Aged to perfection

I was only 18 but engaged to a man who was 10 years older than I. He brought me to his uncle’s place in what was then known as Dakota Street, now renamed M. Adriatico Street. On that visit I met his two first cousins, an architect named Ariston, nicknamed Titong, and his wife Linda; an engineer named Eulogio, nicknamed Logy, and his wife Nena, both of them surnamed Nakpil. They were two of the three sons of Juan F. Nakpil, one of the once-prominent architects of our country.

These two sons and their wives enjoyed drinking. I did, too. We spent the cocktail hour drinking into the night. Titong and Linda had four little girls. Logy and Nena then had a daughter and two sons. My fiancé and I still had to work on our first baby. We became fast friends. Especially Nena, Logy and I. Once they took us to dinner at the New Europe. New Europe was one of the posh restaurants on a street then called Isaac Peral, now United Nations Avenue. It was diagonally across from Talk of the Town, another charming intimate restaurant. Both restaurants are gone now. What does one expect? I’m writing about fashionable restaurants in 1962, or 61 years ago. Did I expect them to stay open? Why not? Jade Vine, where I had my 16th birthday party, is still open. I passed it recently and was shocked.

Nena Barretto Nakpil and I hit it off pretty well. We both had happy-go-lucky personalities and we were both married to extremely jealous husbands. We got pregnant at more or less the same time. She with her fourth child, a girl; me with my first, another girl. Then it was the habit of the Nakpil family — my mother-in-law was a Nakpil, sister of Juan — to have Christmas lunch in their beautiful old mansion in Barbosa, Quiapo. That house still stands.

We went there one Christmas. Nena and I were both pregnant. I remember how beautiful she looked.

We had thousands of good times together. Our husbands were jealous so we complained to each other about them. She and Logy built a new house and invited us over. There we met Jimmy and Connie Lacson and Lito and Ching Caluag. We began going to each other’s homes or sometimes to Nina’s Papagayo, a Mexican restaurant owned by Connie’s mother.

Connie once invited our whole group to their beach in Olongapo. Nena and I wanted to drink, talk and laugh all night so we could watch the sun rise in the morning. We were just feeling adventurous. Our husbands wanted to sleep. We decided to stay up, just two young women who wanted to see the sunrise. Our husbands both went to bed sulking. Nena was more patient with hers than I. She stayed with him until he died. I left mine when I was 24.

But life does strange things. For a while Nena and I didn’t see much of each other. I was working hard in advertising. That gave me a different circle of friends. Nena was doing interior design work for offices and hotels. Also she always played and loved golf. Her son-in-law remembers when he was courting Debbie he saw so many golf trophies on display at a shelf in her house. “Your father must be quite a golfer,” he commented. Debbie, my godchild — so maybe she takes a little after me — scoffed and said, “Those are my mother’s trophies.”

Through thick and thin, high and low, Nena and I remained friends. I became the baptismal godmother of her youngest daughter, Debbie, and her godmother again more than 20 years later at her wedding in Baguio. In addition to drinking scotch or gin or vodka or wine with Nena, I loved drinking beer with Logy. We got along just fine. I remember once sitting with him at a bar, the two of us tipsy, singing, Mem’ries, light the corners of my mind — badly, but neither of us cared. That was silly and fun.

On my last birthday, my 79th, Nena called and invited me to dinner —she, Debbie and I. We went to a French restaurant. We talked, drank a bottle of white wine among the three of us, didn’t get drunk but laughed a lot. In our old age we don’t drink so much anymore but nevertheless we feel close to perfection.

Nena had a birthday party recently. It was her 89th. She celebrated it with a Mass and then a spectacular brunch with everything you can imagine —eggs, ham, waffles, French toast, first-class tapa, chicken pastel, champorado, taho, fresh fruit and bibingka to name a few. At the end of that impressive bash we had to have our photograph taken.

Did I say we — aging women both — came close to perfection? For a minute there — both of us were aged to perfection.

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