Maybe she worked all day, then partied the night away the way Annie in the Hotdog hit did, but this woman, whose contemporaries have retired, receded or died, continues to run with the wolverines. She remains wild and hip, despite calves and knees that rebel and make walking a strain.
After decades of being “layas,” Gilda is house-bound these days, working on large collages that pull together all facets of her personality, all epochs of her long life: the colegiala who chafed at her Catholic girlhood’s chains; the young restless wife who wore a congenial mask in the day, then stripped off her clothes at night to bike naked within her husband’s walled property when everyone else was asleep; the creative non-fictionist who must have been the first to deal courageously with mother issues in “Ladies’ Lunch” and “Last Quarter Moon;” the publisher who instinctively knew, long before art directors became the stars of deluxe books and magazines, that good design and layout and substantive text would carry a book to appreciative readers, etc.
All these in a series of collage, you say?
But this is Gilda, Lola Mad to family and help, Señora once upon a time, GCF to bibliophiles, Tita G to a few who insist she must be addressed with an honorific. To middle-aged me, she remains exemplar extraordinaire the way other women who went before her (Nieves Benito Epistola, Dolores Stephens Feria, Paula Carolina Malay, my own lola) had been in some periods in my life.
I have a living biological mother who continues to teach/preach lessons, and I’m too gray-haired to seek another spiritual mom—most of my baptismal and wedding ninangs are gone, too. Surely, some maturity must have sunk in at age 55.
Gilda is a friend I can converse with, no holds barred, the pal who makes me so at ease I completely forget she’s from Mommy’s generation. These days, if you put us side by side and because of the head of hair I refuse to Henna, I’m the one who can pass for her manang (older sis).
She likes my husband Rolly to bits (the way she likes, in equal measure, all the husbands of the married women in our writing group First Draft, mainly, I guess, for putting up with us, but she qualifies that she doesn’t want to live with them). She remembers to send a token to Rolly. That she thinks of him with such affection is good reason for my choice to remain in this partnership, although he and I continue to redefine what will work for us, the principle being to stay together but not too close. He respects her, defers to her so much. When she suggested, about a month before our 25th anniversary last year, that we host a party instead of having a quiet dinner for two, he said yes. She told me to tell him enough of putting his money into his stamps and other collections.
“Throw a party,” she said. “Who’d have thought you two would last?” I quoted her verbatim to him. It wasn’t hard for me to ask him also that we go on a retreat with two unconventional ICM nuns (Emma Paloma and Perla Macapinlac) as spiritual mistresses. He said yes but failed to turn off his cell phone and continued to accept calls and run the Inquirer bureau by remote.
I shouldn’t complain. If he said yes to two suggestions from loony women, I should be happy. My point is, of countless lessons learned at Gilda’s feet (and I do mean feet, as hers were propped on a stool last time we talked), I like best the one on awareness of karmic homework.
Before we are conceived, we already chose the family to be born to.
We realize why we are where we are when we live, or work, with people who present the most challenges to us, especially where pain is involved in heaps, whether it’s a parent, sibling, partner, child, friend or colleague (“barbecue pit” was how she described her and Attorney Elo’s relationship early in their marriage).
With that realization, the journey to becoming “a holy fool,” in my spiritual directress’ words, is not too tough. Sometimes, we glide on the surface of life unaware until we fall hard. A lot of lessons from those hard falls rather than from perfectly executed double axles and spins. I’m writing in metaphorical circles, and Gilda won’t like that. Some friends learned that Veny, her Girl Friday, recently gifted her with a wheelchair. They tell me they don’t know what sort of birthday message to send Gilda with this condition that her doctors call “rheumatoid arthritis.” Since I don’t like stepping softly around, or being prim and proper with the ill—and Gilda, to my mind, isn’t ill—I had no difficulty composing an SMS early this week. No other way to be than to be oneself. I texted her to this effect: “Hi, heard you have a new friend named Wheelie. Knowing how you can turn adversity into fun, am sure you’re having a good spin.”
She replied pronto and con gusto: “Can’t believe how much one can do just by staying home. But now I got wheels!”
Someone wrote that Gilda “youthens,” she doesn’t age. Annie B has entered the annals of pop music history. She’s dated but still danceable. But La Gilda, oh my goddess! This contemporary classic may surprise us by maybe painting her Wheelie and turning it into a piece of installation art with her on it, outfitted in her latest low-brow and haute couture combination. It’s what this not-too-imaginative friend can think of at this moment. Abangan!
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