We had a lovely dinner recently with friends we usually have no time to see except at night. Ten of us heeded the call of Chari and Amado Bagatsing to relax over tender juicy steaks. We spoke about high blood pressure while Malou Gopengco Rodriguez took her medicines. “Medichina,” as my granddaughter Demi Antonia says in Italian, feeding me my five vitamin tablets.
Ambassador Philippe J. Lhuillier, between bites of chocolate cubes before and after dinner at Red in Shangri-la Hotel, invited us to view his museum of religious artifacts collected 40 years ago from Spain, France, England and Italy. “But you have to be a minimum of 20 guests and a pre-advice for me to inform my curator who explains the provenance of each article,” he said, “from a portion of the skull of St. Tolentino of Spain, to a relic of St. Peter the Apostle to icons from Greece and a tiny particle of the Jesus Holy Cross!” Sounds astounding, doesn’t it?
The men shifted to sports talk. Of course Peping and Richard Gomez anticipated the Southeast Asian Games and young sportsmen. And then political party talk made the rounds between Amado and Peping while Chari, Edna and I discussed our children who like to read and eat, eat, eat. I have both kinds: one is Mai and the latter is China. “Let’s advise them to eat more vegetables,” we promised each other. But we decided, despite our “amens” and promises, that dieting wasn’t going to happen. Lest we be hated, we decided we wouldn’t bring it up to them. They would learn to resolve it on their own, through a mirror.
We were surprised that Lucy Torres-Gomez hasn’t had a child in 11 years and how Malou had five caesarean sections then, and now only three are allowed.
Our conversation shifted to traveling with Edna and Philippe just back from Rome where he was the ambassador to Italy. “How reasonable Et Al Airline is in its fares, and its service is noteworthy of praise.” We got prayerful. Oscar Rodriguez had visited the San Antonio prayer room to meditate for an hour. Leaving the Holy Tabernacle he put on a pair of shoes because you have to enter this tiny chapel barefooted. He returned home. The next day the church administrator called him to say Mr. X had lost his shoes and the only person in the chapel with him was Oscar. Could he find Oscar and ask him, “Did Oscar wear the correct pair of shoes?” Oscar, looking for Mr. X’s shoes in his closet, realized he had taken someone else’s shoes home. “How could I have gotten into them? They were a size smaller than my feet!” Shoes were exchanged from one neighbor to the other.
I have another shoe story and this one is from Ambassador Philippe J. Lhuillier. Observing his bulging waistline, he started walking around the Roman capital as his exercise, always putting an extra pair of shoes in his car. One day he went into a shoe store to meet his son. “Signor, your shoes aren’t the same,” the salesman noticed. “They don’t match!” “Oh!” Philippe asked for a shoe bag and had to buy a new pair of shoes. Great salesman, ha! Expensive error. My daughter Pin committed a shoe faux pas too, leaving her house with blue shoes, one slingback and the other pumps. Opps, her driver, did a sudden turn back home. My friends Agnes Irriberi and Lulu Tanalgo called my attention to the uniqueness of Mrs. Stella Martir, who always wears different colored shoes. One never matches the other. White on one foot and red on the other, then black and white and whatever color shoes she fancies for the day. And the bride wore blue shoes at a wedding I attended. I loved the idea.
For my inaanak Eric Castillo, shoes are both a blessing and a curse. He has a disease called poliomyelitis so the size of one leg is smaller than the other. Consequently, Eric uses orthopedic shoes and a long-leg brace for walking, which prevents the development of scoliosis due to the imbalance in his legs. His orthopedic shoes are a blessing to him because they make him feel normal even though he walks with a limp. But orthopedic shoes are one of the sources of frustrations in life. “It is so boring wearing shoes with one color and the same design all the time, over and over again,” he once told me. Every time he goes to the mall and sees different types of shoes, rubber shoes or leather, he feels deprived! He bought 10 pairs of rubber shoes once because he liked the design, not because he would wear them. In time, he gave away nine pairs of his shoes and kept his favorite in the original box.
Justice Simeon Gopengco, father of Malou, was on an airplane to Europe. Upon landing, due to the gravity of the “dive,” the shoes of the Australian behind him slid forced forward under Justice Gopengco’s seat; he mistakenly put them on and exited from the airplane. Apparently, the Australian who owned the shoes behind Justice Gopengco was brought down on a wheelchair, refusing to walk barefoot. A complaint about the missing shoes was filed against the airline and ended up with a diplomatic complaint for the Philippine Ambassador to that European country. The Ambassador searched for the Justice and arranged a meeting between Justice Gopengco and the Australian, to return the foreigners shoes. The Australian said he was insistent on getting his shoes back, because they had been handcrafted in Marikina!
Many stories have been written about shoes. Hans Christian Anderson wrote a short story called “The Red Shoes,” and the Grimm Brothers wrote “The Elves and the Shoemaker.” Prince Charming found her Cinderella by way of her glass shoes. And who can forget those ruby slippers Judy Garland wore in The Wizard of Oz across the Yellow Brick Road?
In our contemporary culture, Elvis sang about “Blue Suede Shoes” and we’d boogie-woogie in high school, and then there’s the book turned movie blockbuster The Devil Wears Prada (meanwhile I get teased in the office that “the Devil wears Ferragamo”). The TV show Sex and the City focuses on Carrie Bradshaw and her love affair with shoes. Whether she is elated or depressed, hopeful or desperate, this fashionable New Yorker vents her emotions via Christian Louboutins, Jimmy Choos or Manolo Blahniks. She’s so in love with her shoes that the message on her answering machine goes: “Hi. I’m not here but my shoes are, so leave them a message.”
I love baby shoes, specifically my grandchildren’s. I have a sentimental attachment, so I keep them. In fact, I have my father’s baby shoe inside a frame and he is 91 years old now. My children are more practical. Hardly used shoes, they hand them down from one child to another.
I once gave my uniformed officers shoes that were on sale in America as pasalubong. Did they fit? Their answer: Anything that’s free should fit. The shoes fit!