Scrolls from the Throne Room

Being the youngest of four children, I am my father’s baby. As such, I don’t need to do anything I didn’t want to do. And I definitely did not want to cook. It’s hot and uncomfortable in the kitchen and I hate perspiring. My eldest sister is one heck of a cook, though, which is probably why my mother did not mind my not helping in the kitchen. We each had our chores and I chose to do the clean up (woe to the one who dared sully my floor!). And so I never ever learned to cook (like my siblings never learned how to clean – but that’s another story).
Well, I did try once. I think I was ten at the time and I had this craving for hotdogs. I was too polite to ask anyone to fry them for me, so I just imitated what I’ve seen my mother do countless of times. Except that I turned up the heat too high and I used too much oil. And never did my mother hurl the hotdogs at the pan from the other side of the room. And she didn’t shriek like a banshee either. My brother heard the commotion I made single-handedly and tried to help by lowering the flames a little. I rewarded him by accidentally pouring scalding hot oil on his wrist. His skin burned right off and he sported a bandage for weeks. I never set foot in the kitchen again, and my family equally kept me out, using force if necessary.
But then there’s home economics in school. Needless to say, I barely made the passing grade after paring a potato to a tenth of its original unpared size (fortunately keeping all ten of my fingers while doing it). I also made a chocolate cake that can be used to mark a loved one’s grave. And oh, I remember this essay question on a final exam: “How do you cook rice? Please discuss.” I did. Confidently. Then my father was called to the principal’s office. He had to explain that yes, we do have a rice cooker at home, and no, he doesn’t allow me in the kitchen. How was I to know that there’s the primitive way of boiling rice in a saucepan?
There are a hundred other booboos I made, like making orange juice that tasted like orange-colored dishwater (if you were unfortunate enough to get to taste dishwater whatever its color), or serving fried eggs with shells, or using too much pepper (enough to start a worldwide sneezing fit), or making pancakes that can be mistaken for coals.
Oh, there’s the time I was able to make a tuna salad everybody liked – and no one died of food poisoning. You can hear my family’s hallelujahs clear across the village. I never tried making tuna salad again though, in case the first one was a fluke. I at least want that one triumph to remember.
However, now that we’ve all grown up, I realized that despite the feminist movement, women are still expected to know how to cook. When I voiced this thought, my mother complacently answered that I’ll learn when I get married. Well, I’ll probably be a widow before the honeymoon is over. Better to be a single for life then rather than hurry somebody to his grave (but then again…). But I did decide to take cooking lessons just in case I do decide to get married someday.
But that’s until this morning. My sunny side up resulted into an eggshell and coal omelet. My future husband had better like pizza. At least I know how to dial a phone.

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If the speaker spoke the truth, wilted flowers would be there to welcome me in the after life. Written September 25, 2000.

Following the Harry Potter craze, I was reading this book ‘So You Want To Be A Wizard’ by Diane Duane. It was a nice enough story, perhaps not in J.R.R. Tolkien’s league, but one particular passage in it hit me:
‘”You have to be careful with names, it says. They’re a way of saying what you are – and if you write something in a spell that’s not what you are, well…”’
Remembering what Shakespeare said about the rose being a rose even if it were called another name, I wondered then which is right. Do names really matter? Do they spell out our destiny? Are our names our fates? Or is it just a tool to know which is which and who is who? In Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman comic book series, a character once said: “I loved bein’ a kid. I was one of seventeen children. We were all named Wilkinson – I suppose it was roughest on the girls, but we all got used to it in the end.”
Some of the books I’ve read, the Bible not least, accord names with meanings which somehow sums up the person’s life. The person fulfills the prophecies made at his christening. Remember Abraham, John the Baptist, Simon Peter, and even Jesus Christ. Yes, somehow I do agree that our names are like DNA. Something that is indefinably ours and defines the core of what we are.
Take for example my eldest sister, Patricia Anne. She was named after Patricio (our great-grandfather ) and Anastacia (our mother’s aunt) who both shared her birth month (March). Even if Lolo Patricio and Nanay Tacia have different personalities, my sister somehow got the best (and the worst?) of their characters, creating a personality uniquely her own yet a memorial of her ancestors. She’s ornery, period.
Then there’s my brother, Paul Anthony. He was named after our grandfathers on both sides, Policarpio and Antonio. My brother is as hung up on his wife as the two old men were with theirs. And he got their short tempers too.
My other sister Pamela was named after my father’s favorite Hollywood star, Pamela Tippin. Although my sister isn’t in Hollywood, she certainly had a different temperament from the rest of the family. And somehow, we just knew she’s going to be a star in her own right someday, if she’s not one yet right now.
My niece, Caitlin Anais, was named after her mother’s favorite Sweet Dreams heroine and favorite perfume. Well, she’s as ‘kikay’ (girly) as Caitlin was in the novel, and she certainly thrives on perfume, badgering her mother, her grandmother, and me for colognes.
My other niece, the youngest in the family, is named Meghann Abigail. Meghann, after her mother’s favorite character in ‘Thorn Birds’, and Abigail, a nice godly name in the baby book. At four, she’s as melodramatic as the original Meg and as prayerful as the woman who helped Mary give birth to the Christ child.
In one of the seminars I attended for a christening, the speaker told us that children should be named after saints, so they should live saintly lives with special protection from their patron saint, and that these saints would be there to welcome them to heaven when the time comes. My cousin Rafela insisted that her name is close enough to St. Raphael. It struck us then that her boyfriend Arnel would have no one to welcome him, but then shrugged the fact since we aren’t sure if he would be welcome in the first place. My friend Angelica, however, is not taking chances. She plans to name all her kids with angels’ names. My godchild’s father, Arles, named his daughter Althea Corinne, names which connote a ladylike demeanor. And if I know anything about her parents, she’s gonna need all the help she can get from her names.
Even pets live up to their names. We once had a dog named after a Mafioso, and he got put down for viciously biting a passerby. Then there’s the ever lazy dog Sleepy, bad cat Robin (named after an action star known for his bad boy roles), and the Japanese Spitz Deedee, who is as nosy and noisy as Dexter’s sister.
But what about me? I was supposed to be named Jennifer (yup, the typical girl-next-door kind of name) but my siblings chose Azalea from the encyclopedia, liking the sound of the flower’s name. They still call me Jen or Ajen at home, but I was Azalea at school. And you know what? Ajen is as easygoing as Azalea is proper. And the Chalei that my closest buds know is wild and daring like you wouldn’t believe if you knew me by any other name. Then of course there was the time I called myself Chestnut and acted as spoiled as Nadia Montenegro who sported the name in the now defunct TV sitcom. As Nini, I was the serious British writer, who wrote about kids in London (never mind if I haven’t been there or anywhere else outside the Philippines). As Lea in college and the office, I was less staid than Azalea, but definitely more professional than Ajen. Whether this is a reflection of the people’s belief in the talents of the immensely popular other Lea (Salonga, who else?), I’m not sure but I’m also more confident in myself and in my talents as Lea. As Barbie, I’m very ‘kikay’ and vain and in love with pink. No, I’m not blonde and curvy like the doll, but people started calling me Barbie after my doll and accessory collection. Leababes, on the other hand, acts like a kid most of the time and is a lot more fun. When my nieces started calling me Tita Aji, another personality emerged, a more responsible and maternal one.
Do I have a multiple personality disorder then? Or do I just rise to the call of the name? So, what do you call me? To my mind, ‘Your Majesty’ is most preferable. Yes, I’ve been calling myself The Queen of the Damned since college. As the chief of The Bug (a little rag I used to edit) and the boss at the office, I wanted to instill fear to get the results I wanted. I figured I needed the ball-busting menace and bossiness the title accorded me, since being named after a flower connotes someone who is quiet and ladylike at best, and mousy and a pushover at worst. I’ve always thought that my name is inadequate to define me (hence my other names) but that’s until I realized that some azaleas also bloom in winter, and that has made all the difference.
How about you? What’s your name? And what’s your fate?

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My hair and I have come a long way together. We both survived sixteen years of school, a hundred heartaches and highlights, and a million hairstyle fads.
I distinctly remember sporting the apple cut for eight loooong years when I was a kid (a style designed for Vigilant Moms Against Lice). The constant hairstyle, however, was relieved by a permanent curl every March for graduation or recognition day. I still could not figure out why we all have to look like poodles during graduation. After that was the Soleil Moonfrye Syndrome for the next two years. I was finally allowed by my mother to let my hair grow long enough to reach my shoulders. Provided, of course, that I kept them neatly tied in Punky Brewster’s pigtails.
Madonna and Cyndi Lauper entered the picture, and generally, it was an era of bad hair days. But who cared? Not nine-year-old me and certainly not my younger set of cousins. We endeavored to keep our hair tied up with yards of gaudy ribbon (resembling old net pantyhose). My cousin Ela was our hairdresser. She was the one who pulled our hair into tight ponytails (so tight we were all chinky-eyed afterwards) and she used to weep in frustration when she couldn’t style her own hair (Chel and I were useless with combs. We just sympathized with her until she calmed down enough to try again.). We believed we looked great. Looking back, we could pass for tasteless Ninjas.
And then I turned eleven. I kept my hair in a half pony day in and day out. Only the ribbons varied. Of course, I never used the same ribbon in a month (just like I never used the same pair of earrings in a month). My bangs, regally swept back from my forehead (and teased to death), resembled a small frozen tsunami. With all the hairspray my four girlfriends and I used, we could be convicted for causing skin cancer all over the world. In just two preadolescent years, people had to say goodbye to the ozone layer. And that wasn’t the end of it. I was the first student in the whole school (a Fifth grader, no less!) to have my hair dyed burgundy. You can bet your last penny I made sure that the sun’s rays slanted perfectly on my red locks during flag ceremony.
When I switched schools for my high school education, I was much simpler. My hair fell to my waist naturally. But then the fad was to wear a headband and let your hair fly free. Every girl in campus just had to keep a comb and a compact mirror in their pockets to keep away from tangles. Thank goodness for “paynetas”!
When the egg cut was made popular by Demi Moore in Ghost and every girl had her hair shorn, I stayed put, saving my mane for a bigger star. Enter Julia Roberts and Nicole Kidman. With a smug smile on my face, I had my auburn locks retouched and permed. It wouldn’t hurt to have a boyfriend with Tom Cruise’s profile, but then that would probably be asking too much.
However, it was with Winona Ryder in mind that I entered college. My hair was a black bob, and with Winona’s lisp cultivated once in a while, I had it made. But of course, I had to prepare for the once-in-a-lifetime event of posing for the college graduation picture. Knowing how ridiculous grad pics will look as the years march on, I made sure my mane was in the classic waist-length style. Unless the future generations will be completely hairless due to genetic tampering gone bonkers, I figured I couldn’t go wrong. The camera flashes had barely faded when I had my hair clipped in the more stylish layered ‘do.
Then it was time to review for the Board exams. I had no time to see my family, much less my hair stylist. I kept my hair in a three-horn ponytail to keep strands away from my face and my worksheet. I remember the Board Exam proctor putting a towel on my back when it was too hot in the room. She thought of me as her granddaughter with the small colored rubber bands in my hair.
Finally, I was reunited with my hairstylist when I started working. She suggested trying out the Swiss Wave and I eagerly complied. What resulted was a mass of springy curls Julia Roberts must contend with every morning. I adamantly refused to call it a “perm” because a perm only costs less than three hundred bucks, while a Swiss Wave was less than a thousand. ‘Swiss Wave it is,’ my officemates hastily agreed, seeing the dangerous glitter in my eyes. I also experimented with highlights at the time. The chestnut hue was such a hit that a ‘pest’ started hanging around my cubicle. I had my hair dyed jet black as quickly as I could.
Then I found out that the Standard and Poor’s analyst I had my eye on had a Japanese girlfriend. I mourned by having my hair sheared really really short. He found me cute with my new haircut. I hated him.
I left my hair pretty much to its own devices after that, except for the regimental trim every fortnight. But this summer, I craved for a change. I decided to do something drastic to my locks. I had them shaved off, leaving a few tendrils long enough to flop over an eye, while some stuck out like inch-long spikes. The style was something my hairdresser copied from Cosmopolitan: a cropped version of Natalie Imbruglia’s uneven cut. I felt great.
However, if you have conservative parents and an even stuffier big brother, stay away from that kind of hairdo. My mom and I had a shouting match over it, which scared the hell out of my grandmother who was witness to the battle. We did not speak for two weeks. I did not count on my brother coming home from Singapore though. To this day, he calls me by my full name “Azalea” with a perpetual frown on his face, even though my hair is a lot longer now.
But what do I care? I love my hair the way it is (although of course, a year ago I would have worn a wig or tugged at my hairstrands in a vain attempt to make it longer, should my brother cast even a single glare in my general direction). I consider it my flag of independence. This is me! This is what I want! And I am free to do what I please with my own hair!
Although of course, you’d have to be prepared not to be besieged by men. Unless you have Julia Roberts’ smile – or mine, for that matter =) – men are easily intimidated by the sight of a confident, independent, liberated woman. Unless of course the men you know have a fetish for newly shorn sheep. But then you wouldn’t want anything to do with those kind of men, would you? Would you?
Most girlfriends envied my hairstyle but are too afraid of their boyfriends’ reaction to have it done themselves. I tell them not to be such doormats as to allow mere men to rule over their crowning glory (my former boyfriends had the perfect sense to leave my hair and my wardrobe to my superior knowledge. They’re still alive to this day.). Our hair is just that. Ours. All the beauty and complexities of it.

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I was at the bookstore the other day, ostensibly to order supplies for the office. However, I found myself gravitating towards the stacks of stationery in the corner. Looking at the creatively designed pads, I remembered the days when I collected stationery avidly. I still have my collection but it’s been at least a decade since I added to it. I bought two pads then and there to assuage my guilt.
Later, opening the gift box containing my precious hoard of “crackly” paper, fond memories of old friends came to mind. You see, the main reason I collected stationery was my love for writing and receiving letters. I exchanged gossip with friends from grade school and high school. In fact, my bestfriend and I are better letter-writers than phonepals. When I entered college, the first thing I looked for was the post office. And I blessed the day Mail Stations scattered all over the city.
I loved writing letters, and being able to add kikay touches (like stickers or drawings or colored pen scribbles) just added to its magic. If any of my correspondence with friends ended, you can be sure that the last letter written between us would be from me.
When emails became popular, my friends and I switched for faster disbursement of gossip. It was great because old friends, who found it tedious to hunt for a pen and paper, let alone actually post the letter, started popping up again. It’s also easier to keep in touch with people overseas. I remember exchanging emails with my former boyfriend when he was abroad. In the days of yore, we’d have to wait for two weeks before any of us would receive a letter from the other, and we would have been dead by then. And although I admit languishing is a romantic way to die, I’d rather not try it, thank you very much. And just to underline the point, my brother and I chatted through email everyday while he was in Singapore. Now that he’s just two towns away, I’m lucky if I see him twice a month.
Email also became a means for starting new friendships. Unlike penpals (whose name you get to pick from – ughness of ughness – songhits), one can pick an e-pal from the names listed as To: or CC: in your friend’s mails. The email address could also give you a clue where he/she works, while giving the chosen one the security that his/her identity and actual mailing address is not known. And if he/she turns out to be a creep, you can always blame your friend for including creeps in the To: or CC: list.
But, but, but, despite what Meg Ryan said, the “You’ve got Mail” sound still does not compare with the thrill of actually seeing a bulky envelope in my mailbox. Besides, email does not make good mementos.
When my mom told me to check out the junk in the spare room, I found boxes of mementos from my past relationships. (Yeah, I know, I know. I planned to put them in a scrapbook after my first break-up but I never got around to actually doing it. Now, I have four boxes waiting to be catalogued. Nuff said.)
I found the love notes funny and sweet. Most were written in stationery probably filched from their kid sisters, while others were more creative (particularly boyfriend number three. He’s an artist.) He wrote sweet nothings on candy wrappers, restaurant napkins, movie tickets, burnt paper, toothpicks, and the stuff you made nipa huts from.
On the other hand, I had no letter to remember my last relationship by. And I’m not in any way dissing my last boyfriend. My last “honey” could write romantic emails that could burn my socks off (and more. But let’s not go into that.) but the point here is that they are emails. Even if I printed them out, it somehow lacks the personal touch a handwritten letter has in abundance. And for the more vengeful people out there, you don’t even have the writer’s penmanship to give to your friendly neighborhood witch. Well, it was just a thought. Anyway.
One of the exercises in Julia Cameron’s “The Right to Write” involves penning letters to people you’ve lost contact with. I pounced on the activity eagerly. They did write back – through email. Letter writing IS a lost art. But that doesn’t mean I’m giving up on it. I’ll think of it as my contribution to the world. I mean, I just know I’m going to be famous SOMEDAY. My letters are going to be worth a lot.

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Star struck? Hmmm… There ought to be a stronger word. Written 8 February 2002.

As I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had two things on my mind… C. Thomas Howell and how we were destined to be together. Actually, the first line is from the movie “Outsiders” where I first fell in love with Tom Howell (and Ralph Macchio, and Patrick Swayze, and Rob Lowe, and Matt Dillon, and Tom Cruise, and Emilio Estevez) and started daydreaming about the day I will meet him in person and live happily ever after with him. It didn’t matter that he got married to Rae Dawn before I reached the age of fourteen. I actually thought it better if he got married and got out of the limelight for a while than I die of jealousy every time I see a picture of him in a magazine with a different girl (each one more glamorous than the previous). It’s alright, I say to myself staring at his Ponyboy poster on my bedroom wall, wait until I grow up and meet him and we’ll go from there.

Then my sister came home one day and turned on the television to New Kids On The Block’s latest video. Finally, I admitted that Tom was a little too old for me and that Joe McIntyre was more my age. I swore to myself that someday I’d live in the bean town land and be as snobbish and stuffy as dyed in the wool Yankees. And to set things on a proper perspective, I wrote countless stories about how I would meet Joe without recognizing him, share instant rapport, all the while not knowing that he was somebody famous, and he’d love me more for that (because I loved him for himself and not because he was part of NKOTB).

But of course, when I reached the age of sixteen, I realized that Joe and I weren’t meant for each other at all. I was meant to love Bret Michaels of Poison. So I said goodbye to Joe, told him that he will always be a special someone in my heart, and put up Poison posters to replace his. I bought all their albums and played them nonstop until even my dogs were able to howl in tune with their music (they were famous for glam metal). I graduated from high school and entered college with my binders and locker religiously plastered with Bret’s appealingly crooked grin (he’s got those lips Angelina Jolie is now famous for) and sexy blue eyes. And then I looked up and saw Jason Webb striding down the hall. Goodbye, Bret. Jason is my destiny.

For the better part of seven years, I stalked Jason during college and hounded his professional basketball career when I graduated. When I said stalked, I wasn’t kidding. Even without a copy of his enrolment form, I found out what his class schedule was, and was usually at the right place at the right time, just to watch him pass by. I jot down his outfit in my personal organizer and was usually the first to notice when he is wearing a new shirt. A block mate once commented that Jason was wearing a new shirt. I glanced up and said, “No, he already wore that last September 21.” Nuff said. Jason took up Business Management and sold cloth slippers as part of his group’s finals. Of course, I spent my allowance buying at least one pair a day. Everyone received slippers from me that Christmas holiday. Even Jason’s group mates recognized me by then. Once, when I approached their booth, one guy said, “Oh, there’s a new design, you don’t have that yet.” And what did I get for my pains? Jason’s signature on the Official Receipt. Sigh.

When Jason started hanging out with Snow Tago, one of the former Binibining Pilipinas World who also happened to go to La Salle, I usually go to Greenbelt and watch movies by myself to drown my sorrows.

And that’s how I renewed my acquaintance with Val Kilmer and fell in love. I took off my wedding band (the one with Jason’s name inscribed in it) and watched Val’s films with such determination that my sisters got sick of watching Val’s earlier movies (they were THAT lame), although they could never contest the fact that Val’s rear was to die for. Even before the famous shot in “Batman Forever”, I was already hooked with that locker scene in “Top Gun” where he wore nothing but a low slung towel. I’m sorry, Tom, were you in that movie? My first date with one of my boyfriends was unfortunately (for him, that is) the first day showing of “At First Sight” and I ended up mooning over Val until the time my date had to say goodnight at my front door. Only then did I remember his existence.

Then “Dawson’s Creek” came into being and watching Joshua Jackson dancing in a faded red sweatshirt (in the TV program’s opening song) became the stuff of Monday night dreams. My boyfriend learned to wait for the commercials before he could claim my attention. My officemates, although quite older than me and were not regular viewers of “Dawson’s Creek”, knew Pacey (Joshua Jackson’s character) because of my computer wallpapers and screensavers. They, of course, were not aware of the posters I had on my closet door. A girl friend even accused me of falling for a guy just because he had Joshua’s hairstyle. No comment.

But hey, I’m older and wiser now. I realized that these are just infatuations (of the weird kind, I suppose) and that a lot of people go through this phase until they mature and leave the daydreams behind. So I kissed my idols goodbye and headed for the real world.

In Australia, where I hope to bump into Hugh Jackman, that is.


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Once, while checking out the wall calendar, my six-year-old niece wondered aloud, “There’s Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Grandparents’ Day. How come there’s no Tita’s Day?�

Tita, for those who are not familiar with Filipino culture, is an informal (or perhaps more affectionate) version of Aunt. Moreover, Tita sounds hip.

“Maybe we’re not important enough to merit our own day in the calendar,� I answered her with a smile and ruffled her hair. But I know that it wasn’t true even as I said it. The fact that my niece realized that I didn’t have a day where she could greet me and celebrate my Tita-hood means that I meant as much to her as her parents and grandparents did.

Being a Tita is cool. It’s like motherhood without the pain. Oh, wait, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Titas are better. I’m all for motherhood, actually looking forward to becoming one someday, and taking my hat off to all the Moms out there. But for us who have yet to experience the joys of Motherhood, well, Titahood is the next best thing.

Being a Tita has been a never-ending source of insight and inspiration for me. Ever since my sisters’ bundles of kakikayan entered this world, life has never been the same for me. I learned patience (“Tita, I tried on your favorite office outfit while playing. It’s lying there on a crumpled heap at the foot of your bed.�), humility (“Tita, your new hairstyle looks ugly.�), mortification (“Tita, your boyfriend doesn’t love you anymore that’s why he broke up with you, right?�), and all those virtues your spiritual director says is good for your soul.

But the two things I learned most is 1) a person’s capacity for love is limitless (the more kids you have around, the better. In fact, I’ve been adding my friends’ kids to my list.) and 2) gratitude for every blessing whether big or small (I’ve been thanking the heavens for every safe step they took, every new word they learned, and every hug and kiss they give me.)

At first, I wondered if it was just me or if all Titas enjoyed being one because I truly enjoy hanging out with the kids. We throw parties, go malling, have makeovers and manicures, discuss boys, and do fun stuff that somehow you’d feel a little awkward doing with your parents. Parents have to maintain some semblance of authority to discipline the kids. This is an advantage for Titas since parents do the “dirty� work, and we have all the fun. Not that we should ignore rules altogether, but a reminder here and a chide there would suffice before getting on with the party. And my nieces have barely reached the age of ten! Imagine what other fun talks we’d have when they’re old enough to date.

I remember my own experiences with my aunts and they’re highlighted with laughter, adventures, and love. So I guess it’s not just me, but Titas the world over. So why don’t we merit a day in the calendar? Maybe because we celebrate it every day of the year.

My niece, now turned seven, told me just this morning: “When I grow up, I wanna be a Tita.� Now you can’t get a higher praise than that.

A Happy Tita’s Day to you!


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