Who’d want to… manage (one guesses it’s an appropriate word) this group of women not only talking all at the same time but also engrossed in laughing at themselves?
The scene preparatory to the photo shoot fairly explodes in disorder. One is suddenly struck by the idea that the American Diane Arbus, distinctive for her photographs of circus performers, transvestites, people in masks, people lost in themselves, would have been in her element and produced shots as startling as she made them in her time. Except that here, glee is evidently the underlying emotion. And the subjects would not have stayed still long enough to evince the singularly dark Arbus mood.
Endgame
The disorderly scene is part of the early Christmas gathering (Nov. 22) of the College of the Holy Spirit High School Class of 1965. The ties that bind the women date back to when they were 5-6-year-olds entering the first grade; they have been in touch through the ebb and flow of time, more often than not addressing or referring to one another by their maiden names. Now, done with raising children and with grappling with the demands of family and career, they are confronting—no, playing—the endgame. And laughing while at it.
So who’d want to manage such a group at such an occasion, with DIY Christmas hats and “screaming colors” as the decreed theme? No sweat.
Earlier, faint squeaks of protest at producing a suitably festive hat—the couturier Lulu Nepomuceno claiming fatigue, for example—had been swiftly dismissed by the class’ acknowledged moving force, Rosalou Soriano, whose bright idea it was. Efficient arrangements for the tedious minutiae of gatherings had been made: lunch at Mesa Greenhills hosted by birthday girls Lillian Santillan, Chari Balatbat, Chari Paje, Lulu Maceda and Vicky José; stubs for the exchange gifts and the raffle by Tiks Carillo and Tessie Centeno; birthday cake by Buching Yoingco, Elena Palenzuela, Luz Ibarra, Dina Casis, Chai Morabe, Gracia del Rosario, Tiks and Tessie…
Busy bees
The busy bees were at work even as packets of Ottie Henson’s to-die-for chicharon, a bestseller in her restaurant in Angeles, Pampanga, were being handed out. (The resulting joke: Next time, bring more chicharon with atorvastatin on the side.) More treats appeared: cans of Spam from Cynthia Cheng, trays of eggs from Kate Banta, Christmas gewgaws, birthday gifts—a loving ritual of give and take marked by a flurry of embraces. In between, Eggie David took the time to pray with and for someone needing comfort.
The assembly managed to gather two long-missing classmates—Ades Tagle and Jean Mendoza. Mos Viado lost her way but managed to get there.
Lunch having been expertly dispatched, the Christmas hats were now laid out for the judges’ discriminating estimation. The women were alternately admiring of and tickled pink by the display—literally a Mad Hatter’s feast. Deadpan, the dancer Dee Villareal (also the mother of singer Miguel Aguila) grumbled about her pillbox creation, whispering that if she were asked who had made the thing lying unclaimed on the table, she would deny it. Patty Antiporda confessed that she had raided the family Christmas tree to come up with her hat.
Mission accomplished
The winners—Cielo Basco, Mila Licauco, Gracia, Patty and Kate—were shortly proclaimed and called to model their stuff. The way they looked, a conclusion emerged: How sweet it is to declare “(wacky) mission accomplished” and be applauded for it.
Thus this hubbub. Everyone but for a few are properly hatted and poised to be photographed, milling about, talking each to each, all the while convulsed with madcap laughter. Yet miraculously, as though the Spirit had descended and nudged every giggling woman in place, the disorder straightens itself out: Esther José and her reindeer antlers, Mely Viado playing peek-a-boo, Joy Sabado in jaunty red, Evelyn Golangco and Vicki Jugo in delicate silver, Inday Jopson in black with holiday accents…
The moment is now frozen in time—to show those absent how things proceeded, to remind everyone present of the way they were.
Lulu Maceda, who arranged the lunch and produced the prizes for the winners, smiles serenely at right with a tiny Christmas tree on her head.
Rosalou, ringleader of the merrymaking, her headgear looking like an extravagant birthday cake, quite fittingly sits at the center.
The traffic starts to simmer outside. Having seized the moment, the women begin to come to terms with leave-taking. “Life,” Joan Didion wrote, “changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.”
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