Beads, Blossoms, Boogers and Blessings (Oh, and Black and White Pictures)

My grandparents, before migrating to Canada and spending the rest of their retirement there, used to own retail shops down Burgos Street in Roxas City. My grandfather is half Chinese and my grandmother with her Swiss ancestry and mestiza looks both had this knack for sales and business was generally part of their natural systems. Their love story, at least the story told to me by our nannies at bedtime, was that even after they were wed, they were competitors when it came to their shops. Grandpa Emilio kept his shop and Grandma Linding kept her shop, both guarding their investments down to the last centavo. It was business as usual. Marriage was not going to change it. But then there was a fire. I don’t remember who or what started it. But it became the circumstance by which Grandpa Emilio was able to present his shop, still standing, to his wife, as a gift of unending love and devotion.

Well, at least that’s how it was told to me.

How did Grandpa Emilio manage after giving up his livelihood? Well, he owned a farm, a parcel of which now belongs to my dad. He had other interests as well. I was not aware of them until he was dying and with the sentimentality came the stories. He came home in a wheelchair and looking completely transformed from the 6-foot giant that I knew, trudging down the rice fields in his muddy boots and straw hat, barking instructions to his workers on how to plough his land.
Anyway, his other interest was photography. We have a small museum in Roxas City. It used to be a water tank around which the City Health Office used to stand. Now it’s the local museum, and in it stands an antique camera that used to sit in one of the old cabinets at home, collecting dust and tiny lizard eggs. I remember my brothers and I discovering it one day and we had no idea what it was. After that, I had completely forgotten about it. Even when I've seen it several times on display at the local museum, it never dawned on me that it was the same old boxlike contraption that used to be in our house. Yes, it belonged to my grandfather. Those black and white pictures of my aunts and uncles in the beach; of Grandma Linding smiling and beautiful; of my dad as little boy...

I never thought for a moment that it was thanks to him that I even know what my dad looked like when he was little. We take it for granted sometimes because nowadays everyone can take lots of pictures anytime they want. You put an SLR camera in the hands of an amateur and the picture could still look great. But I think it takes a lot of love to make something beautiful when the making of it requires a lot more sweat.

Which brings me back to the topic I was really planning to write about. I just get side tracked very often that I sometimes wonder how I ever manage to get anything done.

Anyway, the love that goes into the making of something beautiful.

Yes.

This sounds very mediocre when compared to old school black and white photography as an art in general, but I’ve recently been busy with my own craft.

I make wire-wrapped jewellery.

Beads and copper, mostly. But lately, thanks to Manang B and Nanay Ring who venture into Quiapo for me, I’ve recently experimented with rubber blooms and plastic flowers. I used to moonlight as an island doctor in Boracay and made friends with the local “borloloy” vendors. They introduced me to the local beads shops and I’ve been making bracelets and other trinkets ever since. What’s surprising is how I’m suddenly making money from it. It has transformed from a simple hobby to a side-line business venture and I’m not so sure how I feel about it. I don’t even get to wear the pieces I make anymore, but at the same time, I’m proud of my trinkets and I’m quite surprised that other people actually appreciate them.

My real job is catering to the mentally ill of Metro Manila, yes. And don’t get me wrong I love being a doctor. It’s fun at the psychiatry ward, you people don’t know what you’re missing, hahaha! That’s what’s really putting milk in Promise’s bottle, but I have to say, stringing pretty shiny things together puts my mind at ease after a day of dwelling with the troubled minds. Apart from the fact that they’re shiny and pretty and they sparkle and that I’m such a girl that way that it makes Tope laugh at how silly I can be, drooling and getting a spiritual elation in a bead shop in Quiapo rather than in the well renowned church for which Quiapo is famous for, but, hey, there’s just something very calming and meditative about beads. Buddha and the Virgin Mary can certainly attest to that, so there. I rest my case.

The problem lies not in the making, though, but in the selling. My grandparents were business minded people. I am not. That part of the gene pool totally missed me, along with the mestiza looks and the tiny waist. In fact, I find I make more beautiful pieces when I have a person in mind to give them to. I can’t even put a price on the pieces that I make because I feel like I’m either selling myself short or charging too much. I could never seem to reconcile the two. I shudder when people ask me the quintessential question: “how much?” and I feel like I’m selling a part of my soul when the aspect of business comes into the conversation. I get a lot of help from a co-resident and my oldest friend in the selling part, which warrants a special mention: Thank you very much Trina Dela Llana and Kuai Villarosa. But there will come a time when I will have to swallow my queasiness and just put a price tag without blinking an eye. Lately, I’ve even developed an attachment to the trinkets that I feel genuinely sad when I have to part with them. Not because I want them for myself, but because I know I might never see them again. And I also know for sure that I’d never be able to make another one that’s identical. That’s my flaw. I make my designs freestyle so that I’m incapable of making any two pieces alike. I console myself by taking pictures, but that’s just the best I could do.

So count your blessings, mom always said.

I have a home. I’m able to nourish the people in it. I love what I do. Promise makes me happy. And Tope strums his guitar just for me.

“WOW!” Promise always exclaims whenever I show her a finished product. I think she’s learned to say that to make me happy. She always offers her tiny hand when I show her a bracelet, as though she’s entitled to be the first to try them on.

And that’s just perfectly fine with me.

That’s the thing. In the end, for me, it will always be about her. Baby boogers and all.

Yeah, I think I’m good.

Bracelets, anyone? :)