The Gospel of Happiness (according to Chit)

On this month dedicated to women, Chit Roces-Santos is a must-read. Her first book Personal Space and other essays (published by Anvil) is for all women out there — happily married, happily in a relationship, blissfully or anxiously single, or lost somewhere in all of the above.

Chit is an inspiration to women because she dares to be happy, sometimes uniquely; she dares go to that destination called happiness even if she has to traverse the road less travelled. She dares to feel girlish even when she’s wearing reading glasses — I’m sure she can manage to scrutinize her grandchildren’s report cards even while feeling saucy in Victoria’s Secret as she waits for her husband to come home from work.

Chit shows you that giddy happiness can be yours at 16 or 46, 56 or 76. It can begin now, if you have the courage to be worthy of it. For Chit, no woman is ever over the hill. Wife to newsman Vergel O. Santos (one of my bosses while I was with Cory Aquino’s Press Office at Malacañang) and mother of four, Chit shares her own tried-and-tested formula to staying at the peak of the hill — even when the sun sets behind her.

In one of the book’s chapters, “The Older Woman” (Vergel is six years her junior though he has Richard Gere’s silver gray hair while her hair is the shade of Anne Hathaway’s), Chit shares how she once found affirmation in Jane Fonda. Chit recounts that Fonda, who is her age, “leaned forward in a gesture of theatrical intimacy and said in a stage whisper, ‘It gets better’!” when asked how she was doing in her present relationship with a younger man.

Chit gives tips on staying forever young inside (“Managing anger and grief”) and outside (“The dye is cast”) with personal, heartwarming stories of how she lives life as a wife, mother, stepmother, grandmother, daughter and friend.

Next time you have the urge to lash out at anyone, heed this parable from Chit: “Cousin Sylvia, whom I grew up with and had never seen lose her temper in all those years, has told me how, provoked recently to anger, she happened to catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror in that state. ‘I never imagined I could look so ugly,’ she says.”

Since she confronted that image of her angry face in the mirror, Chit’s cousin has had even better control of her even temper. It has also made me think twice before blowing my top. Sayang ang Diamond Peel.

Chit has her own take on keeping one’s cool when anger threatens to spill over like boiling lard in a pan, taken from Eastern philosophy. “Drop it. It teaches that anger exists only in the mind, that we have ourselves put it there, and that the more we dwell on it the more we empower it…”

Yes, you can Chit your way to happiness.

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Chit also draws a lot of insight from the wellspring of her own experiences. Her pain when she was left out of a stepson’s wedding is palpable. First she tells of being a chance witness in a wedding where the coordinator, much to her surprise, called out for the “bride’s father’s second family” during the picture-taking at the end of the ceremony.

“My eyeglasses began to mist, and I just had to leave, or else I’d break into sobs and risk being mistaken for the jilted one, although they’d probably have a place for such a character, too.”

“How I wished at that very moment that it had been the case at my stepson’s wedding.”

You see, Vergel is Chit’s second husband, and they both have children from previous marriages. So in one chapter of the book,  “Rules of Estrangements,” she writes about the unwritten rules and customs that surround couples on their second marriages whose family traditions are tested during “traditional” gatherings like Christmas, weddings and birthdays. She is honest about the complications, the heartaches.

On the night of her stepson’s wedding, she asked a confidante to take her out to dinner. Thankfully, he refused to indulge Chit in her self-pity.

“Tonight,” he said bluntly, “isn’t about you.”

So whether you’re left out of anything, a stepson’s wedding, a friend’s birthday party, a victory celebration of a cousin, just remember: You might feel as left out as the 13th fairy who wasn’t invited to Sleeping Beauty’s christening, but hey, tonight isn’t about you. It’s all about the celebrators.

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Another favorite chapter is “Suddenly, Mona.” I believe God brings people into our lives because they have a void to fill in ours, and we, in theirs. Sometimes the void is deep, sometimes, it is superficial.

Ramona or “Mona,” her son’s daughter, is the grandchild that came to Chit under unique circumstances.

“From what I can piece together in my imagination, Ramona was born out of the passion of a rekindled old flame, with plenty of love, but without much of a plan. Alas, personal circumstances and other realities do not allow this would be family to come together just yet.”

So Mona stays with Chit’s daughter, a mother of three herself, who has been designated the baby’s legal guardian. “True, a child’s ideal place, especially in her tender years, is with her parents. But I’m sure God has a plan, and His plan is for Mona to be happy…” writes the loving grandmother.

Chit’s daughter, Mona’s guardian, one day has a hysterectomy. As Chit watches over her daughter in the hospital, they both get to talk about motherhood.

Suddenly, bouquets arrive, one by one, and soon, “her room looks like one for a new mother.”

Her daughter tells Chit with a pout: “It does feel that way, except this time I’m going home without a baby, Ma.”

And then almost as soon as she says that, mother and daughter laugh. For waiting for her at home was a baby — Mona.

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The last chapter,  “Happy Believer” will be my daily gospel reading. Chit talks about growing up in Catholic schools and the matters of faith she has had to wrestle with, the openness of some spiritual advisers, the sternness of others.

One day, a Jesuit priest counseled her that she is writing her own gospel, her own truth.

After her first marriage was civilly annulled (but not by the Catholic Church), Chit began venturing into other “paths to God.”

“But what am I really looking for? All my big decisions have been motivated by my desire to be happy, surely a worthy cause,” she writes.

Then a friend gives her a book by an Indian meditation master entitled, Where are you going?

How does Chit find happiness after her wanderings? What is the gospel according to Chit Roces-Santos? Grab her book at Powerbooks and be enlightened.

As my gynecologist, the beautiful and brainy Rebecca Singson, says, “Do not postpone happiness.”

(You may e-mail me at [email protected].)