80 Different Things: Big Finish

 Celebrating Me 

One of you didn't know many of the Different Things listing and have never seen my childhood photos with my brothers. Another knew only a few bits.

That's good. At least, I'm not repeating stuff. Continuing on.

71. Hmm... Maybe, I don't have to go through all these because...

YOU KNOW THE REST OF THE STORY!

Halloween In Phoenix, Arizona

Wrinkled was not one of the things I wanted to be when I grew up. - Anonymous

When I was young, I couldn't wait to grow up. Now, I'm just waiting for my next nap. Life has been a series of, I can't believe this is my life now moments.

But I've been content thinking that nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember because that's how we fill our minds with memories, like thousands of stars in the sky.

Memories, such as those of my 80th birthday which has been comprised of several perfect days.

First, a day filled with

precious and most-thoughtful gifts.

Far left: A wrist watch and monstera-design gown through Second Daughter's Walmart gift card 

Above right: Grilled stufft burrito lunch after shopping with First Daughter and the cutest six-pack mini Coke topped with a mini red bow from Favorite Son-In-Law

An adorable umbrella from Kyoto with a pixie-face Japanese doll handle and a Ross gift card (not in pic) from First Daughter

No gift is too small to give, nor too simple to receive, which is wrapped in thoughtfulness and tied with love.

Left: Japanese parasol unfurled. Note new wrist watch in full view

Leftmost: Telefora red roses and chocolates from Youngest Bro (who now resides in New Zealand)

Left: Yellow and lavender tulips from Jach (including a rogue African iris picked on the wayside)

Secondly, a time for cuteness overload at Don Don Donki, a Japanese-style discount store.

As First Granddaughter comments, Woah woah woah.

And Second Granddaughter: OMG AHHGGGG SOO CUTE!!

Thirdly, a super sarap birthday lunch of fried pampano fish, kare-kare, monggo guisado and halo-halo at Seafood City.

Then, capping it all, a Thai dinner treat at The Sister by First Daughter and family.

I may not have it all together, but together with family here and abroad, I have it all. TOGETHER is my most-perfect day, and for this I'm grateful. 

Ho'onani i ka Makua mau,

Ke Keiki me ka 'Úhane no.

(Praise God, From Whom all blessing flow.)

THE END?

Nope.

Here's to MORE DIFFERENT THINGS

and BEYOND!

By The Light Of Tiki Torches. Photo: V.E.V., Outrigger Canoe Club, Waikiki: March 2025

80 DIFFERENT THINGS: Part Four

 Celebrating Me 

College And Graduate School

College is fun as long as you don't die. - Tsugami Ohba

49. It was UP all the way with free tuition through semestral scholarships plus a one-semester Sigma Beta grant which I earned after writing a sob story essay (financial need was the qualifier).

50. I was weird and awkward through most of my sophomore year.

51. I started looking better soon after, thanks to Pond's cream and Maybelline eyeliner and shadow.

52. St. Mark's basketball team chose me as muse. I intentionally arrived late on opening night of the game to avoid parading with the team.

53. I wore my first white pair of one-inch Cuban heels for the UP taditional coming-of-age-for-females ritual parade called Cadena de Amor.

Cadena De Amor. ManilaTimes  photograph: UP: 1963

54. Who knows? Perhaps, I was one of those in the foto above because 1963 was the exact year of my participation.

55. Scooping each side of the tea-length skirt of my pink outfit, I limped through the entire ordeal.

56. A totally awesome fact at the time: my 15-inch waistline (give or take). LOL

57. In junior year, I won second place in a college-wide essay writing on Maria Clara. I titled mine, Maria Clara: Caricature Or Paragon? First place went to a senior law student. 

58. This was also the year I met a certain Vicente Velasco III, first at Christmas camp and later on campus. I thought, What's with the III? Is he royalty? 

59. I had just turned 20 when I graduated from college with a degree in English and Comparative Literature, cum laude.

60. I was hired as an instructor thereafter.

61. While teaching, I concurrently pursued graduate studies toward professorship status.

62. I chose a local Rockefeller Scholarship over an East-West scholarship in Hawaii to pursue graduate studies.

63. I had just turned 26 when I earned my Master's degree in English and Comparative Literature.

Graduate, Master of Arts in Comparative Literature. UP Yearbook Official foto. March 1971

Wedding Bells

When we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness - and call it love. - Rob

64. I got married a month after commencement.

65. Wedding was presided over by three ministers: Pastor Meynardo Jose from would-be-hubby's St. John's Church, Pastor Nathanael Cortez from my church St. Mark's, and the Pastor from UP Chapel (whose name I forget).

66. Dadee and all six brothers wore traditional barong tagalog for the occasion.

67. My attire was an embroidered shift gown made of jusi (pineapple fiber) and raffia-covered heels from Rustan's. 

68. I carried a single yellow rose for my bouquet.

69. Our labandera (laundry maid) Aling Luring, who was a guest at the wedding, said that I looked like Lisa Lorena, a popular actress at the time.

70. My wedding gown still hangs in the walk-in closet of our Columbus home.

(To be continued)

80 Different Things: Part Three

 Celebrating Me 

School Days

School is like a zoo. Except the animals talk. - Anonymous

28. At five years, I went to kindergarten at Ang Ilaw (The Light), a makeshift school that was across the street from the Llenado house.

29. Teacher Mrs. del Rosario looked ancient, dressed in an old-fashioned kimona dress everyday.

30. She often slapped my left hand with a ruler when I wrote to train me to be right-handed.

First Brother's class pic at Ang Ilaw Kindergarten School. He's third from left on the last row. I don't have a class pic.

31. One had to be seven years old to start first grade but Dad, convinced that I was ready at six years, faked my birth and baptismal certificates (filling out a blank certificate from Lolo Gorio's book) and signing with flourish for two sponsors, the pastor, and Bishop Sobrepena.

32. Consequenlty, I got accepted at Moises Salvador Elementary which was walking distance from the Torio house, now built on the same premises as the Llenado property.

33. Mrs. Capili was my first grade teacher. From her, I learned all about minutes and seconds, and days, months, and year.

34. Miss Guerrero, my second grade teacher, was my Mum's favorite. She often gifted her with boiled saba bananas. Her dream was for me to be a teacher like her.

35. All I remember doing in Miss Losa's third grade class was polishing my side of the desk wih sandpaper.

36. Right around the end of fourth grade, I had chicken pox, so Mrs. Pasion exempted me from taking the final test.

I must be eight years old here and in 3rd grade. With brothers Rey (6), Dan (4), and Eddie (2). Looks like it was posed at a studio.

37. We all called my fifth grade teacher Miss Acosta kembot because that was how she walked, wiggling her hips.

38. Mum wanted me to be a folkdancer when in sixth grade, she watched my teacher Miss Bautista dance the tinikling during a school program.

39. I was elementary school Valedictorian for which I received a 100-peso award.

TEEN YEARS AND HIGH SCHOOL

They say teenaged years are the best years of your life. They also said Algebra would be useful. - Anonymous

40. I was 12 when I started high school at Ramon Avancena.

41. To go to school, I rode the Quiapo-Balic-Balic jeepney everyday for a ten- centavo fare.

42. I won several contests in my third year: first prize in Geometry construction and second prize for a Tagalog essay on Earth Day. I got second place in an inter-high spelling competition. The word I missed was apiary.

43. My best friend Victoria Posadas and I would buy for ten centavos an ice-cold coke to share at recess.

44. Although at first I thought boys were yucky, I made an exception that year with Jose Raneses, my first crush. I kept the Christmas card he gave me under my pillow the rest of the year.

45. That was the time when friendship meant you could spend the whole day doing nothing and still have the best time ever.

46. To this day, I still text high school friends Nini Rodriguez (she never married), Del Ballesteros-Gedang, Lita de Guzman, Pi (from the musically-renowned de Leon family), Amor Landas-Marcos, Sonny de los Santos, Romy Fayloga, and Tony Ejan.

47. I'd always been shy. I didn't attend senior prom when I learned that I was Prom Queen candidate and had to walk and parade for the competition.

48. I graduated valedictorian in high school for which I earned college entrance scholarship at the University of the Philippines in Diliman.

(To be continued)                    

80 Different Things: Part Two

 Celebrating Me 

Growing up happens in a heartbeat. But the memories of childhood stay with you for the long haul. - The Wonder Years

Growing Up

14. Growing up, I was English-speaking. Mum wrote on my baby book that I would choose clothes after a bath, Mummie, dis one wid pawers.

15. We lived for a while in the Llenado home with Mum's six sisters. They said that at an early age, I could recognize which bakya (6 pair for the sisters, one for the maid) at the foot of the stairs belonged to whom. 

16. It was there that Blackie the dog bit me, for which I had to endure anti-rabies shots.

17. Mum always adorned me with real jewelry. I had a silver bangle and a pair of hand-crafted earrings with blood red gemstone that was supposedly my birthstone. 

18. Sort of a tomboy? Yes. I wore t-shirts and shorts when it was unbecoming for girls to be so attired. Hated dolls. Didn't like getting dressed for photos.

19. On Saturdays, Mum sometimes gave money to the maid so we could go to Cine Rosie to watch cinema heart throbs Amalia Fuentes and Romeo Vasquez. 

20. My godmother Auntie Tessie was my idol. I wanted to be like her. She was unmarried and drove her own car.

Pouting Don't-Want-To-Be-A-Girl in overalls, a birthday hat, and dollie. Llenado House on Trabajo Street (now M. de la Fuente), Sampaloc, Manila. Circa 1948

21. Once, Ninang took me to the air-conditioned Life Theater to watch Lana Turner's blockbuster movie Imitation of Life. 

22. Mum told me to never forget that I was Llenado, a landowner family with old money.

23. Dadee always teased me about my butt sticking out when I walked. I must have been channeling my Llenado lineage.

24. Mum lectured me on the importance of owning land. It is immovable property, she would say.

Maria Francisco Llenado and Gregorio Llenado Sr. Sepia photograph of my grandparents: Llenado House on Trabajo Street (now M. de la Fuente), Sampaloc, Manila

25. Because I was fair-skinned, Mum always chose bright orange and yellow fabric for dresses that she sewed for me.

26. For Christmas, when most girls wore pink dresses, Mum had me wear an apple green dress. You'll be different, she'd say.

27. For New Year, she would sew a light blue dress for me, her idea of an appropriate welcome hue for the year.

(To be continued)

80 Different Things: Part One

 Celebrating Me 

         The important thing to remember is not to forget. - Benny Bellamacina

For the first time in my blog history, I'm writing as I go, while preempting an originally-scheduled series topic. For two reasons: Brother Number Two's discovery of some rare foto albums in our ancestral home at the Emilia Compound and the fact that this month marks my milestone 80th birthday. 

So, here's the plan. This series will be a celebration of me through 80 personal tidbits, unknown to you.

I've not reached that stage yet where my train of thought often leaves the station without me.Thus, I'm confident that I can do this.

Here goes.

Pencil Sketch: AVS, Columbus: October 2023

                                 

                                         BIRTH AND EARLY YEARS

Never forget where you came from and never take your eyes off where you're heading. - Anonymous

1. You already know that I was born on March 21, 1945 but perhaps, not the fact that I was born in Balic-Balic, Manila. It is a jeepney-ride away from my ancestral Emilia Compound home.

2. I was delivered by a midwife at home, don't know exactly at what time.

3. Because of my tiny, flat, round, and reddish nose, I was dubbed Tomato Nose.

4. Relatives had commented that I looked like Fat Mother (Dad's mother), a comparison that I resented, growing up.

5. My ears were pierced shortly after birth.

6. Milak was the name that I used to call my Mum, perhaps because she was my milk source.

7. Mum said that because of hard economic times, she had to feed me castanog (roasted coconut meat) which she said gave me the smarts.

8. When she could, she would save centavos to go to the sari-sari store to buy me an egg.

9. I told my Mum once that I didn't like my given name, Adoracion. I wanted an American name, like Jennifer or Elizabeth.

10. She reasoned out that Adoracion was the most beautiful name ever because it meant adoration in English.

11. She had vowed that her first-born child, if a girl, would be so named, as a form of her adoration of God. Note: Glad she didn't apply the scriptural reference to sacrifice of the first-born.

12. Conceding to my inclination toward an Americanized monicker, Mum nicknamed me Doris after Doris Day, a popular American actress and singer at the time.

13. As a child, when asked what my name was, I'd say, 'Chon Toyo. Mum and Dad took to Chon as a shortened form of Chona, referencing me in their mind to one Chona Recto-Kasten, a well-known socialite at the time. They kinda liked that linkage.

                                            (To be continued)