Home sweet home
February 18, 2007 | 12:00am
I remember during the days I was still young and naïve enough (read: six years old) to allow my mother to put me and my older brother in matching Cacharel outfits and identical bowl haircuts, we would spend New Year’s Eve at the home of my dad’s friend.
It was perhaps one of the most spectacular homes I have ever seen. It had a chapel, a grand garden à la C.Z. Guest and a house that gave Tara (pre-war) a run for its money. I remember being so entranced by the grandiosity of it all. I breathed to my mom as we entered the house, "Oh my god, they’re so rich." My eyes were as big as saucers and my embarrassed mother shushed my nouveau riche inclinations with a stern warning: "Don’t touch anything and only talk to the children." I didn’t need kids to keep myself entertained. I stared at the crystal chandeliers and little objects that were casually littered around the house, and I hardly noticed it was midnight.
We would then return home to my grandfather’s home, which was a few streets away. It was back to reality. My aunt told me that my grandfather’s home was one of the first to be built in Forbes Park: "It was hills and trees here, just like a forest," she would say with an air of smugness like they discovered it or something.
I never understood why it was a big deal, but I guess adults have different ways to pat themselves on the back. My grandfather’s house was the total opposite of the grand home of my dad’s friend. Although in scale it could house 70 people, which I think it did with the staff and relatives that lived there, there were no crystal chandeliers or anything Baccarat in that house. My grandfather took me to garage sales instead.
It didn’t matter if we were here or in the US, weekends were all about garage sales. Our house was filled with stuff we had found during those weekends. My grandfather would let me pick one thing every weekend, and it usually was something completely unnecessary and strange. I would get hairdryers from the ’70s complete with the hose and cap, used perfume, foot warmers (eww!) and broken toys. My grandfather thought these were treasures, and I thought so, too. This was my world with my grandfather, my real life. I only was able to experience that level of sophistication once a year; for the rest, it was all about garage sales and eating dried fish with Lolo.
When I was nine, my parents left Flame Tree, the name of the house of my grandfather, after the street it was on. People in the old days named their homes, I think. It was never Fernando’s house; it was Flame Tree. Our beach home was Roca Encantada, and in Iloilo, it was called Colonial. Now it’s kinda prissy to do that, although I plan to do it when I do move in to my first real house. I’ll call it Little Gibraltar or Napoleon House, since I’m more than sure it will be small. I saw another way of living through my mother’s eyes.
Her house was compact, well put together and beige. My mother thought that beige was the color of intelligent people. It was not risky, it blended with everything and nothing about it screamed crazy. Living in Flame Tree, my mother, a rational transplant from Bataan, had seen all the crazy she could handle for one lifetime. Everything matched. When I was 11, she even commissioned me to draw flowers for her. I was very good at painting and was even featured in a book about gifted children. I was really better as a child. They were my golden years. I was nice, sweet, talented and self-contained. Now I’m whiny, cynical, capricious and lazy. She had two conditions: that the flowers be gray and the leaves beige. I never drew a more depressing piece.
My project this year is to dress up my first adult apartment. I’m moving away from my Melrose Place nest. My dad looked at me disapprovingly when I invited him for dinner at Melrose Place when I first moved in: "Why is it so small?" I gently reminded him that he had decided to cut the umbilical cord (and cash flow) and I was left to my modest income. I never invited him again. As I was dreaming about the blueprints in my head, I found myself affected by these three homes that captivated me as a child. Over the years, I acquired little treasures from my travels. I kept them in my playroom pad, an apartment in Legaspi Village that I kept to entertain friends as my parents could not stand the noise that came with my extravaganzas.
It later became my office when I moved out of their house, and I decided to abandon entertaining since I was lousy at it anyway.
In my head, I longed for the rich and opulent splendor that my dad’s friend’s home had, although I’ll need to just keep longing for it since my champagne dreams won’t fit my beer budget. But my fetish for mismatched furniture is unmistakably from my garage sale weekends. Not even my dining chairs match. What I lacked in actual gemstones I translated into rich jewel-like hues that dominate the home. And being the prisoner in the beige cage (kidding, although I was grounded a lot as a teenager), there is strictly no beige. I like crazy people colors. There is always something in me that was afraid of the ordinary. The rickety furniture in Flame Tree inspired me a lot. I loved anything old and worn, but the memory of the musty smell that came from the second-hand stuff did not make for pleasant memories. Thus, I relied on insanely expensive candles to give me that Park Avenue feel, even if I did live near a hospital, police station and a fire station. Sirens for the siren, as I always say.
The things I got from my mom were things I got literally. I call it the MAMA (Museum of Acquired Mommy’s Art). I slowly started pilfering guest soaps, which escalated into paintings and a Lalique dining table from the ’30s. I’m now lobbying for the malachite table that once belonged to the Romanovs and a Chiparus piece that once belonged in the estate of Liberace. Being the true consistent fashionista, my mother covered this table, which I might even learn to love more than my dog Bruno, in a beige tablecloth.
So with fond memories, I go on living life with vestiges from the past. My friend calls any home I live in "The House of Sand and Fog," as I always buy or acquire things meant for mansions. Perspective and common sense were never principles I adhered to. And for that I am glad.
It was perhaps one of the most spectacular homes I have ever seen. It had a chapel, a grand garden à la C.Z. Guest and a house that gave Tara (pre-war) a run for its money. I remember being so entranced by the grandiosity of it all. I breathed to my mom as we entered the house, "Oh my god, they’re so rich." My eyes were as big as saucers and my embarrassed mother shushed my nouveau riche inclinations with a stern warning: "Don’t touch anything and only talk to the children." I didn’t need kids to keep myself entertained. I stared at the crystal chandeliers and little objects that were casually littered around the house, and I hardly noticed it was midnight.
We would then return home to my grandfather’s home, which was a few streets away. It was back to reality. My aunt told me that my grandfather’s home was one of the first to be built in Forbes Park: "It was hills and trees here, just like a forest," she would say with an air of smugness like they discovered it or something.
I never understood why it was a big deal, but I guess adults have different ways to pat themselves on the back. My grandfather’s house was the total opposite of the grand home of my dad’s friend. Although in scale it could house 70 people, which I think it did with the staff and relatives that lived there, there were no crystal chandeliers or anything Baccarat in that house. My grandfather took me to garage sales instead.
It didn’t matter if we were here or in the US, weekends were all about garage sales. Our house was filled with stuff we had found during those weekends. My grandfather would let me pick one thing every weekend, and it usually was something completely unnecessary and strange. I would get hairdryers from the ’70s complete with the hose and cap, used perfume, foot warmers (eww!) and broken toys. My grandfather thought these were treasures, and I thought so, too. This was my world with my grandfather, my real life. I only was able to experience that level of sophistication once a year; for the rest, it was all about garage sales and eating dried fish with Lolo.
When I was nine, my parents left Flame Tree, the name of the house of my grandfather, after the street it was on. People in the old days named their homes, I think. It was never Fernando’s house; it was Flame Tree. Our beach home was Roca Encantada, and in Iloilo, it was called Colonial. Now it’s kinda prissy to do that, although I plan to do it when I do move in to my first real house. I’ll call it Little Gibraltar or Napoleon House, since I’m more than sure it will be small. I saw another way of living through my mother’s eyes.
Her house was compact, well put together and beige. My mother thought that beige was the color of intelligent people. It was not risky, it blended with everything and nothing about it screamed crazy. Living in Flame Tree, my mother, a rational transplant from Bataan, had seen all the crazy she could handle for one lifetime. Everything matched. When I was 11, she even commissioned me to draw flowers for her. I was very good at painting and was even featured in a book about gifted children. I was really better as a child. They were my golden years. I was nice, sweet, talented and self-contained. Now I’m whiny, cynical, capricious and lazy. She had two conditions: that the flowers be gray and the leaves beige. I never drew a more depressing piece.
My project this year is to dress up my first adult apartment. I’m moving away from my Melrose Place nest. My dad looked at me disapprovingly when I invited him for dinner at Melrose Place when I first moved in: "Why is it so small?" I gently reminded him that he had decided to cut the umbilical cord (and cash flow) and I was left to my modest income. I never invited him again. As I was dreaming about the blueprints in my head, I found myself affected by these three homes that captivated me as a child. Over the years, I acquired little treasures from my travels. I kept them in my playroom pad, an apartment in Legaspi Village that I kept to entertain friends as my parents could not stand the noise that came with my extravaganzas.
It later became my office when I moved out of their house, and I decided to abandon entertaining since I was lousy at it anyway.
In my head, I longed for the rich and opulent splendor that my dad’s friend’s home had, although I’ll need to just keep longing for it since my champagne dreams won’t fit my beer budget. But my fetish for mismatched furniture is unmistakably from my garage sale weekends. Not even my dining chairs match. What I lacked in actual gemstones I translated into rich jewel-like hues that dominate the home. And being the prisoner in the beige cage (kidding, although I was grounded a lot as a teenager), there is strictly no beige. I like crazy people colors. There is always something in me that was afraid of the ordinary. The rickety furniture in Flame Tree inspired me a lot. I loved anything old and worn, but the memory of the musty smell that came from the second-hand stuff did not make for pleasant memories. Thus, I relied on insanely expensive candles to give me that Park Avenue feel, even if I did live near a hospital, police station and a fire station. Sirens for the siren, as I always say.
The things I got from my mom were things I got literally. I call it the MAMA (Museum of Acquired Mommy’s Art). I slowly started pilfering guest soaps, which escalated into paintings and a Lalique dining table from the ’30s. I’m now lobbying for the malachite table that once belonged to the Romanovs and a Chiparus piece that once belonged in the estate of Liberace. Being the true consistent fashionista, my mother covered this table, which I might even learn to love more than my dog Bruno, in a beige tablecloth.
So with fond memories, I go on living life with vestiges from the past. My friend calls any home I live in "The House of Sand and Fog," as I always buy or acquire things meant for mansions. Perspective and common sense were never principles I adhered to. And for that I am glad.
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