Holy Wednesday

As a child, Holy Wednesday was my least favorite day during the Holy Week. For what kid would love seeing a bloody-faced Jesus? A crown of thorns on a the head of a pitiful Christ? A heavy cross forced on the shoulders of a helpless Messiah?

Trikes ground to a halt to give way to the Lenten tradition

Little altar boys led the procession

St. Peter

Agony in the garden

Scourging at the pillar

Crowning with thorns

Carrying of the cross

Jesus and the evil-looking Roman soldiers

Townsfolk attending the procession

St. John the Evangelist

The "mambabasas" and their megaphone

Closer look at the "mambabasas"

Veronica

Mary Magdalene

Image unknown to me

Blessed Virgin Mary

Last of the procession-goers

Engines sprang back to life after a 30-minute wait

Grease Lightnin' (Circa 1960's)

My father was a good-looking feller. He was born with a pair of beautifully arched brows that required no intervention from tweezers, a perfect mestizo nose that any vain person would pay good money for and thick, straight jet-black hair that refused to turn grey nor fall in the face of old age and cancer.

But more than anything, my father was the epitome of cool...

Cory In My Mind

I still remember that Saturday afternoon in January 1986. It was the day Cory Aquino, standard bearer of the United Opposition, was motorcading though our town in a Southern Batangas campaign sortie. She was speaking at the patio in front of the parish Church. With my childhood friend beside me and my father's yellow "Ninoy Hindi Ka Nag-iisa" band round my head, I listened intently and passionately raised my right fist in a seemingly grown-up show of support for my candidate despite the fact that I was a mere fifteen-year old, obviously powerless to show that support by means of the ballot.

When she left the patio, my friend and I ran after the van she rode, wanting for one last glimpse of our hero in the flesh. She did not disappoint us. Cory appeared through the window and flashed the Laban sign. It was my Cory moment, one that still runs very clearly in my head after more than 20 years, after undergoing general anaesthesia, after a bout with hormonal imbalance that all interfered with my memory bank. But then I guess a Coryista will never forget.

* Image grabbed from Google search.

Good Fridays

Last Friday was a good time to go back to the Good Fridays of my childhood.

I remember we would almost always start the day with flagellant-watching. The flagellants were men with covered faces who would repeatedly hit their bare backs with sharp objects, drawing blood in the process. We would stare mouths open and wince when someone poured vinegar over these men's open wounds. Last Friday I waited the whole morning to take pictures but not a single flagellant passed by our house. It was obviously passé in the town where I grew up.

Then there was Visita Iglesia. Seven churches to visit, usually Calaca, Lemery, Taal, Nasugbu, Lian, Calatagan and Tuy. If we didn't go church-hopping, we would more often than not spend the day in front of the boob tube for reruns of bible-based films and docus, most notable of which was Jesus of Nazareth. We were not allowed to turn on the radio. Oh and never forget the fasting! Or should I say abstinence? Lunch and dinner meant fish, crabs, shrimps or lobsters when available. But I was never into seafood even as a kid and making do with a cheese sandwich every meal was my annual little Lenten sacrifice.

The highlight of the day was the 6 o'clock procession led by the parish priest that went around the poblacion like a funeral parade of the dead Christ. This year it was attended by hordes of people, young and old alike, that appeared to be thinning as time went by. When I was quite small I used to go with my sister Pie, my aunt Nading, my cousin Ron and his dad Ninong Paeng. It was playtime for us kids as we made balls from melted wax coming from the candles that we held in our hands. I also never missed a procession as a teenager. It was the "in" thing to do on a Good Friday.

St. Peter, easily identifiable by the rooster by his side (though not seen in this photo), was always the first saint in the long procession. The saints were garbed in expensive-looking velvety garments with golden appliques and placed atop flower-decked carrozas brightened by generator-powered lights.

Next in line, without fail, was St. John the Evangelist.

I'm afraid I have no idea who this saint is. I never saw it before among the ranks of the other saints in this Lenten tradition.

Veronica of "Veronica wipes the face of Jesus", which incidentally, I heard from my mother, has been excluded from the new version of the Station of the Cross.

Mary Magdalene with perfume in hand, actually a very beautiful statue.

The Blessed Sacrament, also a new addition.

The Blessed Virgin Mary with a dagger piercing her heart, an image that I always found disturbing as a child.

The dead Christ in a glass coffin always came in last. Among the carrozas, it attracted the biggest crowd of followers. There were people who pushed the carroza in a somewhat frantic manner, determined to fulfill their panata, a promise made in exchange of a miracle. It was a bit reminiscent of the mad scramble for the Nazareno of Quiapo, only there was no madness here.

After the procession, we would always go to kalbaryos to take a look at the decors and the spectacle that was the pabasa. But there were no kalbaryos to visit last week, maybe for quite a number of Holy Weeks past already. No one must have been willing to shoulder the cost of setting up a place for pabasa during these hard times. Nor fill in the shoes of yesterday's mambabasa during these modern times. The only pabasa I witnessed lately was this scene I captured on video from last Friday's procession—the "grandma singers" as my 11 year-old nephew called them, probably the last of the mambabasas in our side of the world.

* Flagellation photo grabbed from Google.

Life's a Beach

One look at this picture of my Indie and her cousins and I was immediately transported back to the 70s. The beach in the town where I was born was not made for pretty pictures. It was never the white beach on the verge of becoming a major tourist destination. Its shoreline was long but covered with dark unremarkable sand; its waters, clear but certainly not crystal.

Even so, we kids were big fans of our very own beach. It was another venue for play. A huge one complete with water for wading or swimming for the adventurous among us. There was endless supply of sand for building sandcastles for which none of us had any talent. And the sea breeze! Yes, even that one could make us happy.

By the 80s, we had all grown into adolescents and the beach had lost all attraction whatsoever. Aside from the changes in hormones and preferences that happened in all of us, we had every reason not to go anymore. What used to be our favorite haunt had turned into some, I'm sorry to say, God-forsaken place in the span of a decade. The water was not just dirty, it was dangerous given that a power plant was just close by. It literally stank. There was litter everywhere. And where there was none, there were dog poops and human waste lying in wait like booby traps for the next unsuspecting beach goer.

Oh yes, life could be a bitch sometimes.

Mad Hair Days

Those were the days. When big hair was the rule rather than the exception. When female crowns rose to dizzying heights they could have sent hairsprays to the endangered list. When teasing reigned supreme anywhere in the world, pushing past the confines of moviedom and catwalks, enslaving ordinary mortals like, well, my mom.


It was the 1960s, fresh out of the bouffant and beehive movements of the 50s and my mother, true blue fashionista that she was, made sure that her clothes—including her hair—always kept up with the times. The mountainous puff on top of her head was elevated enough to require maybe half a day of prep work. But my mother, the college instructress, must have been very talented with the teasing comb she fixed her tresses that way even during ordinary school days and still managed to come to class on time.


By the late 60s, my mother had not let go of her favorite comb. The towering hair was gone, replaced by a short bob. But the teasing did not stop.


Some decades later when she was into her 50s, my mother's crowning glory had been relegated to a wash-and-wear style—cropped, cut to reveal her natural curls and dyed a dark shade of brown typical of ladies of a certain age—signaling the close of a hair-raising era long gone.

Que Horror!

My grade school and high school years were spent studying in what used to be a burying ground that became a place where prisoners of war were tortured, killed or left to die.

And nothing could be more horrific for a girl blessed (or cursed?) with a wild imagination. According to old townsfolk, my school was a cemetery during Spanish times and later used as a garrison during the Japanese Occupation. Its main building was a very old structure, maybe almost as old as the Immaculate Conception Parish Church to which it was adjacent.

Like any old building, the mere sight of the school's aging adobe walls would tell you there was something there, something weird, something... In this 1950's photo that belonged to my mother, the walls looked even spookier back then without any trappings of modernity such as paint. Beyond those windows was my classroom when I was in 1st Grade. And on the floor directly above was part of the convent used as living quarters by the Sisters who run the school. Legend had it that at night when everything was quiet, the sound of heavy chains being dragged on the floor could be heard. It was said that those chains were attached to the feet of a headless nun bearing a candle in each of her hands who did the rounds as soon as the whole convent fell asleep.

When I was a lot younger, I couldn't bring myself to raise my eyes higher than where this photo was cropped. I was afraid the headless nun would peer out the window and my friends and I won't be able to run in time. This was like a movie sequence that would replay itself again and again in my little head. Poor me. (Picture courtesy of an aunt, Tia Nene, who was a college student in the 1950s.)

The thick adobe walls that belonged to the Church seemed like a good choice for a background in this 1950's class picture. It also looked even more perfect as a backdrop for a horror flick. I remember when I was in 3rd Grade, our classroom was just across this wall. There were a tall ancient-looking tree standing close by and its branches would cast eerie shadows on the ground even in broad daylight. The window was home to a large group of bats that I would always see hanging creepily upside down from the grills. There seemed to be too many of them and their number was good enough for a scene from the Dark Knight.

This was a gated grotto to the right of the wall in the previous photo. I was actually surprised to find this picture and see my young mom, who was now a college professor in her alma mater after graduating from a university in the city, posing in this scary corner of the school yard. During our time, nobody went to this place. Only the Sisters—who believed, as their faith dictated, that God would protect them from whatever evil lurking in that place—had the guts to go past the gates. Many of my classmates insisted there was a kapre who lived there. Others said there were duwendes. Whatever it was, I never ventured anywhere near the grotto.

This covered walk that connected the old school grounds to the new college building was the setting of one of the creepiest legends in town. The utility boys who used to spend their nights nearby were said to have witnessed the galloping of a knight on horseback right on the walk's roof. Like the chained nun, it was also said that the ghost knight was dismembered, without a head on its body.

As I write this, chills are running down my spine. And I'm seeing flashes of the headless nun sequence again. Gotta run!