Three Years, mom

How fast time flies and suddenly you've been gone 3 years. Yet each day I see you
in pictures and memories. Yesterday, the latest dream I had of you, I woke up happy and feeling your love, just like I did when I was a little girl. It was a darkly dream, but I felt your presence and the love. The happy loved feeling kept me going through out the day.
The kids miss you, I miss you.

So, my little vignette for this deathday anniversary: the enjoyment of spooks, occult, afterlife, horror movies, ghost stories, the macabre, not too many will believe that you actually exposed us to this since we can remember. My interest in vampires, led by the Drac, the Arthur Ford and Jane Roberts, behind the door, etc...plus (hey JB you have my collection) my books that have everything from ectoplasmic emanations and ghostly pics, getting scared of Fright Night and other REAL vampire and Hammer films, mom, this I owe to you.

Mom in church

It is February, superbowl Sunday and no one is at mass. Frank is one of a few in the choir who showed up and was given a chance to sing a solo for the first time. Frank who has known mom, GYN since we first started going to St. Mike's. Frank who has always looked young, vibrant, happy. Frank sang and I started to tear up, mom would ahve been so proud. As I looked to the left of the pew, I realized why i never sat there by the aisle, because I always reserve that place for her and know she must be there. Tonight, she definitely was there. I had to tell Frank and it was amazing that even he knew that mom was there, he also felt her. She would have been so proud and so was I. When I went to him, he already knew....he also felt her.

GYN gone 2 years.

Has it really been two years ma? My mind blanks at the thought. But you are never far from my thoughts, regardless of what these are. As an amazing accomplished woman, whose childhood was a wild ride up the mountains of Baguio, ahead of your time in many things that became trendy way after you already created it....
Missing you and celebrating your life.

GYN at the apartment

Finally took mom's cremains home after months of whining and prodding by sister Patty who claims she cannot move or do anything because mom's cremains comfortably settled in her blue and white room whose doors are always closed made her feel creeped out. So we have her on the top shelf facing all of us at the dinner table, with Santo Nino and two iconic prints the baker/cook and fish (mom's known to be a baker of course and fish is good luck but she's also pisces) and a pretty stained glass something with purple flowers and a small votive candle holder. Hope you're ok with that mom until i can take you home and have a beautiful memorial mass for you at our old church in San Juan. Until then, welcome home.

Time Flies Faster Than We think

August 25th marked a year since mom died. And yesterday marked the day we cremated her.
And what did we do? Celebrated like she would, eat and feast and remember. So on the day itself, I shopped for shrimps and blue crabs and had pancit as a side. She missed all the other sea food from home, but these we can get here, so that's what we did.

We had Sundays inviting friends over for a feast of hilabos na hipon, alimango and not the paltry blue crabs, inihaw na baboy and lost of side relishes like tomatoes with onions and red eggs. It was non stop lamon...hahaha. There would be Sundays too with all the breakfast foods, longganiza, tapa and tocino, with eggs anyway you want them.
And GYN set a pretty table, always with a theme, pinks, greens, blues, with flowers cut from our kalachuchi tree. Kamias in our Pinoy version of bruschetta/pico de gallo. Lots of dipping sauces: soy sauce with vinegar and siling labuyo, vinegar with garlic, mashed kamias with shallots, etc.. Those were the days my friends.....

One cannot regret her life, she rose from the mountains of Baguio, ran up the trees with the Igorots, had a very romantic life with Clinton H. Nichols, survived the bombings of Manila during Liberation, visited the US as a young widow, cam back home to a romance with the handsome rogue Ruben S. Menguito, allowed him his foibles as a second string QB, but led him to the path of fine dining with the HRAP and IFSEA.
Accolades, society weddings, her creativity knew no bounds. She knew the taste of what is should be, she set the prettiest tables, she was a fountain of knowledge, the best Ann Landers or Tia Dely when giving advice to the love lorn, the antsy brides and families of the weds to be, everyday conundrums.

She also opened my eyes to the other world, often leading to weird experiences that we embraced.....so my apo Daniel was singing about ghosts at last Sunday's mass, "ghosts are people too" he marveled. Pshew pshaw says the parents but the one single sentence that we challenge his folks to deny was when he said, "Ghosts have no feet". So mom taught us this not by what she would also say but with the books we read on the paranormal. So we have never been skeptics, and in fact enjoyed our joy rides with her following hearses, going to weird cemeteries, visiting old churches from around town to way up north, adventures.

This is remembering you mom, Gloria Y.Nichols, a giant who stood only 4 feet 10 inches or shorter, but with the name of a mega star in her hey days.

Manang Estella

A thin woman, dark skinned but, with a bit of lipstick, one could see the beauty she hid behind toothless cackling smiles. She had always been with GYNichols as far back as I could remember househelp, Estella our labandera.
Mom spent a fortune every few years getting Estella Custodio y Campos, pustisos, and each time after a few uses, she would conveniently hide the beautifully expensive bridges and lose them complaining they were painful. So she was toothless most of the time. Estella had a hard life. Her baby Danny was only a few months old, she lost her husband in a drunken knife fight somewhere. But memorable is that during the funeral, as people were crying and were hovering around her, she felt claustrophobic with all the mourners trying to comfort her, and she also couldn't cry, she was one of those who laughed at a time of crisis. So she leaned on a tombstone cross and of course fell into the newly dug grave. All the while laughing instead of crying, she laughed harder as people were reaching in for her begging her not to follow suit...it made for many a laughing moment whenever we would recall this incident. Bony, skinny, black beauty trying to follow her dead husband to the grave, NOT!

And who does she hook up with? One of mom's bread bakers, the complete opposite of black, he came from a mestizo (as in white) family. He must've loved her, bones and all, because they had beautiful children, I cannot remember the count as I know only 4 of them, and happily, or sadly, I have just hooked up with two of them, Linda, always the caring one, meant to watch over the whole brood, and Apple, of her father's eyes, as we used to tease. I thought Estella was pregnant every year..so i know I am missing kids other than Danny and Bobot.
But she was always there, come rain, shine or flood. Doing the laundry, chatting every body up. She also had a nervous tension when we bought our first washing machine, she thought it would take away her job, hahahaha.Once she got the hang of it, did she enjoy it! If she ever found out that here in the esta-te I wore underwear that weren't ironed, she would flip. Towels, dresses, undies and all were washed and pressed every day! She would freak out to know that I hang my clothes instead of doing laundry on them till the chocolate stains were visible and then needed washing. Or that I tried washing and bleached out the kids' clothes, which made the older kids run for the basement to do laundry whenever I said I would do laundry....She would have loved that story.

Estella was always with mom, she held court inviting everyone to our New Year's Day party for the kids in her neighborhood. She loved Fernando Poe Jr and Joseph Estrada, the two main stars of Philippine politics at one time or another. But I am happy to note, that her daughters and sons all were touched by mom's baking empire. Each of them passed through the walls of Rolling Pin learning a trade. Which kept everyone working long after we were gone from Manila. And which kept them in relative comfort so they could take care of Estella. Years of smoking and drinking (was that why she was always happy?) took its toll on her and she developed cirrhosis of the liver. I already warned each daughter to be prepared.

So Estella was waiting for GYN's cremains to come home. But we were not able to do that this year, so the day after GYN's 92nd birthday, I guess, Estella decided to follow mom and report to work, just like old times at 527 Mariano Marcos (159 Ortega). This is my tribute to someone who was a major part of my life, with her funny personality, her trials and travails, and friendship, Manang Estella.

Gloria Y. Nichols part 1

How does one start when writing about a woman who's life was filled with many interesting chapters through the years, facets so varied that so many lives have been touched in some way or another, enriching them with gems of wisdom GYN loved to share?

We start by working backwards. I would like to chronicle and share her life one decade at a time. If you have met GYN anytime this past decade, you would have met a small, frail looking, white haired (sometimes hennaed brown) woman with wide eyes, almost unwrinkled skin.

Yesterday,Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 5:05pm CST, she passed away peacefully after a short struggle with pneumonia. Patricia and I, along with number one grandson Anamite (Noel Angelo), Kylie (her granddaughter she left Manila for) Mite's wife Dawn, grandneice Lita Rebodos, watched as she fought the ventilator mask which at her frailness seemed to be a fear instead of an aid to keep her breathing. The decision to change to care, comfort and dignity came when no improvement showed with the treatments made as the pneumonia was far too rabid and invaded her whole lung system. She would not have wanted to be intubated and be a "living vegetable".

In the surreality of it all, it has been her teachings and being exposed to her quirky thoughts as we were growing up that helped me and Patty deal with her final moments. All the afterlife, near death and death bed lore and readings and paranormal genre that she shared with us, helped us deal with this particular moment.
That she was hanging on, I was driving back from work with Kylie, and was thinking"who is holding on to her?" and at that moment, Patty called me frantically asking to give the go signal to change from ventilator to the oxygen thingy and that mom was having an episode struggling and asking "Help me, I don;t know what to do!" and then said Kylie's name. KYLIE! I turned to my daughter and realized that it was baby Kylie who did not want to let go, more strongly than me, as I just wanted some more time to think. But Kylie was adamant and she was holding on to her Lola in her heart and mind. Through tears and chiding, I kept telling her, say good bye Kylie, look at her, she wants to go! I also wanted to wait for the evening when the other "apos" Bambi, JB and Migay got there to make this change but mom's struggles with the mask were too painful to watch. Within 10 minutes of the change from mask to regular oxygen, after readings of Psalm 23 both by Dawn and Lita, and with Kylie reluctantly letting go, mom sneezed twice and we all chorused "Bless You!" each time, she looked around and then was gone, asleep, smooth faced, at peace. Anamite was choking as he read Be Not Afraid.

Gone was this frail looking but actually, strong woman with a mighty interesting and colorful life.
A woman who raised two kids in an unorthodox way, raised 5 grandkids as if they were hers, and "lambinged" and held 5 great-grandkids with pride and love.
A woman who was ahead of her time when she was trend setting cakes, food and lifestyle in the Philippines.
She came with nothing and left with nothing but touched many lives with a richness of gems of wisdom, lifestyle, thought forms and philosophies.
Gloria Yandoc Galang Nichols, February 25, 1917 to August 25, 2008.