Foot and Fire

  My Tatay here is not posing as The Thinker; He is just admiring the karsts of El Nido, Palawan. Top things I learned from my FATHER* (that his grandsons should know) I bet that one epic lesson in life that every child has learned to live by as he grows up is "Follow what I say but do not follow what I do," referring altogether to the parent's advices and parent's misdeeds. But this one lesson is not the sum of everything there is, of course, because there are gems along the path considering one cannot live by the words of our parents only but also by what they do without their knowing that they are giving their best. Actually, to sketch my father's personality, I will be talking about his equal love for the spirits (his damnation), for the education (his redemption) and for his kitchen (his charm). So what can be learned from a father who is the center of this love triangle? A lot. As one family friend unsolicitedly whispered to me, “Eversince your ...

My dear little nephews, I write to you today not because I expect you to read or appreciate this letter right away. Consider this as my message in a bottle for the four of you. You will find this message when you already learned how to read, of course, and when you can already truly understand the meaning of each line. In fact, you will read this again and again at different points in your life, and you will find new meaning each time. And I will be hopeful again and again that each time you take this message out of the bottle, you will find something refreshing like a sweet new discovery. I am writing this letter today while I am still enamored with you, sweet boys. I doubt if I can write something like this when you are already in your awkward teens and I appear to be grumpy and preachy to you four. Also, I doubly doubt if this bugging thought these days will ever hover again: When shall an aunt gift her nephews with some words of wisdom? Now that one of you turned s...