“Please, just take my sister,” 15-year-old Apple pleaded in the vernacular. She was sure the woman perched above them in the large acacia tree had heard her through the roar of the floodwaters. “I can stay down here, but please take my sister,” she added, holding 7-year-old Janie as high above the churning black tide as she could.
The irony of life. I have never understood this cliché more so than I do today. As I celebrate the beautiful birth of our third child, I find myself simultaneously having to grieve the painful loss of my loving father. Countless times I’ve heard people’s consoling words: “He is in a much better place today.” While I appreciate the sympathy and I know in my heart that it is true, it can’t erase the hurtful picture in my mind of my father never having been able to hold his newest grandchild in his arms.
I am a 43-year-old single mom to an eight-year-old daughter. My husband died eight years ago, before our daughter’s birth, and we’ve been living with my parents since. I am working as a school nurse and my salary is really not enough for us.
Didn’t President Benigno Aquino III (P-Noy) look like a 52-year-old teenager as he admitted before the news camera that he’s been dating Grace Lee? He seemed to be blushing, and had that bashful twinkle in the eyes. “Blushing?” he said. “Must be the lighting.” (News video? Lighting?) Anyway, whatever, he couldn’t mask the kilig.
I love Belen Siasoco Jose and Lydia Carmona Santos and Sr. Perla Macapinlac and Sr. Perla Ramirez, but they cannot drag me to the 65th (platinum) reunion of our St. Theresa’s HS class. After all, I’m just an adopted alumna.
When I was asked to write about the top 10 hottest men in the Philippines, I was at first hesitant—not for lack of material, mind you, but because a list of this nature is always subjective. I could already hear the comments and the protests coming my way. “Him? No way!” Still, the topic was too interesting to drop.
Last Oct. 15, Ateneo men’s basketball team manager and Fiamma bar owner Paolo Trillo tied the knot with Rissa Mananquil, model, former president of the Professional Models Association of the Philippines (PMAP), and Pond’s brand ambassador.
Bring out the “Dancing Queen” in you, the ’70s are back! The world’s No. 1 musical, “Mamma Mia!,” is now in Manila until Feb. 19. The music of the iconic band ABBA took my buddies and I along an exciting journey as the musical brought us to Greece.
Before my daughter, Ina, got married in 2002, I wanted to write her a letter on love and marriage, in a kind of mother-daughter talk. I thought of doing so when she was a little girl, in case I would no longer be around when she marries. I was glad I could do so at the appropriate time, and not when I was too young to be wise, too involved to see the big picture, and too passionate to be objective.
Serendipity, I believe, is always God’s way of showing the world His assurance. All we really need to do is discern, accept and wait for everything to come into fruition in His time. Of course, that is always easier said than done.
In one of our annual eight-day retreats when we were theologians—the final stage of studies and formation for priesthood—Fr. P. Divarkar, SJ, our retreat director, used this Sunday’s Gospel to introduce the second week of the Spiritual Exercises.
