Sweet Life With Mary

Just came off spending most of the weekend with my best friend’s family. Rowena, is my very best buddy from university. We went through a lot of good times and not-so-good times during the last 2 1/2 years of my 5-year college experience. I feel so lucky having stayed in touch with her for the last 22 years since we both graduated from the University of the Philippines with a degree in BS Industrial Engineering. Yeah, we were a couple of nerds.

She got married within a couple of years after graduation and had a son. I did not and I had so wanted us to have kids that would hang out with each other and get along with each other as we did.

She did not have any other children after the first son until 10 years later— a pretty little daughter she named Lissy and then, another adorable little girl, Nikki.  And wonder of wonders, my own little Mary was born a year after Nikki!  We have kids about the same age, after all.

But, then, we were raising them thousands of miles apart.  One can only hope they  WILL get along once they spend some time together.

Mary met Nikki and Lissy four years ago, on Mary’s first trip to the Philippines. Mary was still too little to appreciate having two other little girls to play with.

On this our second trip, Mary’s almost six and starved for playmates— she loved spending time with the sisters.

Aside from the girls being fluent in English, Nikki and Lissy are both friendly and well-behaved, sharing their toys with Mary, including her in their games, teaching her some Tagalog words, here and there. Some misunderstandings, like when Nikki said as we were approaching their neighborhood, that we were now in their “village,” Mary had to ask, “What is a village?” I had to “translate” it to neighborhood so Mary would understand. (Village, in the local vernacular, refers to the subdivision development— to the group of homes on a certain big plot of land that was subdivided by a developer. A usual enticement is the presence of a guarded gate leading into the “village”, usually the only entrance/exit. Homeowners get car stickers and go through a separate lane into and out of the “village” while guests need to state their purpose in coming in as well as leave a form of ID at the guardhouse which the driver would then pick up on their way out. The developer also ensures that there are no unauthorized building inside the place, that even when you had bought a lot but has not built on it yet, that there will be no squatters. Squatting is a major problem in metropolitan Manila, getting squatters out of your property, especially when they have been there for years is a bigger problem…)

Rowena always spoils me and Mary when we are vacationing in the Philippines. She would plan out little trips for us, pick us up from my parents’ house (it is an hour drive thru Metro Manila traffic from her house) and treat us to whatever we were doing— from spending a morning swimming at exclusive Rockwell Club in Makati, lunch at Power Plant mall to ice skating at Mega Mall. Oh, she took me to have the best manicure and pedicure experience of my life! It came with a 45-minute foot massage — my feet were so pampered!  Thank you, my friend!

Mary’s first ever “sleepover”

Best Friends Forever