Hats Off To You, First Grandson!

Excerpted verses are from Oh, The Places You'll Go by Dr. Seuss

It's funny what happens when you're a grandparent. You start to act all goofy and do things you never thought you'd do.

Six years ago, we bade goodbye to mainland friends as we prepared to head back to Honolulu. When asked why, since we had just come back a few months earlier, we said, Grandson's graduation. They said, Congratulations! From college?

We said, No, pre-K.

It was a milestone we wouldn't miss for the world.

First Grandson at five-and-a-half years said he wanted "to be a construction worker." Hawaii Kai Church Early Learning Center Graduation. July 16, 2015

  First Granddaughter, dressed as Elsa, three years old

Fifth grade graduation, at 11 years.

Kamiloiki Elem School, May 28, 2021

Two days ago, we gathered yet again for another major ohana event, First Grandson's elementary school graduation. 

We said our good wishes then, and say it again.

Congratulations!

You make us proud, First Grandson.

You have made our world a little softer, a little kinder, a little warmer. 

Hats off to you! You did it.

Your mountain is waiting.

You're off to Great Places!

So...get on your way! 

Singing Nun

Onstage

The process by which the inanimate becomes animate seems to the audience to be a real miracle. - Anonymous

A glove puppet in hand, I patiently waited for the signal for my persona. 

At the church service that Sunday morning, I was to be Sister Marie Clarence who along with her singing nuns would perform I Will Follow Him, a remix on the Sister Act movie soundtrack. It was my premier performance as a puppeteer.

Franklin Park Conservatory, Fall 2020

Crouching with three other handlers behind a narrow five-foot high booth, I could still remember the day someone said five words that changed my life forever.

Come join the puppet ministry.

Puppet ministry? I asked.  How? Why? When?

They explained the puppets would simply lip-synch to familiar songs.

What? A chance to cutify without being seen, so no makeup? Choose our character and dress it up? No lines to memorize? 

I was in.

Earlier, I had fitted my hand into my puppet's hollow cloth body, carefully fitting my thumb into the mouth's lower opening and the other four fingers into the upper lip. 

Hold on, Sister. We got this, I whispered reassuringly.

She could only be seen from the waist up, but I wanted Sister Marie Clarence to look her best. So with the other free hand, I straightened out my puppet's habit, ensuring that its coif is safely secured by the wimple, ironing out the few wrinkles of her veil and sleeves.

I was all smiles as the opening tune began. 

Center stage was the open space just above our head height. It was on there that we would hold our hands up and allow the puppets to perform.

Ready, Sister? I whispered. I won't let you down. You know you have my heart.

To the spectators' delight, we wiggled our puppets upstage.

There was no long explanation, no descriptive scenes and painful dragging in of the plot. We simply swayed, singing in harmony.

We will follow Him,

Follow Him wherever He may go.

Our puppets had come to life with movement. Singing high, singing low, singing loud, singing softly. 

There isn't an ocean too deep,

A mountain so high it can keep,

Keep us away, away from His love...

My fingers were moving up and down, matching the climactic tones of the song. My arm was agile and quick in rhythmic consonance with the song's cadence.

I love Him, I love Him, I love Him,

And where He goes,

I'll follow, I'll follow, I'll follow.

I was unseen, but I liked it that way.

It was magical. A primitive sense of illusion. I had made an inanimate character come to life.

Singing.

Dancing away.

A whimsical validation attached to my hand.

Macbeth's Witch

Onstage

I had just turned twenty, hired as an instructor in English after graduating cum laude with a major in English and Comparative Literature from the university. I wasn't bad-looking at all. In fact, I was just beginning to bloom.

So, how did I end up with the role?

I guess because I was the most junior of the staff.

I had to be the sacrificial lamb who'd play one of the witches in the English Department's television presentation of a scene from Shakespeare's Macbeth. (Aside: the two other witches were played by instructors who had come on board a year or two before.) 

I couldn't and didn't complain even when I knew that onstage, I'd have to hunch over, wearing a long robe-like clothing and made up with wrinkled skin, pointy nose and stringy hair.

Fair is foul, and foul is fair.

But I was set. 

The scene was foggy and dark, predominantly empty except for a cauldron center stage.

Crook in hand, we the Weird Sisters proceeded to stir the stockpot into which we had tossed a number of pretend gross items to concoct our spell. 

Then my lines. I first ran the tip of my tongue along my teeth and spoke with a quivering voice in heavy stresses, exuding a sense of foreboding.

Double, double toil and trouble

Fire burn and caldron bubble. 

I was in character, malevolent and unearthly.

The studio echoed with our dark words. On cue, I looked up once at the camera and gave a glare that could freeze vodka and cackled, Hihihi!

That was my Shakespearian moment.

Stereotypically withered. Wild. A hag with skinny lips and choppy fingers that looked not like th' inhabitants o' th' Earth.

I kinda relished the role after the fact. A few spiders and a creepy bat and some spider webs draped here and there was fine with me. 

Such a good job, was the Department Chair's pronouncement in the end.

I learned later in a staff meeting that the scene from Hamlet where mad Ophelia drowned was in the offing for the next telecast. 

Lord, please soon grant me tenure so this role may pass over me.

Mary Wannabe

Onstage

And just when you thought that was all regarding my stage career, let me tell you when I sang as part of a quartet and played the guitar accompaniment for a singing competition in church.

Pick yourself off the floor.

I did.

I was only maybe fifteen and fearless.

I clearly remember our chosen piece. It was a popular tune called Very Last Day by American folk music trio Peter, Paul and Mary. 

Onstage, the girls and I belted out the three part harmonies emulating the rich tones of trained vocalists while I did the guitar work.

Everybody gonna pray on the very last day

Oh when they hear that bell a-ring the world away

Everybody gonna pray to the heavens on the judgment day.

I could swear that our voices boomed out to the back wall, wove their way through the open door and reverberated through the hall.

When I heard the big ripple of applause after our rendition, I remember how I couldn't keep my face from bursting into a massive, foolish smile. In my heart, I just knew our performance was a winner.

Indeed. 

We garnered first place besting the a capella belting of Sweet Chariot by the MYF Hopeless basketball team. 

Despite that premier singing success, however, I vowed never to wander again into the tricky waters of melodic warbling because I knew singing wasn't my forte. 

But maybe someday, on the very last day.

P.S.

As an interesting aside,  I just recently realized  that I did continue to sing randomly in my adult life.

After a Zoom celebration of Ninang Dan's 100th birthday with former UP Baguio colleagues last year (subject of my November 1st blog), I received these emails from the latter:

     Email #1: I remember you clearly singing while playing the guitar, that

     folk song "The river is wide, I cannot get o’er..." 

     Email #2: u knew me as one who could sing 2nd voice to ur first voice

     rendition of "bro john" with u on the guitar.

I suppose the trumpet didn't have to sound calling my name for me to burst out in song. 

For at that stage of my life, my heart sang of its own accord, longing to be close to someone whose hair had been sprinkled with moon dust by angels.

My spirit hummed on impulse, yearning to traverse the bridge over troubled waters when I had felt weary and small.

Going toward the fair, on the side of a hill bordered by rosemary and thyme, my soul spontaneoulsy intoned a melody for a true love of mine.*

And because I felt the feeling, I found the song.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* - Lyrics referenced in this and the previous two paragraphs are from my go-to 70's songs Close To You by the Carpenters and Bridge Over Troubled Waters and Scarborough Fair by Simon and Garfunkel. 

Sultana

Onstage

As always, I'm celebrating Mother's Day with a story about Mum, one of many that I fondly remember. 

The most fantastical things can happen, and it all starts with a wish.

Are you ready for this?

Dance-challenged moi, in my mid-teens and a tomboy at heart, volunteered to do the finale for the church Filipiniana night - a solo performance of a Moro ceremonial dance called Kandingan.

I'll do it. 

I wasn't sure where the bravado came from. My brain? A coffee-induced boldness?

Why not? 

I must have been delirious. 

The night of, I looked like a golden peacock, perfectly dressed in Dadee's silk robe and black polyester pajamas and enough borrowed jewelry to sink a boat. A long yellow scarf that was actually our neon-curtain was draped diagonally across my bodice for a sarong. I even had Auntie Tessie's pearl choker hung low across my forehead to complete the look of a Muslim Sultana princess.

The rumbling from the drum started (it was from a 45-RPM vinyl recording of the music). From stage left, I ran out with my arms raised like a needle to the sky.

I proceeded stepping here and there with slightly bent knees turned outward, fingers held stiffly together with the thumb outward and apart.

The audience was rapt.

My movement progressed into repeated frenzied twirls. I was spinning expertly, as if in a trance.

Then, for a dramatic climax, I executed a halt with my right hand up, palm front and upward. I crooked my left arm behind me, palm facing down. My face was upturned. My legs mimicked the lines of the arms.

I steadied my stance as I glanced sideways, enveloped in the rush of a runner's high when I saw my mother in the periphery of my vision. Mie (which was what I called her when it was just the two of us in the room) seemed enthralled, her face lit up with delight.

And I remembered.

At a parent-teacher convocation about five years ago, we watched my fifth grade teacher dance the Tinikling. She whispered to me then, Chon, you can dance like that some day.

The significance of my piddling amateurish performance dawned on me.

My Mum who had kept her best wish close to her heart was now watching it happen. 

I had just danced.

For.

Mie.

Mum at 18 years, Manila, 1934

Peter The Rock

Onstage

Those of you who know me, please pick your jaw up off the floor after I say this.

I actually performed onstage in an earlier lifetime.

It’s true. I’m serious. Please don’t laugh.

But that was years ago when purple nail polish wasn't really a thing.

YEARS, y'all.

Yep.

It seems like yesterday and foreverago all at the same time.

This is what I remember about my premier performance. 

It was prep week for Vacation Bible School. Just-turned teen girls who were to serve as VBS teachers trained at Harris Memorial, a school for deaconesses (the Protestant equivalent of a convent for nuns).

I remember the theme for that year, the story of Peter and John from the book of Acts. 

Learning the songs and the stories and the crafts was no biggie, but we also had to perform a skit at the end of the training period. I was assigned the prime role of Peter. (Aside: it was an all-girl cast, as you may have guessed.)

So be it.

Garbed in a one-piece tunic belted at the waist and a white cloth wound round my head as a turban, I additionally improvised with an eyeliner to simulate a moustache and a beard.

I guessed that Peter would have the kind of presence that turned heads when he said something. He would be broad-shouldered, with a calm and confident air that made him serene even in crisis.

Having thus internalized his character, I deemed myself psyched up for the role.

The curtain rose as the narrator began with the premise.

On the ninth hour which was the hour of prayer, Peter and John went up together into the temple.

Then he went on.

And a certain man lame from his mother's womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful, to ask alms of them that entered into the temple; who seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple asked alms.

That was my cue.

Waving my hands hurriedly as if trying to chase away an invisible fly, I began to recite Peter's lines with gusto, Silver and gold have I none.

I paused and forced confidence in my voice as I continued, But such as I have give I thee.

I was breathing heavily as if I had just sprinted a mile as I braced myself for the climactic part. I firmed my mouth into a straight line and delivered the finale as boomingly as I could in a voice that could have filled a cathedral. 

In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.

I took the beggar's right hand and lifted him up.

The hitherto 'lame man' must have felt so immense a feeling of gratitude for having been strengthened in his bones that he shouted, Praise God! Then he leaped up, stood, walked and ran falling into the arms of an astounded Head Deaconess seated upfront in the audience. 

The curtain went down at that dramatic and unexpected ending. Applause rang and we came out to take our bow.

Needless to say, the skit was a success. I heard folks asking, Who played Peter's part? He was so good-looking! 

Well, what do you know? 

I was on stage! I was in the here and now.