Wordless Wednesday
Photo by: C. Mercado
Who was your best childhood friend?(David's Post of the Day, 26 Sept 2007)
Feet on the beach
Photo by: C. Mercado
David always asks these questions that make me think. I struggled with this for a bit before it hit me.
When I was little, my best friend was a girl named Lynn. She was my neighbour. Her family and mine were friends, our mothers taught in the same university, and we grew up together. We literally lived across each other, the distance between our houses a mere 20 meters, and we used to have a lot of fun when were were children. We were also related by affinity. Her father is the sister of my uncle's wife, my uncle being my mother's younger brother.
Lynn had three brothers, two older and one younger. At that time, she was the only girl. Lynn's father was very strict. She was not allowed out after 5 pm (well, so were we, but our parents were a little less hard on us), and she would not even be allowed to peek out the window, especially during school days. But she was a very good girl, and she obeyed without question.
But when we were together, we had so much fun! When her father was not home, we could come to her room and play, and our favourite game used to be "house", where we pretended we were parents, had children, cooked for them and looked after them. As children, this was our way of trying to figure out how real life was. But of course, we were just acting out how our own parents behaved towards us, because that is what we knew.
We would also bring out our cooking sets, cut out leaves and flowers and play cooks. One time when I was about 9 years old, I took out some wood and did some carpentry work and made a wobbly table. This became our little play table for a while, until it fell apart.
Despite being in a small city, Lynn and I went to different schools, so the time we would have together to play would be a little bit between getting home, washing up, homework and dinner, and the weekends. I remember our nightly routine. We would both go home after playing a bit, then after we had washed up, we would both look out our windows and shout at each other across the lane, and show off our nice pajamas! I remember having fun doing that. Little girls loved cute and fancy jammies, and we were no different.
Lynn and I used to share stories about boys, our first crushes, and we would go to the movies together with Marie, an older girl who was also a neighbour. We also took piano lessons together. Their family had a piano while we did not, so the teacher would come on the weekends to her house, and we would take turns with our lessons.
Our playground was the small compound where we lived, made up of not more than ten houses, all of them owned by professors at the university my mother taught in. It also went beyond that, to the grassy coconut grove behind our houses where old fox holes left over from the Second World War were still there. The tall grass often served as hiding places for us kids when we played games. We were outdoors most of the time, and would even climb trees and chase the neighbours' chickens!
While there were also other kids in this place, Lynn and I were the two girls closest in age, and we just bonded.
I cannot remember exactly when it was and how old we were, but I guess it was just the year we turned 10, Lynn's family moved to the big city. This was very traumatic for me since I felt I lost my best friend.
But we kept in touch, wrote letters to one another. They also ended up living in the same subdivision as my uncle, in Manila. Whenever I would come and visit during summer vacations, Lynn and I would carry on as if we were never apart. We were teenagers by this time, and we would take our bikes and just go off biking inside this much bigger compound and meet young boys, mostly friends of her brothers. After they moved, Lynn's mom had two more children, and this time she had another sister and another brother.
We remained friends through the years and saw each other as often as we could, until we finally and truly grew up. When my daughter Kristina was born, I made Lynn one of her god mothers.
But it has been awhile since I saw Lynn, or heard news about her. I was told by my cousin that she has two children, but has not ever married, and that one of her older brothers passed away some years back. I wonder how she is now, and how her whole family is.
David's weekend wandering made me miss her.
On the rooftop of the Hotel Place D'ArmesFriday evening, we were desperate for a drink. The meetings we were in were far from over and we needed to come back at 9 pm for the final plenary. We were told there was a an interesting rooftop bar that was THE place to be seen on Thursday and Friday nights and it was in a hotel a few steps away from the Palais de congres.
Tucked away in Old Montreal is the quaint Hotel Place d'Armes, a boutique hotel housed in old historic buildings. We walked towards it, not knowing what to expect. Getting in through the first door we see which led to a restaurant, I approached the waiter to ask how to get to the rooftop. He promptly points us to the lift and tells us to go to the 7th Floor.
We get off on a small hallway, with a door to our left, and a steel staircase on the side of the wall. There was a wooden terrace after the first set of steps which had two tables and some funky looking chairs, but it was empty. Steve and Julia were quite skeptical about the whole thing now, but I carried on, walked a little further and saw another set of stairs, climbed, and was greeted by a most wonderful sight: the orange setting sun in the horizon, silhouetted between two buildings, the mountain in the distance, and tables filled with people having a drink, chatting and just chilling out after a long week... It was a lovely find. I did not have my camera so missed another photo opportunity (Ok, David, I do get your point now!).
It was not high enough to have the whole city spread in front of us, but the view was still quite breathtaking, and the place felt like an oasis in the midst of the bustling city. Exactly just what we needed at that time. While my friend Steve was saying it was too "cosmopolitan" for him, it was just his old fashioned, hippy comment about the well dressed people around us. Not that we were looking bad ourselves.
The mojitos and the beer helped a lot in getting our groove back. I leaned over the railing and looked down, and saw horse carriages waiting for their fare, across the Notre Dame cathedral. I have always dreamed of getting on one of these, and made Steve promise he would take me... of course he could not refuse! It is so nice to have friends that you can bully to do things like these!
It was nice to hang out, and this new discovery was even better. This goes on my list of favourite haunts from now on....
We were so caught up chatting that we did not realise that time just flew. As I peeked at my wrist watch, it was almost 9 pm, and we needed to get back to work!
My day ended at midnight.
Early morning, at homePhoto by: C. Mercado
A rambling old house, who are all these people?
I am walking around, looking for something/someone familiar.
The table was wood, antique wood, with carved legs, benches around it.
Family and friends filled it.
Laughter, banter, food.
There were tens of candles all around, throwing shadows on the walls.
It was domestic bliss at its best.
Then I see a bridge, I walk towards it, and see my father.
He helps me cross since he knows I am scared of bridges.
I don't know why, but I felt the fear, that sensation of stepping onto something stable, but not.. weird feeling.
Suddenly I am in a room, people there, some I know, some complete strangers.
Two catch my eye, my favourite aunts.
But they passed into the other world many years back!
I was happy to see them, hugs, excitement, ceaseless chatter.
I wanted to spend as much time with them, since it has been awhile since I last saw them.
Afterwards, I am walking towards someone, his face is in the shadows, I am not sure whether I recognise him or not.
I felt like this was what I was searching for in the chaos.
Then we were in a garden, the scent of magnolias filled the air.
We sat on a bench, held hands and talked. It was light, happy, filled with tenderness and affection.
Then people stared coming to the garden too, the magic was gone....
I hear a ringing in the distance, and I realise it was my alarm clock. The spell was truly broken this time, since I am awake.
Flowers at Chatuchak market, Bangkok, ThailandPhoto: C. Mercado
David asks this weekend question: What makes you happy?
This was quite timely since sometime back, I had made a list of the things that made me smile, ergo, made me happy. Since it is such an easy thing to do, I thought I would just copy that list here, and that would basically answer David's question, and that would be a new post! Is that cheating? I did add a few new ones....
So here is a list of things that make me smile, just in random order...
- watching Kara and Kristina sleep like angels
- hugs and cuddles from people I love
- when my two daughters smile
- getting emails from my daughters
- personalised cards that my babies make for me
- surprises, anything
- sunrises and sunsets
- poetry, especially if it is read aloud to me
- being surrounded by family
- knowing that my father and mother are healthy and growing old gracefully
- getting my feet wet on the beach
- catching snowflakes on my tongue
- the smell of incense, coffee, anything baking
- when I am looking at old photos and remembering when these were taken
- flowers, especially roses, lilies and tulips
- warm gulab jamuns
- ice cream and apple pie
- talking to my family on the phone
- Scrabble games
- new issues of the New Yorker
- cold winter evenings in front of the fire sipping hot chocolate
- curling up in my favourite chair with a new book
- new shoes!
- sitting and holding hands at the movies with my loved one
- love letters
- baby pictures of Kara and Kris and my nephews and nieces
- a nice long walk in the park
- Nirmal's goofy grin
- chatting with Tanya
- the sound of rain
- a trip to the hairdresser
- a nice, long massage
- the smell of lavender
- birthdays, birthday cakes, Christmas, any holiday where family is together
- being with my friends, simply enjoying their company
And, I am saving the best for last, blogging, reading my friends' blogs and having them read mine and leave lovely comments!!
What makes YOU happy?
These chickens are still alive, they were not cooked for this story!Photo: C. Mercado
I think it comes naturally to mothers to try and find ways to prepare left over food, so that our children eat it again. My culinary talents are reasonably okay, but it always is a challenge to convert something that was left from last night's dinner into another culinary delight.
This happened very recently after we had some leftover roast chicken in the fridge. I was looking to make something speedy for my hungry teen aged daughter, and thought I would make the chicken into a soup. Kara was very skeptical, having had the experience of a disastrous left over leg of ham that I tired a soup recipe for after Christmas, so she was not very enthusiastic about it.
Well, to be perfectly honest, I was a bit in a tizzy as well since I felt that Kara had already judged the meal before tasting it, so it was a real challenge for me since I needed to prove that this would be a very tasty dish. I was at least selling it as such.
So, I started chopping tomatoes, onions and garlic and sauteed them in a wok, added the chicken and some chicken flavoured broth cubes, water and left it to simmer. I was at first thinking of putting potatoes and carrots, but decided on noodles instead since Kara is a pasta freak. I rummaged through the pantry and all I could find was spaghettini. Hmm.. I decided to cut these into three pieces and added these to the soup. Seasoned it with a bit of salt and pepper, and I just left it there for a few minutes, hoping that the flavour will come out, and of course I needed to wait for the pasta to be al dente. It was smelling beautifully as well, so I had high hopes.
After ten minutes, I called out to my daughter who was studying in the basement and she asked whether we could have dinner down there. After Kara came to help carry dishes and all, I took a tray with the soup which was looking quite delectable, and asked her to take the first taste.
She tried it, and a big smile broke out on her face, it was delicious! She told me it has this had a familiar, homemade chicken taste, the kind of soup that would be very good on a really cold evening, or when one has a cold. She also said that the flavour of the roast chicken was in there somehow, and it make it a bit different from the normal chicken soup I make. Oh, we had a really nice dinner that night. There was a bit of it left and she had it for breakfast the next day!
This was a one dish that definitely did not have left overs! Now Kara thinks I can whip this up all the time. I can always try...
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