As early as September all the ingredients for fruitcake should be on hand. That’s how it is with my friend Malu, anyway: she’d have gone to the wholesalers of Quiapo, racing the commercial bakers to the stock. Thus, she begins to bring upon me the pressures of the season.

But how can I resent her? Hers is one of only three noncommercial, home-baked fruitcakes I look forward to at Christmas—the two others are Rosarito’s and Betina’s.

I myself had once managed a good one, the golden fruitcake out of Betty Crocker’s—you might say Good Ole Betty was the Doctor Spock of baking. I also got my ingredients and packaging materials (cellophane, aluminum foil, boxes, ribbons and other decorations) from Quiapo; it was one of the rituals of the tradition of do-it-yourself homemaking handed down through generations. I had been myself indoctrinated by my paternal grandmother.

Lola belonged to the generation in which the woman of the house was expected to be able not only to make just about everything herself, but also to do so out of love. And she was determined to do what she could in preserving the tradition even after her time. To her it made for a special virtue—a woman’s gracia, as she would say—and Christmas was a good time to showcase it. You could make your own achara, bagoong or chutney to give as gifts. Or you could do a Jacqueline Bouvier and sew initials on handkerchiefs; or plant herbs in pots; or produce something artistic from this and that, a la Martha Stewart. Me—I chose fruitcake. As laborious and expensive as it is to make (that is, if made strictly to tradition), it should contain a proportionate amount of love.

Apart from the pilgrimage to Quiapo, the proper fruitcake takes 30 to 60 days to age in a cool, dry place and a regular dousing with cognac or brandy to keep it moist yet mold-free and enhance the ripening.

My first life—it does feel like I’ve had more than one—was spent happily fitting myself into Lola’s dream of the woman of the house; it gave me a feeling of accomplishment. Thus, my children grew up with mother cooking and baking, occasionally sewing and even gardening, and at Christmas herself wrapping their presents, which I still like to do.

Many years passed and much changed—I most of all. My dear Lola passed away, leaving me recipes and philosophies of an uncomplicated life. Alas, these alone could not save my first marriage.

With the kitchen as my world and the Operating Room as his, we increasingly became strangers to each other, strangers perhaps even to ourselves.

Now, in my second life, I’m out of the old mold—nay, out of any mold. And ironically I feel freer, living in a far smaller home, with a far smaller kitchen, and a garden that is, really, nothing more than a meter of balcony crawling with flowering vines that need close watching, lest they strangle themselves; for humans, there are, this life around, only me and my husband, who seemed never a stranger to me—I knew him as soon as I met him.

It may seem almost unfair that I can claim two completely different lives, each with its own kind of merry Christmas. The first goes back to Houston, Texas, to a time when my children believed in Santa Claus, and, perhaps, so did I, a time when we were so innocent and life so simple.

With both our sets of kids doing well, some married, with families of their own, life for us has become even simpler: we’re no longer the center of their Christmas. That in itself feels most liberating.

For many years I prepared only one labor-of-love dish—the pote Gallego—and it was enough to showcase my gracia. I froze it and gave it as gift to a few beloved friends, keeping enough for Vergel, hooked on it like crazy, to go back to again and again over weeks past Christmas. However, both Vergel and I have become converts to healthy eating and, except for very rare indulgences (majestic ham and lechon), are almost vegetarians.

There was a time when Christmas began with an early lunch, on December 11, Vergel’s father’s birthday, in their old home in Malabon, where his youngest brother lives and hosts, serving steamed oysters, charcoal-grilled bangus and liempo, a kind of lumpia, and pancit Malabon, of course, and for desert, fruits and native cakes famously known as sapin-sapin.

Christmas Eve dinner was spent with Mom, and Media Noche with Aunt Alice, but with their recent passing, barely a year apart, the two occasions are likely spent dining out early with any family who can come and Media Noche at home for just the two of us.

Christmas Day begins with a very late lunch, a tradition for us as a couple with first cousin Ninit Paterno’s clan, with some of my own children and grandchildren sometimes in attendance, too.

For many years, the pote was my only contribution to the feast, but with everyone’s health problems now, I know better: I bring instead a lemon-flavored pecan cake, now baked by my daughter, Gia.

Sometimes the old fruitcake habit tugs at me, but it remains, unacted on, no more than a nice memory. With no more pressures, no more proving, I have become free at Christmas!