time slips away

Image from here.

My father turned 60 today. Yesterday, we had a nice day, celebrating the milestone year. I took them to see a play and to dinner and we were all rather pleasant because of the experience. I was distracted by the idea of what having a 60-year old for a parent meant. And then as we were pulling out of the mall parking lot after the play, I realized that there might not be a lot of years left when I could rely on my dad to drive us to places -- the thought terrified me. Not even of him dying, though everyone dies -- just the idea that he would be there but unable to fulfill the functions I had grown up being used to: driving, getting cars fixed, having all the answers, things like that. It made me feel so inadequate and unprepared for anything.

Today, during his all-day birthday party, I had a similar thought again. My grandmother was here for the celebrations, and while I was trying to coax a birthday greeting out of her, I realized that she was no longer as lucid as I thought she was. I realized that she could barely open her eyes because she no longer saw very well. I want to say that this is what a big big family does (you could go on living not thinking about your grandmother because there are too many of you to think about) but I really don't want to use that excuse. I can't believe that so much time has passed and despite my grandmother living a few minutes away, I have not taken the time to know her beyond the cursory "hello" and "how are you" when I come and go. She was lying on the couch (she has been immobile since she broke her hip a couple of years ago) and as I was trying to get her to recognize my voice, I rubbed my hands on her legs and she smiled. It was a little girl smile, a smile I didn't see on her face when my grandfather was alive, or when she was lucid for that matter. It made me realize that it must have been so long since someone rubbed her legs like that -- since she felt anything about her legs like that, and it made me smile that even when she could no longer recognize me, I could comfort her by simply rubbing her legs. I wish that I had given her more, that I had more to give back when she still knew the difference.

The idea of time passing makes me nervous. What have I done with the time that's gone by?

On turning 30

Image from here.

I turned 30 a few days ago, and it went very differently than I thought it would. For the longest time, I have been dreading turning 30 because of recent developments (or non-developments) in my life that have set me back and changed my views of the world from how I perceived it a few years ago. For one, nearly my entire twenties was spent working in attempts to survive law school. All of this work was geared towards becoming a lawyer at the end of all that work and hopefully settling into a financially stable and exhausting (though rewarding) work life. When I turned 29 last year, I got the most devastating (I'm still recovering from its trauma) news of my life learning that I had failed the bar. The knowledge that I could fail something I had put so much into really crippled me, and I cut off many friends and hid from the world for a year trying to recover from the news. I couldn't make myself take the exam again and I had to really ask myself if I was willing to spend another year of my life working towards something that felt so futile and so thankless.

After a year of being inactive, of trying to grapple with who I am as a person and with what strengths I do have, I decided to forego taking the bar (indefinitely), choosing instead to work towards rediscovering my passions and capabilities. I am entrenched in the creative writing world now and on most days, it feels like this is (as it always has been) a much more comfortable fit for me than law ever was. Still, so much of my life feels like a question. I wonder always if not taking the bar is the correct step, if I will regret that I put it off for so long, or even if I could make as much as I did had I chosen to focus on becoming a lawyer and not on rediscovering creative writing.

I had thought that turning 30 would give me this clarity that would make me see things from an entirely different perspective, but the day crept in quietly, and without much fanfare. There were no glaring epiphanies or sudden directions or life paths discovered, only an awareness that I had been around for 30 decades now, and that I had better learn to enjoy the small moments as much as I look forward to the bigger ones. Life is made so much of the smaller moments, and I suppose these are the things you remember when you look back on your life later on.

If this year has taught me anything, it would be that life too is so much about having the courage to take chances. I had thrown myself into the ringer by accepting a project that allowed me to travel to 5 different cities in less than 10 days so close to all my deadlines, leaving little time for me to work on them. But I did it anyway and came out (for the most part unscathed).  So much of my life and my decisions are based on the prudent options, always foregoing adventure for what is expected, what is practical. This time, I just really wanted to do it without questioning if I could or couldn't.

I took this lesson and applied it to my birthday, and how I wanted to celebrate my life from hereon. It was an exercise in deciding how I wanted to do things, and then finding a way to do them anyway. I heralded its arrival with a few friends who stayed with me till midnight, over tapas and sangrias. I spent time with my family, and then gave myself the chance to relax and take it all in on a weekend jaunt to Baguio, one of my favorite places to visit. As I sit here now, by the balcony, enjoying the cool air while writing off the delicious food I had from the buffet, I feel quite pleased at the idea of wanting something and then making it happen.

Hopefully this is the start of a more conscious, more deliberate life, focused on the little things as well as on the big things. I want to stop fearing things and do more of them. Off the top of my head, I want to dare to dream about standing on a surfboard, riding a bike, go to Europe, kiss someone, and maybe even fall in love. I want to try new food, meet new people, find something that I am absolutely passionate about, and reclaim my fitness. I want to really feel alive, finally.

birthday blues

so i turned a year older a couple of days ago. when a good friend overseas asked me how it was, i told her that it was a mishmash of nice - dare i say even surprisingly pleasant - so-so ish and heartbreaking. to me it exactly was that. i don't know what it is about birthdays (or maybe it is just me) that suddenly make us believe that if we can celebrate it the way we want we can get a handle on the days after that and live our lives exactly as we choose?

when deciding how i would be spending my birthday, my immediate response was that i didn't want a party with lots of people there. i didn't ask for anything, in fact, from anyone. to not have a party was my one birthday wish. but the forces-that-be spoke, and so i had a party, which i boycotted (with notice).

but i am glad that my birthday began with some pleasant things, which i hope will be current in the days to come. as the clock struck midnight, i was watching videos at home with my mom and eating my favorite burger. yes, a burger at midnight. a video at home. such simple pleasures that are the few things that feel like me.

but the actual day of it began with a sacrifice. i had intended to spend my morning getting pampered (i had denied so much pampering of myself when i was suffering through law school because i didn't feel like i deserved it), but against my hedonistic instincts, i acquiesced to going with my mom to represent our company at a cheese tasting event for local businesses. it turned out to be a lovely surprise. by the end of it, i was full and caloric from cheese, and from the loveliness of being surrounded in 5-star luxury.

a plate of cheeses all for me!

some of the pizzas we tried. I think this is the triple pesto (pesto base, pesto jack cheese, and fried basil on top!) and the asian style pizza with dried shrimps and sriracha (strange but edible)

this was an interesting pizza topped with apples?! and cumin flavored cheese. interesting, but not my favorite

this was what i liked the most! another strange pizza topped with a port wine reduction and creme fraiche and chives. delish!

this was my fangirl photo with mark todd aka the cheese dude. he lives the life! he tastes cheese and travels around the world to talk about it for a living! i wish i could have photographed him with his funky chef pants. wanted to make a comparison to mario batali but i wasn't sure if he liked him!

a plate stacked with cheese based goodies after the whole demo. gaaaahhh.

yes, this is where i spent the start of my birthday - had to photograph the lovely lobby of makati shang, natch.

since i am a frivolous person now, i decided to leap into my 29th year wearing a tutu that i found from the ukay-ukay. love.

some things went south after that, but here are some other snippets:

flowers and bling from a, a good friend, and tibok-tibok ice cream!

was finally able to have dinner at Zucchini, which I have been dying to do for years
Australian veal cheek risotto

food, wine and conversation with my oldest friend. it almost felt like we were grownups.

for dessert, a prune and port souffle for me, and gorgonzola ice cream for z.

i left out the not so nice parts, because ultimately, that's not how i want to remember my birthday. maybe it was childish to believe that even for just one day you could get everything you wanted and do anything with reckless abandon. suffice it to say that much like life, even in birthdays, unpleasant things happen. so my birthday was not all blue, maybe depending on where i stand, i can see the rainbow in it, if i look really, really closely.

what i would like to carry on into my 29th year

wow. there is a part of me that doesn't even want to believe that i am actually 29. i thought for sure that i would be in a different place in my life by now, more sure of myself perhaps, more settled, more successful in my bid to find out my place in this world at least. but i might as well be 12 right now, only at least then i would still have been reed thin, and hopeful of the future.

while there are no significant milestones to pass for me as i turn 29, for some people the anniversary of my birth spells out the end of their lives. 3 filipinos will be executed in china today for drug trafficking, and that is sad. kids will lose parents, parents will lose children, chances for change will be lost. i used to think think capital punishment made sense until i realized that i believed in people's capacity to change more than in my need to feel secure and satisfied that wrongs are made right.

on an unrelated but still noteworthy occurrence, i found the feeling i want to carry into the my 29th year today, and by some miracle, though i had no intentions of being coherent as i wrote this, it somehow made sense. i was inside one of my favorite used bookstores today, and out of the blue a girl goes out of her way to recommend several books to me, very nicely i might add. one was actually a book i had picked out initially then put back onto the shelf; i wasn't sure i was up for a heavy period piece again. yet i was so pleased at how this stranger took a chance and went through the book titles to find books she thought i would like, and though i had no intentions of buying these 2 books in the first place i ended up getting them. if they turn out to be horrible, i will keep them on my shelf as reminders that people are inherently good, or at least, they try to be. i was so glad that girl spoke to me when she did. so few people have since i plunged into my social coma. paying P160 for those 2 books was the best money ive spent in a while i think.

so there. i guess i can be as unsatisfied as i want to be about my life; but i can't complain. there are still good people out there, and even those that aren't good at the moment have the ability to change if they wanted to. happy birthday bright eyes, one day, maybe, we will be happy, but no longer lost, you and me.