Remember when?

I remember only three among all my birthday celebrations. One in Kasulutan Beach, Tawi-Tawi when the Samal and Badjao children, strand dwellers living along the edges of the waters, were treated to fried chicken.

It was a rare experience for the children to savor chicken flown in from Zamboanga City, or so I thought, only to hear them request for sardines. At Bongao, Tawi-Tawi the huge Batibot characters performed before 500 children. Popsicles were rare in that southern province then, and Francis dared his imagination to do the seemingly impossible. He bought in the local market bits of plastics that resembled condoms. Got a huge pitcher and filled it with an orange drink adding lots of sugar. He ended his experiment tying the ends of the plastic and placing them beside dry ice to cool and harden from 7 a. m. to 5 p.m. It worked out. For the first time, Tawi-Tawi saw and tasted what popsicles where.

Another was a monumental, birthday bash when I was governor. It seemed the whole of Tarlac’s three districts’ residents converged at the Capitol Building. It was a divine mess, a pandemonium, feeding hundreds and hundreds with aching feet and a frozen smile.

Was I surprised to have six cadets carry me and my chair around the mess hall while the corps sang their unique version of Happy Birthday! Cadets are dunked in the pool on their birthday. Not me. It’s a day when crispy lechon, rare for the boys and girls, is served to 1,000 cadets while the Muslims are segregated out of respect for their religion. The majority in both occasions, the Sama-Badjao children’s party and the Cadet Corps, made me celebrate the diversity of different complexions, characteristics, languages, noses, eyes, intelligence, culture. Wonder of all wonders, we were unified.

My choice of where I want to share one year gone by and reluctantly accept another has become more meaningful over the past years, especially at the academy. By now my list of friends has become fewer. The older I am, the pickier I get.

This year when my children asked me what I was doing for my birthday dinner, I said, “Seeing you…” and six Moro friends.

My circle has, from the size of a huge zeppelin, shrunk to the dimensions of a chopper… from a king-sized pizza to bite-size. No extravagance has been my preference with the existing poor and the jobless. Just thinking about getting all dolled up for any party makes me want to stay home. Just the thought of deciding which black pair of pants to wear, cotton or crepe, gets me exhausted. Every day I do so much and I’m as sprite as a teen, using my head all the wiser. But deciding on mundane matters tires me. I automatically get lazy.

I’ve always been eager at planning celebrations for my children, never for me. Clowns, hamburgers, barbecue, spaghetti was for all five girls. The more guests they had the bouncier the trampoline was as shrieks and even fights ensued. The more garbage we collected from wrapping paper and stuffed them into a huge balikbayan box. Inviting long-lost married friends and seeing their children grow at the same time with mine made me wonder, would any of my girls marry their sons? Would he be kind to my daughter? Social classes stuck together closer then, now demarcation lines are set aside, evident even in society pages.

At their different ages I celebrated my own maturity growing along with them. A three-year-old with a party? Not reasonable, they wouldn’t understand what was going on or remember. At 10, my first set wanted spaghetti sent to their elementary classroom. At 13 and teenagers my second set wanted their classmates to sleep at home. That was fine but for them to bother another household, I didn’t allow.

At 16, my first set of girls Liaa and Josephine, and my second set of three born every two years, wanted to go on picnics in Tarlac and Baguio. I asked permission from their classmates’ mommies and used my social graces. At 17 Pin was partying with a curfew of 12 a.m. with seemingly young boys. Could I trust them, I wondered. At 18, boys came over to visit and I planned their merienda. In time my children’s world of Disneyland summers became tedious for them. They wanted to remain in Manila to be with their boyfriends. Recalling huge shocked eyes at seeing Barnum and Bailey circuses in New York courtesy of my in-laws summertime was the most embedded picture in my brain… the children had become young adults.

I learned to understand every stage of girls growing up, up, up older. I went through being glamorous, steadying myself on my two-inch heels. Later, flat shoes on the ground got me around faster. All the changes in my life came in loops and humps and experiences that carried me to further lessons. Life with two sets of children was a perfection of my emotions through reruns of every past. I had grown to treasure their hands, clutching mine in need, combing hair drenched with knots and perspiration, powdering their backs to warm them from sinuses. When they had fever I dunked them in ice and cold water, a remedy taught to me by my mother-in-law. I wrapped them speedily in a warm towel after a long swift dip in a freezing basin they haven’t forgotten till today. What a quack doctor I became.

Broken hearts eventually set in. The mystery of what was going on made me inquisitive about my girls’ emotions. Decisions were theirs, not mine. Their decisions were simple consequences of their choices. Even like this, for example: A ride on a motorbike downhill. I saw Pin crying with a cut on her thigh. Cousin Marla came to me with a cut on her eyebrow that’s a scar today. As for Pin, a year later, a blood clot mixed with fat caused a lump we thought was more serious than fat and a black and blue bruise. A cyst had developed from bumping a hollow-block wall and had to be operated on. Both certainly faced the consequences.

I started out with this column writing about my birthday and I ended up with a celebration of remembrances of my children’s birthdays and their lives intertwined with mine. I know why. How I changed from being a teenage bride to a full-fledged mom. Through God’s kindness I had grown up with them believing growth can be ageless in spite of birthday celebrations. I see my friends and I don’t remember them with their hair dyed today but remember them as young mothers with youthful memories of their little children in their “party best” at my baby parties.

I never look at calendars and numbers. I’ve forgotten how old I am. I hate numbers and flunked my math subjects from high school onward! I can live without numbers but I can’t live without my children and memories.