it was my grandmother's 91st birthday yesterday. in my mind, i believe i am not the best of granddaughters, but again i am humbled by what you can learn from someone who has over seventy years' more life experience than you.
our birthday celebration for nanay was very simple, as our home birthday "parties" tend to be: cake, ice cream, noodles ("for long life") and the requisite bottle of coke (sugar-free this year, as a rebuke to the family diabetic), plus a few odds and ends. really, really simple, but it was amazing how pleased my lola was with everything. she was really happy with the colorful muumuus (exotic word for big soft pambahay) that i got her as well as the other whatnots from my family. she immediately tried them on and started preening in front of the mirror. (seeing a 91-year old woman put on pink lipstick for her birthday party, like an excited sixteen-year old, was a wonderful moment of wrinkles-be-damned femininity. hell, i'll probably still be putting on lipstick at 91.)
then she launched into her usual drama, which is a nice drama actually, of how lucky she is to have wonderful children and wonderful apos who take care of her etc etc. there is really something amazing about families--i don't think i would be able to say that to me if i had myself for a granddaughter. and i remembered something i told someone who was once very close to me (i'll paraphrase myself here)--people whom we care deeply about have the power to make us so very happy with so little effort. we are hurt when they don't use that power, or when they don't seem to care that they have it at all.
i wonder how i could have said that without thinking of the effort it takes to make people like my lola happy. it takes so little, really--a cotton dress, a 10-baht purse from my last trip. i wonder why i don't try more often.
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my "little things" theme continues.
i went to bed last night and woke up this morning in a terrible funk due to a looming major decision that i have to make within the next two weeks. i don't want to think about it too much (and in fact i don't have to--yet), but suffice it to say that it will be a tough choice between something i love and something i want badly. both are needs on very different levels, which makes the decision all the more difficult.
i think i had a zonked-out simangot on my face for most of the morning; darius even interrupted me in the middle of editing to ask if i was ok (which he's never done, since most of the time everyone is glued to their screens). towards lunchtime, i made a decision not to freak out over it until i'm called upon to make a decision (how's that for convoluted?).
okay, so here's the "little things" part. in the midst of my icky funk, i ran into a good number of little things that helped me wipe that simangot off my face and get on with my day.
1. rainy weather. it's not sweater weather and i usually hate commuting in the rain, but the skies were kind to me today. not a one of my toeses got wet despite the fact that i was wearing open toed sandals. besides, as leo likes to say in our do-you-miss-him brogue, "i love the weather acsh'lly... 'treminds me of ahhhrland."
2. bangkok pics. from a real camera, i mean. i got the first half of my pictures developed (the other half is still in the camera) and i love them. the outdoor photos are lovely--the grand palace pics in particular have sunny skies, brilliant colors and great detail (i sound like a kodak ad). i'm especially happy with the hot pink t-shirt i wore on our sightseeing rampage--it photographs very well. sadly, i can't say the same of my tummy. :(
3. (re-) meeting someone who remembers you well. i had lunch at jollibee on makati ave (right next to kodak and the money changer's, for today's errands) when one of the servers came up to me. it turned out that she was one of baste's kid's from the mandaluyong children's chorus who remembered meeting me over 2 years ago! she was so cheery, i couldn't help smiling as she told me that she came over to prove to her fellow servers that she really knew me, kasi ayaw nila maniwala. what was really nice about the conversation was when she told me that all of her batchmates from mcc (they graduated last year) all went on to join choirs even after mcc. she's in a spinoff choir, mandaluyong philharmonic choir and her best friend is in the UE chorale.
4. live radio streaming. how can you possibly stay mopey while listening to rrrrrradio rrrrrrevolucion, live from aruba? pass me that piña colada, please.
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