“Drink from the well of yourself and begin again.” —Anonymous
Not-so-newbie author Alma Cruz Miclat turned 65 in December last year with a new de luxe book, “Soul Searchers and Dreamers,” to mark her milestone.
This mother of two—the talented but tragic Maningning and stage actor, singer and teacher Banaue—said she considered the age of retirement a precarious one, when life could be taken away anytime, “yet you are prepared for any possibility because of the cause you embraced.”
Asked how her sixth decade is different from 10 years ago, she recalled how she was three months shy of 50, in December 2000, when Maningning took her own life. Alma and husband Mario were out of the country, she said, “leaving the most difficult task of funeral arrangements to her courageous only sister, Banaue.”
She said, “I couldn’t imagine Maningning doing what she did. I thought she had everything—beauty, brains, kindness, talents, love from our close-knit family, even from our extended family. I tried to seek answers, talked to God, talked to Ning, asked myself what I had missed out on in my relationship with her, what unfathomable sadness and sheer frustration engulfed her, such that leaving this life was the only recourse.”
Alma was senior vice president at Data Center Design Corp. For 26 years, she headed the company’s sales and marketing department.
After Maningning’s death, she was left with “grief so deep that I had to do something to save myself and my family in the process,” she said. “What happened in the 10 years and more after the tragedy—the books we wrote and published, the Maningning Miclat Art Foundation we formed in her memory to help young artists like her—were coping mechanisms to give sense to a beautiful life cut short.”
She said she’s battle-scarred, a survivor trying to enter a state of grace and gratitude. She cited the many times her marriage vows of “in sickness and in health” were tested, when her husband (they will have been married 45 years this May) was taken ill at different times.
“He had several near-death episodes. The worst was in September 1998, when he underwent quintuple coronary artery bypass. He bled continuously. We appealed for blood donations. What happened next astounded us and the Philippine Heart Center. Donors from all walks of life—academe, police, military, business—queued from sunrise to sunset. We not only had enough blood for Mario, but for the needs of many patients suffering from a dengue epidemic at that time.”
Another time, when they were living in Antipolo in September 2012, a week before they were to leave for China for a paper Mario was supposed to read in a symposium, he had a stroke before midnight.
“I was familiar with the symptoms of a heart attack. This was different. He was unintelligible. He couldn’t move his legs. He felt dizzy. I asked our house help to assist me in moving him to the car. I drove and drove, thinking of the Heart Center where his cardiologist was. While driving, I egged him to cough and do deep breathing, especially when I couldn’t hear any movement.”
It felt like déjà vu. Eight years earlier, Alma had driven from Antipolo to take her mother, who was having a heart attack, to the Heart Center. It was raining, the older woman was moaning; she was declared dead on arrival when they reached the hospital.
In the case of Mario’s stroke, they were lucky to get to the Heart Center with him still conscious. The coughing and deep breathing first aid that Alma learned from a forwarded e-mail message helped ease her husband’s pain.
Mitos Benitez of Baguio’s Hill Station
The stroke left his right leg immobile, the left one wobbly. It took a week before he got back his memory, and months of rehabilitation before he could walk again with the aid of a crutch.
Despite these, he remains the love of her life. “I have not felt a big difference in Mario the man and Mario the author, probably because I knew him as poet and writer before we got married. I can’t separate the two. He is meticulous, obsessive compulsive, which exasperates me sometimes because I’m practical. He can have a temper but can be very patient, too. What’s endearing about him is his soft heart for people, especially the hoi polloi.”
A blessing in Alma’s 60s is becoming a grandma. She described grandparenthood as “love, indulgence, comfort, bliss, joy, happiness and more. Those are the feelings I get as I watch little Raja grow. It’s spoiling your grandchild because you’ve earned the right to do so, because you know that disciplining your apo is the duty of his parents.”
Raja told her, a few days after she retired, “Nanay, dati di kita love kasi lagi kang nasa office. Pero ngayon, love na kita kasi retired ka na.”
Alma wants Raja to remember her as a lola who doesn’t only lend him her cell phone, even if she’s using it, so he can play games, and who allows him to watch Baby TV and Junior Disney even if she and Lolo Mario want to watch BBC and CNN.
“I want him to remember us as grandparents who put him to sleep during nights when his parents had to be out for work or for a date, and who talked to him like an adult and shared wisdom and love through our own actions.”
She imagines her next book as more writings about art and artists, maybe part two of “Soul Searchers and Dreamers.”
“I also would like to write about women. I have written about my mother. ‘Mother of Pearl’ was included in our biography, ‘Beyond the Great Wall: A Family Journal.’ I want to continue writing about other mothers and grandmothers. Featuring them will be a balm for my alma, my soul. I hope I will still be healthy and well to do all I want to do.”
She shared her list of favorite authors and books, among them Jose Rizal’s “Noli” and “Fili”; Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude”; Arundhati Roy’s “The God of Small Things”; and many others.
Alma said women must “love ourselves, too. Even as we tend to prioritize husband, kids, and now grandkids, we should make it a point to pamper ourselves once in a while, gift ourselves with something like a massage, a trip to a parlor and the like.
“I like the idea of women getting together now and then to watch a movie, have coffee, lunch or dinner, or even go out of town together.”
Retirement has allowed her to visit some of the country’s sights in Cebu and Vigan. “Everybody should have a chance to travel. Priority should be given to our own spots. Traveling in one’s own country helps us appreciate what we have, helps us understand and respect other people and their culture. It helps in enhancing one’s humanity. I look forward to unraveling more secrets of our beautiful country and people.”