Soul Highway

Transitions

I have started working on the website’s photo section by writing captions and moving the files I have uploaded on Yahoo Photos from years back. I will abandon that page as soon as I get the photos in order in this site.

As I was writing the captions, I couldn’t help but reminisce on moments shared by friends over the last ten years. We were a crazy mix of people and I guess we found a common ground in that craziness. I remember conversations lasting till the wee hours of the morning as if we didn’t have deadlines to beat that day. I remember the times we escaped from work and retreated to the islands on Valentine's Day to avoid the “firing squad”, that is, being picked on by colleagues for our non-existent love life back then. As with most people who grow older, we transitioned from “Let’s shoot some pool and drink beer to unwind” to “How about coffee tonight?” We would congregate at coffee-shops with the intention to relax and yet end up talking about the madness of media work and our biological clocks ticking, to the discomfort of the males in the group.

Check out the girls' summer hairdos! My friends and I on our first camping trip in the late '90s.
More pictures of the group in the photo section.

As what happens in life, people move to different places or change jobs or start a family. This month, Threese, who now lives in New York, will give birth to her first child. As with most 21st century Filipino (or Filipino-American, in this case) kids, he will carry one of those kilometric names – John Carlos Leon, aka Carlito. (I’m glad my grandaunt, who named all three of us children in the family, stopped at two names for each one.) My recent conversations with Threese consisted of baby showers, baby clothes, Lamaze (and other birthing options), and fetal movements. Times have really changed, huh? The group is excited about the impending delivery and Threese has already decreed that we would all become godparents to Carlito, even in absentia.

A sonogram of Threese's Carlito at 34 weeks.

During our last phone conversation, I asked her if she was nervous. She thinks the nervousness would start to sink in once the labor pains begin. I’ve been in a hospital’s labor room before and the groaning and crying were more than enough for me to understand the pain. However, after all is said and done, the look on the mothers’ faces as they cuddle their newborns is priceless. Mam Ters, I wish you a safe delivery.