday in school. So what if Freddie Mercury died of Aids or that he openly admitted that he adores Liza Minelli and Cabaret? That doesn’t make him any less of an artist. If anything, it makes him even more of an artist. After all, the rock music industry is notoriously homophobic. For someone like Freddie to make it big in a testosterone-heavy arena is proof that – to borrow from Rizal – “genius knows no country, genius sprouts everywhere, genius is like light, air, the patrimony of everybody, cosmopolitan like space, like life, like God.”

Freddie was born Indian. Before there was a Freddie Mercury, there was a Farrokh Bulsara – and for Bulsara to conquer the music industry the way he did is sure evidence that sometimes, talent triumphs over clever packaging. Freddie had no machismo, no good looks, no bad boy image to sell. In fact, Spanish soprano Montserrat Caballe even said that the difference between Freddie and practically all other rock stars was that they sold their image while he sold his voice. He had to; there was nothing else he could do better or be more passionate about than making music.

Ironically, the man who is considered one of the greatest rock singers of all time never had formal voice training. I’m not sure if he had any training in songwriting, too, but with or without training, that guy sure writes well! He wrote complex harmonies and intricate melodies, used a wide range of genres, and utilized just about all types of key signatures. He was a singer, writer, musician, and performer and I would have given just about anything to see him perform live. I would have loved his flamboyance, his eccentricity, his ability to excite an indifferent audience and hold them in the palm of his hand. I would have loved the way he stuck out from other musicians like a sore thumb.

You see, I have always had the highest respect for people who dared to be different – and Freddie wasn’t only different, he was wonderfully odd, too. He took his music to the edge, drove his creativity further than the rest, and wore tights. He had gaps in his teeth and looks like he had swallowed a golf ball each time he sang. He was also – in his own words – as gay as a daffodil. How could anyone not love a man like that? And because I can’t NOT love him, I’m leaving you with one of my favorite Queen tracks, the song that best expresses what I’m feeling right now – at 3:29 in the morning. And no, I don’t mean that part about feeling like a sex machine ready to reload.

Posted in Harking back, Quietly beautiful things, Wee wonderfuls | 4 Comments »

I am getting dumber with each birthday.

I kid you not, I am. I was born awesome. I read my first adult novel at age 8. I googled the title and discovered it’s 487 pages of ill-disguised smut; no wonder I knew plenty of synonyms to ‘penis’ even as a child. To most 8-year-olds, a penis is that unnecessary body part that will only cause you pain and grief – it’s a free pass to the circumcision tent. To me, it was a schlong, a dick, a ten-inch pole, a raging erection. And, thanks to my uncles’ vast library of porn books, my vocabulary grew and grew.

I was my school’s extemporaneous speaking champion from second to sixth grade. I was also a loser who wore knee-high socks, sharpened pencils with her teeth, and obsessed about Adolf Hitler and concentration camps. By fourth year high school, I had morphed into a full-fledged geek. I critiqued provisions of the Visiting Forces Agreement for the schoolpaper, debated over the National ID system, learned Bahasa from an Indonesian nun in school, stole a German-English dictionary from the library so I could read Hitler’s Mein Kamp in German – and still wore knee-high socks with floral patterns.

Today, those tasks would be too much for me. I keep trancing out on pretty things. My mind has the terrible aptitude of skipping ahead to discover the results of events that have not yet happened and probably never will. Thus, all Iris has to do is mention “a hefty yoga project that will pretty much take care of this month and the next” and my mind would be off imagining dollar amounts that would let me pay off my plastics and take the kids somewhere awesome, like Tibet so Alex can fistfight a yak, or Angola where tribesmen remain so primitive they still wear loincloths but are savvy enough they talk gunrunners into taking their cows in exchange for M14s, M16s, and M21s. Then, I take a break from that hamster-brained thinking to have impure thoughts about Jack Johnson.

How can anyone with such short attention span succeed at anything? I’m getting dumber, I tell you.

Posted in Annoyances, Harking back, Strangeness, While on baby leave | Comments Off

Once upon a time, you taught me to ride bikes. You taught me to play chess, read, draw, swim, and speak my mind. You taught me to plot a ship’s course, recognize stars, play Sicilian defense, reason, use nanchucks, get skinned knees without crying. You taught me to be my own person first, a daughter second. There’s one thing you forgot to teach me, however: how to tell you I love you in a language I know, in a language that you would understand.  (more…)

Posted in Big Sad, Family, Harking back | 9 Comments »