'As these recent months passed by, I saw how she retreated more and more into her silence. But the graciousness and vanity remain.'
At the First Draft group of writers reunion with Gilda Cordero Fernando, I felt that her facial recognition of some persons, even those close to her, was going. Her oft-asked query was a wide-eyed, “Sino ka ?”
She used to be my middle-of-the-night and other times textmate. I miss those long text messages because there is none forthcoming anymore unless it’s her help who punches the words for her. No matter how I and some friends assured her that “plagiarizing herself” was fine since she was addressing a younger and newer audience or those who missed out on reading her groundbreaking books, she didn’t sound convinced.
In a Facebook conversation thread after freelance writer Alma Cruz Miclat posted her family lunch photos at Fat Russel’s on Father’s Day, it was decided that it was a good place to bring Gilda for a treat, our modest way of paying her back for the generous attention and love she poured on us as she was struggling to make sense of the world. That’s how long we’ve known her—our young adult years all the way to senior citizenship.
Carole explained that whenever she visited Gilda in her youth, she would go home with a lipstick, a new pair of earrings or some other trinket. She felt she had to pay the gesture forward to us, les girls. At the Panay Avenue abode, the first thing that caught our eyes in the sala was the newly installed small sculpture of Aba Dalena depicting her Tita Gilda as the fairy godmother of art and culture.Then we marveled over the table setting: batik tablecloth, stoneware , checkered cloth serviettes.
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