Family Portraits 1

When Mama picked me up from the department at 7 pm the other day, Papa was in the car as well. They were listening to a tape of Strauss waltzes, and in between pieces, Papa increased the volume and said, with almost as much enthusiasm as he expresses when watching the Santa Ana horseraces, "This is it, Wiener Blut, the 'national anthem' (yes, I heard the quotation marks in his voice) of Vienna." Then he leaned towards me and said, "You used to bounce to this waltz when you were a baby." Great, I used to bounce to a piece called "Vienna Blood." But it was beautiful, and familiar, and...sensuous, so much so that Henry Mencken once described it as:

"...magnificently improper---the art of tone turned lubricious. I venture to say that the compositions of Johann Strauss have lured more fair young creatures to compliance than all the movie actors and white slave scouts since the fall of the Western Empire. There is something about a waltz that is irresistible. Try it on the fattest and sedatest or even upon the thinnest and most acidulous of women, and she will be ready, in ten minutes, for a stealthy smack behind the door ..."

My best moments with Papa have often involved movement---either physical (riding a bike several blocks down to where MJM School of Dance used to be; going around a quaint church in the Quezon highlands; walking as far as we could into the ocean with him carrying me until the water reached his neck) or musical (both of us calling the energetic summer movement of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" as our favorite; him playing Chopin nocturnes on the piano after a tiff).

Without music and movement, we become snarling mirror images of each other: impatient, moody, and somewhat spoiled, with elitist tastes.

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Yesterday, my sister spent one of her precious "days off" from GMA (the station, not the president) to help me in the (admittedly frivolous) hunt for the perfect September 1 dress. And it was a hunt my former fashion mag co-workers would have been proud of, taking us from Glorietta to Galleria, from orange Mexican curtain-like shifts to slinky vermilion ("red" does not do justice) cocktail dresses, from mid-high-end boutiques to department stores, from the so-so to the ill-fitting (insert your own jelly belly/inadequate cleavage/bulging butt example here).

What did I end up purchasing? Taupe sandals, mint lip balm, and spicy seedless sampaloc. My problem? I have a budget and I don't know what exactly I'm looking for. Bitchy philo teacher translation: stop making your mundane chores illustrations of your existential angst. My sister's take: "Sumusungit ka when you don't get what you want."

My reply: "This is payback time for when you used to drag me around from Cubao to SM City in the 80s for the perfect running shoes and I, not knowing any better, would be happy with my reward of a cup of buttered Mais ni Ann corn."

Her witty comeback when we stopped for Chinese food and a waiter shoved a gigantic plate of mapo tofu to my side of the table: "Ah, the kind that farm animals feed from."

"(Grunt, snort)." Man, I miss sisterly banter.

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