Happy Valentine’s Day!

 

We celebrate love and lovers today. Does it mean we will suffer traffic on a Sunday? I certainly hope not!

 

Yesterday was a mess. I chose not to venture out.

 

This is the time when heart-shaped cards, candy and chocolates and florists are all sold out. I remember many years ago, someone sent me a bouquet with a card that said “Red roses for a blue lady!” Not too original, but sweet. It was not signed. Go figure.

 

Here’s a toast to love, to people in love, who think they’re in love, to those who remember what it feels like, to those who have sworn never again and to the ones who keep on trying. And whoever and wherever we are, here’s to us, courageous people who braved it, some more than once, and have emerged “bloodied but unbowed.”

 

Love tokens

 

Allow me to do some reminiscing. One Valentine’s Day, a whole lifetime ago, I received a box of Whitman’s chocolates and a pretty ID bracelet with my name on one side and “Likewise, 5” inscribed behind it. Then there was a lovely poem with no meter or rhyme. It was written for the “girl with long arms” and I was thrilled.

 

Someone gave me a book on Dag Hammarskjold. Quite unromantic, that’s true. But it made for interesting conversation.

 

The cutest Valentine’s gift ever, I must admit, was a giant Nestle’s Crunch bar purchased on sale at Safeway for 50 cents. It had an IOU attached to it that promised and talked about better times. Those times did come.

 

And they were grand. But then the lights went out. Oh well.

 

Way back then and even now, when there are more candles on my birthday cake than I can blow, I love romantic stories, cheesy mushy movies, they call them chick flicks today. I watch them many times over, still breathlessly waiting for the classic love scenes. To this day, I get goose bumps when I hear, “Frankly, dear Scarlett, I don’t give a d—!” No one did cariño brutal like Clark Gable.

 

And how can anyone forget the old love songs? Frank Sinatra was my all-time favorite balladeer. No one can sing “Night and Day” like he did. I think I owned every record he ever made. We had a whole collection on V-discs, 33 rpm, right after the war. (Google that, kids.)

 

When I saw him in person eons later, raspy voice, forgetting lyrics and all, I was ready to swoon like the teenagers did when he was at his prime.

 

These days, however, I have become a tad biased and more selective with my music and even Old Blue Eyes can’t hold a candle to my own in-house “Concert King.”

 

So sue me! But in those good old days Sinatra was my Mr. Romance. Okay, Mathis, too.

 

There are many love songs that still tug at my heart.

 

They bring back warm and fuzzy memories. And for those who think it’s weird (that’s what the young ones call anything they don’t understand) that I should still get all giggly, sentimental and teary eyed at my age, I repeat my sister’s mantra. “We’re just old, we ain’t dead!”

 

Here we go!

 

Tuesday morning’s headlines screamed: “They’re off and running.” My coffee curdled.

 

The campaign period for the 2016 elections has started.

 

You mean what we have been seeing on streamers and TV for months now was not campaigning? Really? You could have fooled me.

 

Be that as it may, how I wish a few of the wannabes were off and running in another direction and never coming back. I cringe at the unimaginable, scary, embarrassing possibilities.

 

This is only the beginning. The mudslinging and name-calling are only now getting started. Wait till the candidates get warmed up. Shudder!

 

Where can one go to escape the stifling ugliness? Where do we find a whiff of clear, fresh air?

 

I wish it were as easy as just getting in a car and driving away, like we used to when I was a little girl. On busy days we went to Dewey Boulevard and sat by the bay, tasting the salt in the air.

 

Some days we had picnics sitting under the fruit-laden mango trees in a lush, undeveloped and uninhabited expanse of land called Alabang. I remember that at sundown, as we got ready to go home, we squeezed in just a few more minutes of fun, chasing fireflies.

 

Is there anywhere one can run to hide from the monstrosities of this political circus?

 

Oops!

 

There was an uncomfortable moment at a dinner the other night. Somebody did the unthinkable. I heard him ask a gentleman seated across the table, “Who is your presidential candidate?” The lady beside me gasped, “How tactless!”

 

The interrogator persisted, and when the reply came, he paused and said, “I wish I could say that I respect your choice. But let me ask you, how does it line up with your core values?”

 

The silence was deafening. You could slice it with a knife. I heard nervous laughter. Someone coughed. A couple left the table. The man tried to explain: “Well, I know what they say about the guy, but I can’t help it. He’s my friend.”

 

Then the man who had posed the question spoke again: “Sir, there comes a time in life when one must decide whether to keep his friend or take a stand. It is as simple as that.”

 

I almost applauded. Instead I downed someone else’s glass of white wine. Delicious!