Jackie: I came to make peace, not war

The Pandora’s Box was pried open when Andre, guesting on Startalk a few Saturdays with his dad Benjie Paras and younger brother Kobe, addressed his estranged mom Jackie Forster when asked a sensitive question by hosts Joey de Leon and Lolit Solis about her, “Give us space!”

That widening “space” was quickly bridged by Jackie with a music video that she herself made titled Remember Me, inspired by the Adele song Don’t You Remember, in which she appealed to her sons for understanding, recalling their beautiful moments together, reminding them that, whatever mistakes she has done, she will forever be a mother to them, ending the gone-viral video with a plea for forgiveness, “I think that’s enough time and space, my loves. Please forgive me.”

Three more such music videos (Parts 2, 3 and 4) are nearing completion but, unlike the first one, it won’t be for public consumption.

“Those will be strictly between me and my sons,” Jackie said in an exclusive interview with Funfare last Sunday afternoon barely three hours before her flight back to Kuala Lumpur where she and her Dutch husband and their two kids (aged seven and three) reside, hoping that they would soften Kobe and Andre’s hearts into, as Jackie is praying (keeping her fingers crossed), “giving me another chance.”

She rushed home Friday night, taped an interview with Boy Abunda for The Buzz (aired last Sunday), guested on Jobert Sucaldito and Ahwel Paz’s dzMM radio program, said “Hi!” to some friends and did a one-on-one with this columnist for both Funfare and Startalk (airing on Saturday, July 27, after Eat, Bulaga! on GMA). All in barely 48 hours. 

“I came not to make war but to make peace,” added Jackie who, at her early 30s, has obviously mellowed. The last time she was here was two years ago as a castaway of the GMA reality-TV Survivor Philippines (won by Betong Sumaya Jr., now a regular cast member of the GMA gag show Bubble Gang). She quit.

Misty-eyed, Jackie recalled that she was only 16 when she and Benjie got married in Las Vegas (marriage has since been annulled). Before she was 20, Jackie found herself a mother of two, a responsibility that, she now admitted, she was ill-prepared for. The marriage was doomed from the start. Inevitably, she and Benjie broke up, with their two sons caught between them. Initially, Jackie enjoyed her visiting rights, until something “traumatic” (as Andre put it) happened, something that Jackie now refused to discuss. The sons opted to be with their dad.

Jackie and her new family are now living happily ever after in Kuala Lumpur and so are Benjie and his wife Lyxen with Kobe and Andre, together with the couple’s young kids. There hasn’t been any communication between Jackie, and Kobe and Andre.

“A few years ago,” recalled Jackie, “I chanced upon them (Benjie and Lyxen, with children) at a five-star hotel. I wanted to run and hug my sons but I held back. I didn’t want to force myself on them.”

According to Benjie, he won’t stop Kobe and Andre from seeing their mom again but he’s not forcing them to, simply waiting for them to do so voluntarily…in due time. Wouldn’t it be nice for the two families to let bygones be bygones and stay as one big happy extended family (like Ogie and Regine with his ex-wife Michelle van Eimeren and her new husband)?

Jackie smiled, her eyes lighting up. “That would be nice…” if that ever happens.

“Anytime my sons relent and say they are ready to meet me,” assured Jackie, “I will fly back and give them a big hug, even if I have to fly back tomorrow.”

What’s up?

= Oops! Corrections on yesterday’s The last time I saw Paris story:

=From Bing A. Miranda (no address given):

The Luxor Obelisk at Place de la Concorde stands where a guillotine stood during the French Revolution. This is where King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Madame du Barry, Antoine Lavoisier and Maximilien Robespierre, among others, lost their heads between 1793-1794.

Anne Boleyn, the second wife of England Henry VIII and the catalyst of the English Reformation (the shift from Catholicism to the creation of the Church of England/Anglicanism), was beheaded two centuries earlier on May 19, 1536, at the Tower of London.

Your tour guide may have gotten Anne Boleyn confused with Marie Antoinette, both notorious but grossly misjudged women.

=From Erick Geronimo, London:

The Luxor Obelisk, a 23-meter high Egyptian obelisk standing at the center of the Place de la Concorde, that (as pointed out by the tour guide) “marks the spot where Anne Boleyn was beheaded.”

For your information, Anne Boleyn, who was one of the 6th wives of Henry VIII of England was beheaded at the Tower of London. You probably were referring to Marie Antoinette who was beheaded at the Place de la Révolution (present-day Place de la Concorde).

Ai-Ai (re)freshed abroad

Ai-Ai de las Alas flew home from an extended US family vacation with her children the other day, recharged and refreshed, ready for the old grind (I mean, movie/TV work and not the court cases she and her estranged husband [of one month] Jed Salang have swapped). Here are some photos from that vacation on both coasts of the US (top to bottom as Ai-Ai herself has captioned): With my children (Sancho, Nicolo and Sophia) and step-children (unidentified) and Papey (her ex-beloved Miguel Vera with whose family Ai-Ai and their kids are close)…Our family photo in the US (not specified which coast) sharing a big American meal…With Nicolo (based in California with dad Miguel) and Sancho in San Francisco on the Fourth of July…and with The Obamas at a Wax Museum.

(E-mail reactions at [email protected]. You may also send your questions to [email protected]. For more updates, photos and videos visit www.philstar.com/funfare or follow me on www.twitter/therealrickylo.)