A lesson from Mom By Emmanuelle LET this son tell this story. He is in his early thirties, a theater actor, a vocalist and a canvas artist disguised as a network branch manager and a state college professor.

Revisiting May By Emmanuelle THIS year as in the past decade, the people of this town celebrate their fiesta in January. It has not always been so. They used to have their fiesta in May, when the native kalkalautit, sharing the landscape with the ancient acacias, let go of their…

Please, excuse the excuse! By Emmanuelle SIGURO, from the day she received this particular excuse letter, to the day of her retirement, this teacher-friend of mine would never really get her acts all together again. Would she laugh, or cry, or hire a detective to tell her why a parent…

Baby’s Big Break! By Emmanuelle THEY wanted so much to have a baby but they realized early on that a baby was probably an impossibility. She was never healthy enough since she was born; she also had Steven Johnson Syndrome and a negative in her rare alphabet of a blood…

Breaking free! By Emmanuelle A survivor, she had always been. She grew up with the sound of loud whispers and raised voices, and of footsteps constantly shuffling in and out of their lives. Her parents were primarily political figures, and as a child, she learned she must raise her voice…

Broken Child By Emmanuelle STORIES like this are many and too true and too often told. In fact, these stories became too many these had stopped being told. This child’s mother had a family of her own when she went to the Middle East to work as a domestic helper….

The Choice By Emmanuelle The first woman was lifted from the bone of the first man. She was risen full-bodied and grown. When her maker led her to him from whom she came, instinctively they must have felt the connection, of same flesh same bones. They must have knotted their…

The One By Emmanuelle SHE grew up worshipping the ground he walked on. Oh, well, she did not exactly worship the ground he walked on, like light candles, burn incense, chant hymns while gyrating around his footprints. The ground is what you and I confront when we trip and we…

He has something there! By Emmanuelle This is not the “I know you have something there. Get it out, show it to me, or with this hammer I whack black your fingers the left and the right, paa at kamay.” Neither is this the “I know you still have something there….

Cannot be reached By Emmanuelle STORY 1. She should not have taken that one last bottle of light beer. The beer was everything but light. It was also the “last tagay na ito!” that lasted and lasted and lasted. Way past midnight when the group broke up, dawn was just…