Freline

a lot of us may overtime at work, but nobody gets lesser rest time then Freline. She punches in at before 8 am. She has to leave before 4 pm so she won't be late for her class, which ends at 9 pm. It takes her almost an hour to commute to her home. When she arrives, she still has to do her part of the household chores plus her schoolwork.

yet, she comes in at the office with a smile. she greets everyone with a half-diffident smile. she meets our guests at the showroom to offer drinks with a well-practised, "Would you like anything to drink, Sir?" and with a smile so shy yet visibly there. she serves coffee or juice with a smile. and nobody even tells her to do so.

Freline is one of the young college-level girls we have taken to calling the "show room girls," though technically she is the only one in-charge of keeping the showroom spic and span while the other girl, Mirali, is in-charge of the office. At home, she is one of 13 children. Like her name, her 12 siblings have monikers that start with the letter F.

"Ka creative sad sa imo mama, nakahimu siya'g 13 names nga nagsugod og letter F?!" I exclaimed when she told me. I suggested that her mother may have got her name wrong. Perhaps, her name was inspired by the Sound of Music's Fraulein Maria (which literally translates to Little Miss Maria). she said no, and that her mother really intended her to be called Free-line.

Aside from her mother's naming method, we didn't talk any more about her family. She told me about her plans. She is taking up Hotel and Restaurant Management so she could carry on with her dream (not just a plan) to work in a cruise ship. This was before the schoolyear 2008-2008 started. At that time, she told me she would stop working at the company when school starts so she could focus on her studies. But well into the 1st half of the semester, she's still there, feather-dusting the furniture, sweeping the floor, waiting on the guests. I need not ask her why as she volunteered herself, "Dili nalang ko muhunong ate uy kay para makatabang ko sa ako mga ginikanan."

I wonder how many college-level employees are struggling out there to carry on with their dreams. I wonder how many among these struggling college-level employees actually make it through and realize their dreams. I'm positive that Freline is certain about what she wants, how much she wants to get it, and what the stones she needs to step on to arrive there are. But I couldn't really tell; each of us could only take so much. With Freline's circumstances, how much really could she take? I could only hope she has enough strong nerves in her litheness to stop her from letting go.

I hope what she earns at the company will be enough to sustain her and her dreams. Or better yet, I hope she gets wait-listed in the company's newly-implemented scholarship program (for which I have to salute my boss, Sir Kenneth). I hope this program is not discriminating against those in the lower positions. What matters, isn't it, is not the distance one is at ahead of the others, but how those behind and anybody is willing to get ahead in life. I see this willingness in Freline by the way she carries out even the most menial tasks and by the way she talks about life like its a cruise in the Caribbean. I hope life sees her on the same cruise.

Tabata Burquez Luczay

The first thing that fascinated me about Tabata was the lone whimsical earing drooping from her left ear (or was it from the right ear?). If I remember it correctly, the design was a miniature dream catcher with a feather poking out from a lock. It was so pretty and exotic. If I hadn't known better, I would have thought she bought it from a fetish shop in Africa or Brazil. But yeah, maybe. I wondered then if such earing was sold solo or if Tabata intentionally took off the second of the pair to keep up with a trend back home (it was a few meetings later that I finally got to ask her why she wore only one earing).

I first saw that earing on her on the first time we met. Our cousin Joevince has been telling us about his hot Brazilian girlfriend whom he met while modeling in Singapore, at the same time not encouraging our imagery of a hot Brazilian by showing us only obscure photos in his phone. Not long after he started bragging, he finally brought her with him here in Cebu. My sister Iana and I were binging at Bigby's in Ayala while she and my cousin Joevince were having salad in the same restaurant. I clearly remember she made beso-beso as she was introduced to us. With a faded and loose racerback top and a pair of shorts that ended rather shortly on legs that seemed to go on forever, and of course, the pretty earing, Tabata was easily a stunner at first sight. you could tell a smile when it's forced on the wearer, and Tabata's was not. We decided there and then that we liked her.

Over time, as her visits to the Philippines became as regular as Joevince's, we discovered more things about Tabata. The greatest facet that made all of us in the family instant fans (even Mamita) is that she is real and very grounded. In Singapore, she is counted as a supermodel. She's walked on the most important stages, appeared in the most important fashion spreads, and attends the most important fashion events. But she does not parade this success in her walking portfolio (herself). She does not let who she is and where she came from hide behind her supermodel.

On the contrary, Tabata is a homebody, as Joevince once attested. For a homebody though, she has the ease and comfort to blend in amongst strangers... and in strange places! She is even quite a talker, but not the kind that cuts in a conversation abruptly. She is generally the meek type who bubbles up when provoked. When she is asked, she doesn't throw one-liner answers that are honestly useless in attempts of initiating conversation. She just doesn't talk, she converses. Just as well, because her life so far is very interesting. She once slept over in our place in Ormoc during Summer. For breakfast, we talked about her life before she started modeling and after that.

Tabata started traveling abroad to model at age 16. Her first experience was in South Korea, and since then, she has lived and worked in Hongkong, Japan, and Singapore. She says a lot of girls from her small town just outside Sao Paulo seek escape from their meager lives in modeling. She is one of them. This is probably why there is not an inch of prima-donna in her. Or the exhausting been-there-done-thatness common of those who have been there and done that. The way she talks of it, modeling is only a job, not something she can crave a crown from for herself and wear it like a tiara to show everyone. [But she really has no choice. With her long legs, a killer body, and a pretty face, she's a natural give away].

Since Tabata travels a lot, she doesn't keep a lot of things with her, even clothes. Whenever she buys, she gives away. She's even sent us a bunch of tops and jeans, and thankfully, her style is all loose and laidback, so her size 0 didn't matter. We asked her if she ever get freebies from photo shoots and she said she can, but doesn't want to. She tries to keep the weight of her luggage at the same scale. She loves to read but can't buy books, so when she's in a country, she borrows from a friend and tries to finish it before she has to leave.

I asked her once where she really is based, and she answered not in any place. In one moment, she's in Singapore, the next, she's completing a contract in Japan. The last time we heard from her (June this year), she's still in the Land of the Rising Sun, but will be traveling to Germany anytime soon for another opportunity. I followed up with, "Don't you miss home?" Tabata answered that she does, but her being a traveler is almost innate in her. Among her siblings, she's the different one, and has been likened to her grandmother who stemmed from a gypsy clan in Europe.

For somebody whose lifestyle depend on a profession that determines success at face value, Tabata loves to touch base with her inner soul. On our way to a Boracay jaunt in 2007, she was glued to a Dalai Lama book on the Meaning of Life. She commented that during the turbulent part of the ride, she was on the chapter that tackled death. I've heard a lot of people talk about loving sunsets (me, included), and they never fail to capture the phenomenon in paragraph-full of romantic superlatives. When I asked Tabata, she only said of the Boracay sunsets, "I love sunsets here... because it's different every day." In a clearing high up on a hill in Biasong with a majestic view of the Ormoc Bay and the city, Tabata, while looking at the landscape, sighed and told Joevince, "I want to stay in a place like this for good."

In Tabata, we have met different people: the Brazilian, the supermodel, the traveler, the person. I don't think I have met a lot of people like her. But definitely, I have read stories of her kind. The kind that wander the world in pursuit for the best that life can offer (Pico Iyer calls them Nowhereians, as in people who finds home in everywhere). Most people find their best in just one place; a rarity find theirs in breaking through the unknown. Tabata just happens to be lucky because along with finding her best in the unknown, she is earning, all by what she can be. But what she really marks the world with (at least, with us) is who she is.

Tabata as a supermodel

Joevince, our cousin, with Ting, my brother and the woman of the post, Tabata, grooving to Summer Place's fun during our Boracay Trip in 2007. It was where Carlyn famously blurted out, "Tabata, if Joevince won't marry you, we will marry you." She was speaking in behalf of the whole family, of course.

P.S. Joevince and Tab broke up in January this year. They remain friends.
P.P.S. I asked Tabata why she wears her dangling, feathery earing one at a time, and she answered, "Because if I put on another one, it would be too much."

Mamita

I honor my grandmother today on her 76th birthday.

MY GRANDMOTHER, YOUR GRANDMOTHER
originally published in Cebu Daily News

There are people who are easy to write about; say, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela. It helps that their lives are laid out in a platter like Wikipedia, but it is having read so much about them that makes it easier. We are already familiar with the range that writing on them entails as to not downgrade, overrate, or falsify their lives.

The stories of our grandmothers would have been easier baits to a blank page. No persistent editing and the four sides of a webpage bind it to any limitation. In place of Wikipedia are their lives as they share it with us. But too much familiarity, I dare say, breeds the apprehension to even start, for fear I might miss something. However, as grand-motherhood hits a woman at any point later in her life, so should her story begin.

It was an August day 27 years ago that first introduced my mamita to the role of a grandmother. This she would play 33 times over again and would master throughout the years. What she shares with all of us and we to her is best exemplified by an unassuming cross-stitch frame that hangs on a wall at the beach house. Stitched beside a lovely illustration of little kids cuddling with their grandmother are the words, “Had I known my grandchildren would be this fun, I would have had them first.”

She delights in seeing us all gathered together. We do not go by the holiday calendar and wait for December or birthdays to schedule jamborees; ordinary weekdays are options, but Sundays at the beach has become a family tradition. In these gatherings, she is a queen who is difficult to pin down to her throne as she insists on taking care and making sure all is prepared. As we would discover, being up on her feet is her energizer, and sitting down a power-drainer.

To her, traveling for more than 5 hours in one day, from one city to another, is just like a walk in the beach. It is because of this that having her around is as much a pleasure as it is a relief; it means taking time off from her city-hopping.

Yes, she is still a working woman at 75, a choice that reflects that time in her 20s, when she was called back to the province from her college studies to work for the family. Ever since, mamita has always had her hands all over things, from the farm to her business, to her 10 children, and now to her 34 apos. An aunt once quipped that when God was raining skills on earth, mamita was not able to bring an umbrella.

To her children, she is an amazing mother. To us grandchildren, she is a wonder grandmother. To all of us, she is the foundation on which the strength of our family stands on.

There is an image that’s etched in my mind from six years ago. Seeing her daughter trying to sit up in bed, mamita briskly walked to her bedside and bent down to help her up. It was a motherly instinct that was brushed off as quickly as it was offered. My tita’s cancer has reduced her spirit to frailty that she had a hard time moving in any way, but she did not accept the help as she knew it might aggravate mamita's back pains. That moment’s exchange between a mother and a daughter imprinted in my mind the selflessness of love, and just how much mamita has of it coming out of her as there is going in to her.

Perhaps of all that she has given us, her greatest legacy would have to be our parents. It is but the natural order of things that they came before us; but it is a blessing of a great woman that they came to be the kind of parents any mother would have been proud of having brought up.

This is the first that’s written about mamita, but some of you would have probably known of her kind and witnessed yourselves in your own grandparents. Theirs is the universal story of selflessness and love. It runs along the same lines as that of King, Jr. and Mother Theresa. But while these modern day heroes are heralded by a page or two in Wikipedia and the history books, the stories of our grandparents are heralded by our lives and the many ways that they have touched it.

edited by Ms Annabelle Tan-Amor

Kenneth Cobonpue

So far in my life, I have already come close to two people who have been featured in Time Magazine. For someone who reads Time like it's a graded homework, this is big. Like, whoa!

One is Carlos Celdran; the other hired me on my 21st birthday. Allow me to brag and introduce you to my boss, Kenneth Cobonpue. I wonder why but it's easier to introduce him as the designer of the bed that Brad Pitt bought, than the designer to whom Time has given the credit, Rattan's first virtuoso. Most possibly, it's that more people watch Brad Pitt than read Joel Klein. Okay.

For almost 2 years, I've had the honor to be seated two office chairs away at KC's left. But to be honest, the honor gradually disappeared starting on the third or fourth month. By the time it has completely faded away, KC has been relegated to just a boss. The Time recognition is just a page off the magazine, laminated and placed against a mini-standee on the production head's desk, and Brad Pitt a vital namedrop to make his way to celebrity level. Good news though, he's a one-of-a-kind boss.

First, I don't call him boss. I am among the 10 or 15 people in the office who insist on calling him Sir; the rest are comfortable with Kenneth, which he very much prefers by the way. Second, I've never heard him scold anybody. This I can say is the most remarkable about him. Believe me, the company has suffered enough production failures and mixed-up shipments to give him the right to belt it out.

With this being said, as a head of the company, he's pretty laid back. He gets tense when it's show time (international furniture shows) or when there's a negative complaint in his inbox (like of a badly warped rattan chair or a hularo that was not sufficiently secured around the metal frame), but his amateur sarcasm is about as far as his reprimands go -- as subtle [albeit slightly mean] as a sneer. But not always he cares enough to respond this way to every problem. Most of the time, he will just hear you out. Speak, and he shall understand.

Quick, find me a boss whose boss-ness sounds like mine and I shall gift you with the award-winning Kenneth Cobonpue original Dimple chair. Criteria are as I have already mentioned -- plus, plus, plus his desk should not be cordoned off by white walls and a requisite knock on the door. He should also be available for consultation whenever one feels like he needs it. He should be able to sit on a table with his office workers and eat puso, barbecue, and ngohiong. He should have enough respect for local showbiz denizens as to allow them instant Chiquita stools or a tour around the showroom with himself curating. He should be busy enough as to leave to his clueless Marketing Officer, yours truly, the job of answering interview questions from important magazines (*humbled*).

And lastly, he should be a design genius. No outpouring of words about him is ever complete without re-upgrading his image from just a boss to the rattan virtuoso that Time Magazine has called him. He gave the dented can a pedestal in the Lolah, an easy armchair that the most prestigious design award given in Asia (the Design for Asia) has noticed. In Croissant, he turned the French breakfast staple into a living room spectacle. The Pigalle easychair is his interpretation of the human curves.

Not all of us has a boss who turns the mundane into brilliance, and gets Brad Pitt to appreciate it. What more, Time Magazine to plaster you on a full page feature. For my first job, I have it pretty good.

Bien Maria Tan Rodriguez

Bien Maria was a stranger to my world until she was three days old. We picked her up at an orphanage in Borongan, a small city in Eastern Samar that's 5 hours away from Ormoc. The nuns who run the place left her nameless for the first three days, so my mother unofficially christened her Bien Maria the moment she scooped her from a bed she shared with four other babies and arranged her in her arms.

It was quite a funnily memorable setting. My mother was expecting a light-skinned baby since she was told the baby would be, but in the room where all the baby orphans were, there was only one who fared lightly, and it was Francisco, a boy. The nuns instead pointed out to her a crying infant with Hershey's Symphony chocolate dark-colored skin. My mother laughed off the skin-reference mistake with the nuns, but it was too late to back out. She was already smitten. (Don't fault my mother for being skin-discriminating. While she was growing up, her dark color against her older sisters' lightness made her the butt of jokes.)

Our pick-up did not take long as we had another 5-hour ride ahead. For the long trip, Bien was dressed in a sleeveless shirt and a lampin secured around her bottom. The orphanage's budget does not afford them the convenience of diapers, and my mother completely forgot about that part (and the powdered milk, the bottles, etc etc). More than 20 years has passed since she last put a diaper on a baby and Bien forced her to an instant re-orientation to that motherly-at-an-infant-stage job.

Jackie, Bien's biological mother, was there the whole time we were readying Bien to a life. She stunned me with her seeming aloofness. She dressed up Bien at a half-hurried pace, with an expression on her face so blank you wouldn't be able to draw any emotion from it. If there was, then maybe I'm just bad at drawing.

Before we left, she handed my mother a letter that detailed her past affair with a 20 year old guy, her pregnancy, her intention to give away her baby, and her deep gratitude. This letter was all the authorization we needed to prove to the court that we did not kidnap Bien. I could not remember what my mother handed in return, if she did.

It was Jackie's mother who cried the tears of a woman who is to be separated from her child. As we were leaving, Jackie remained at a corner and looked elsewhere. You would think she was built for this kind of drama, and structured in her was a restraining order for any amount of tears to escape from her, no matter how hard-knock the circumstance is. That, or maybe her baby (Bien to us) was just another toy from a thrift shop that she no longer found a need for. Jackie was only 15, after all. Knowing that she's only at the prime of her teens allows her nonchalance a bit of integrity.

On the way home, we stopped by a convenience store and bought a bottle for the milk, a can of powdered milk, and diapers. Good thing we were convinced not to wait until the 5-hour travel was over, because just as we were nearing the exit of Borongan, we got stuck for almost an hour when up ahead a 2-lane dirt-road, an accident stalled the traffic. Well, actually, it was one-lane at that time since they blocked off the other one for pave-men at work. (I forgot what kind of accident it was.) It was a perfect time to be stuck in traffic. We had a stranger with us, and we were taking her, her three days so far in the world, and the rest of her days, home.

During those three days (the only days in Bien's life that we missed), we were half-excited and half-reeling at the prospect of a new member in the family. We only had three days to take in everything -- the announcement/invitation made by my grandmother who saw the baby on the day it was born, the discussion between my parents, the decisioning c/o mother (since she is always the one who decides on domestic matters). Thus, we forgot about the milk, diapers, etc, etc. The only crib Bien ever slept on was a basket my mother used to put fake fruits on. My mother paraded Bien to the family and to her friends on that basket.

The inevitable changes a new member (and a very young one at that) would bring to our family were left unlisted and unspoken. But even before Bien arrived, my siblings and I, my father, and my mother knew what they were. There will already be 7 plates on the dining table. There is a kid we will have to consider in every travel itinerary we prepare (amusement parks!). All of us -- except for pop and my brother Ting -- will have to be acquainted with baby bottles, diapers, cans of powdered milk, infant cries in the middle of the night, turns to clean up the baby or feed the baby in case yaya is not around, etc etc. (But I do remember that one time when Papa prepared a bottle of milk for Bien, as demanded by my mother... awww.)

Bien is now 6 years old. Through the years, we discovered how trivial the changes we expected were. Anybody could have easily guessed them; the psychologist could have easily pointed them out to us. The greatest gift that Bien gave us is happiness. Not to say we were living in gloom before she arrived, but there's a remarkable difference in happiness that a kid brings with her. Its face has more sheen, its laughter comfortably louder, its constancy more trustworthy. Even without her actually promising it, we are sure could always hook ourselves on this happiness. She's the sunshine that is always there, even if we want to sleep more.

We have come across a lot of strangers whom we now call friends, but only a few have made sisters of them. The most important stranger in my life laughs like it's the happiest day of her life, makes funny faces, has a comic dance, intervenes in conversations, has 20 sleeping positions, snores like my pop, obeys my mother like her lifeline, can shift from friendly to grumpy in a second, sees colors in all aspects of her life, and the most marvelous of all her blessings, she lights up our home. We adopted this stranger and now, she's among us.

Our Little Ballerina, who learned LOVE 3 days late

~~~

What She Learned at 2

Mother: How many mommies do you have, Bien?
Bien: Two, mommy Jackie and mommy Janet.
Mother: Why do you have two mommies?
Bien: Mommy Janet was praying to the Lord for a baby so mommy Jackie gave me to her.
Mother: Bien, what does adoption mean?
Bien: Love!