Methodist, she ensured that we attended Daily Vacation Bible School where we were each given by an American pastor a pocketbook edition of The New Testament ). There were so many old magazines to riffle through until one time, as I was entering sophomore high school, I read a longish article on existentialism and got hooked. Because we lived most of the year in an apartment in Santa Ana, Manila, where there was not much of a garden to speak of, we loved the roses, poinsettias, pansies, dahlias that grew on Lola ’s lot. She would sometimes bring a bundle of them to the Quonset hut that was the original United Methodist Church on Marcos Highway for the offertory. My cousin Erline “Allyn” Valdellon Mendoza, now a resident of McLean, Virginia, keeps two gardenia plants at her home, in memory of Lola ’s garden in Baguio. “They blossom in spring in my lanai here in McLean.” Lola taught us the beauty and intimate connectedness of letter- writing, at least, letter-writing addressed to her. My cousins and I also got a kick out of re-reading our letters to Lola and looking at the drawings we made in middle childhood. She kept them all in her scrapbooks and photo albums. When we asked her why, her answer was an amused, “Because you can’t repeat them!”And she never failed to write us back, acknowledging our letters, praising and thanking us for anything we sent her. In a letter dated September 4, 1968, she wrote to me: “During my confinement in bed, I was able to finish the framed saying about stamps and most likely, you will have it when someone visits me here. You write good English, Babeth, and I wish you success in your studies.” Her encouragements, in many ways, led me to a career as journalist and writer.
My cousin Telly (named after Lola ) remembers how Lola opened the windows on mornings and sang a song whose lyrics went
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