Category Archive

Right after holy week, I received message from my sister that she’s planning to wed by the third week of April. I logged in to chat with her and get the details. She said she wanted summer colors spruced up all over the place.

That wasn’t hard as summer was already in the air. She also said she wanted her wedding to take place on the beach. Not hard to find also. We have a number of relatives who’d be willing to hold some jolly affair in their resorts. We chose the one closest to our place in Zambales ― Edu Beach, situated in a quiet barangay named Uacon at the northern tip of a sleepy town called Candelaria.

From then on, my sister and I had to chat almost every night to finalize the details: from attire to decors to menu to guests list to the composition of the entourage to the sponsors, everything. All finalized within short tight weeks before the occasion. We had to call almost everyone else who we could count on to help. Luckily, most were willing.

We have cousins abroad who even sent in some assistance. There were a few who could not decide, though, whether they could attend or not, for reasons we just don’t know. But that didn’t matter; we could not afford to entertain negative energies.

I took care of all the print matters ― invitations, thank you notes, tokens, signages. I even handled the sketches on the thought-out spot on the beach where the wedding would take place. My sister arrived from Boracay when she was able to seek her vacation leave from her work in Mandala Spa on April 7.

With her, her boyfriend (then) Alex and I, we bought all the minor menu items from hypermart in Pasig. We could not schedule a time for Cloverleaf in Caloocan, as that would be too early for us. We bought all the materials for the entourage and other decorative materials in Divisoria. A lot more also came from the collection of our aunt. All the fresh summer flowers we bought from the famous source ― Dangwa along Dimasalang Street in Manila ― before we started driving up north to Zambales.

There had been a lot of modifications on the structures that were to be set up on the beach, a few alterations on the menu plan, the guests list (family only and very close friends who are like family to us), and the compositions of both entourage and sponsors. In the end, it all worked well.

On the eve of the wedding, my sisters, Alex, and I stayed on the beach until 3am to set up all the decors. (What with beauty rest, we defied that, too!) The ground was wet, brought about by some afternoon April showers. We could not include the fresh flowers on the decors yet as the wedding was to take place in the afternoon and the flowers would wilt by mid-day. Our aunt, the owner of the resort, said she’d take care of the fresh flowers the following morning. By 1pm the next day, everything was on upbeat mood. Guests had already arrived on the beach, the minister and his aides were all there, we were already there. By 4pm, the ceremony started.

Somehow, the wedding turned out to be a simple family reunion of some sort. Relatives I haven’t heard from for so many years were there. Those of us who were there during the previous holy week were back there, together with those who weren’t able to make it then. Wacky, crazy cousins, lots of them, with their children who have grown taller than us, were there and we were young again, for we see duplicates of ourselves among the kids. One lovely experience after another.

The biggest surprise was our chef, who was able to pull off all the menu plan we set out. He, too, is family and friend.

Our newest addition to the family was Alex ― my sister’s lover and friend. They were wed by another cousin, a pastor, who also yearned for a long time to go back to Zambales. Those who didn’t make it there either had very good reasons not to or are not family at all. View album.

(I suggest you slip in Tracy Chapman’s CD with “The Promise” in your player or play its mp3 equivalent in the background — over and over. If you don’t have it, Jewel’s “Enter from the East” would do, I guess.)

We were a bunch of moms with kids and we used to meet Fridays. In the group, I was the only one uncommon to the rest. All of them went to the same high school together. But it wasn’t difficult blending in, for as moms we shared the same domestic concerns and dreamed the same future although in different levels of vagueness and with varied approaches to make them come true.

We used to go out a lot together, most of the times in separate groups but whenever Friday comes, we’d all be there, out somewhere, or in one of the houses pre-assigned to host our regular Friday gigs. We’d always be there during Fridays to make the other groups jealous in a fun way. Somehow it was a sisterhood of some sort, kind of the extended kind as there were more getting in.

I was the super laid-back one in the group and it would really take quite a few of them some time before they could get me on my feet to go out on a bash or binge. It was a time, a season I would say, when, through sharing, some started to learn of dependence and inter-dependence, taking back lost identities. While others learned of moderation, focus on what’s at hand, and stability, others considered getting livelihood education. When the “bared arms policy” evoked a lot of conundrum among the members of the G8 , we did bare our arms and shared a lot of cheap talks just to break the ice and things like that, that one won’t just get from simply being invited to a party or the regular family reunion.

Those Fridays would momentarily peak up and then dwindle but there was the core group, as in any team or organization, that would keep on and stay together no matter what. But, sadly, that, too, had to go. The kids are growing, moms need to work harder now. Or, mom is seeing someone else. Or, mom has to go abroad. There were a lot of other reasons that keeping Fridays only meant an added concern.

For a time, three of us tried to keep the Fridays through. Until there was none. I waited on the phone to get excited during Fridays but minutes had stretched to countless hours, until I had to go to bed wondering who it was who had been seeing someone else, or who it was who had to work harder now.

The kids are growing, their moms will surely find other ways to keep up with their Fridays. I hope they will find it as meaningful as mine. I hope that despite some of life’s misgivings, what we had shared and learned from each other before will still keep them — us — dreaming; not losing oneself but finding more reasons to fulfill those dreams.

Arms bared. These photos and that one above show what used to be the core of our Fridays. Taken way past midnight, the kids enjoying each other’s company, and with her low-res phone-camera (no smart phones yet then), Lotlot took these shots and sent them to my email that same night.