I am her Will; she is my Grace

We all take different paths in life. No matter where we go, however, we all take a little of each other everywhere. Since a part of me can be found in you and a little of you lies in me, it will not come as a surprise if one day two strangers become friends.

The avenue of friendship is always open. We are the pedestrians who walk in and out of this path. It was in this thoroughfare that I met my best friend Christine Dayrit. To the manor she was born. South Sea pearls and diamonds were her marbles when she was a kid. Why not when her family owns Miladay, one of the most famous jewelry stores in the Philippines?

To the manor I was not born. Sun-dried mud rolled to become little black balls were my toys. Why not when both my parents were farmers? Our orientations in life may be poles apart but those differences failed to deter what destiny had for us: a beautiful story of friendship.

Christine and I met in May 1995 when I decided to write about Vincent’s San Mig Pub in Ortigas, the restaurant owned by her late father Vincent Dayrit. All I needed then was a good food story for the magazine I was then writing for. I never realized that fate had already written a beautiful tale of friendship between me and my subject. We hit it off at our first meeting. More than the history of the restaurant, Christine, who looked bright, bubbly and beautiful in her avocado green shirt, and I found ourselves discussing our lives. My interview with her was peppered with laughter because she and I discovered that we were both repositories of everything fun and funny. We exchanged stories and with that we exchanged beeper numbers. (I have long forgotten my Easy Call number but I still remember her Beeper 150-323464.)

Sometime in August 1995, I lost my job in the magazine after an altercation with the owner who refused to pay my salary. Feeling down and out, I walked from Intramuros (where my former office was) to the Central Station of the LRT in Lawton. So forlorn was I that I needed a friend to talk to that moment to share my disappointments but I was so disheartened I did not know who to call. At the train station, I saw a woman in avocado green shirt and remembered Christine. I looked for a pay phone and sent her a message through her beeper: "I feel so low and I need someone to talk to." She beeped me back right away.

"This is providential," she told me on the phone after I recounted to her my misfortune.

"It was only the other day when my dad asked me to look for you. He actually wants to pirate you after reading your article about Vincent’s."

The next thing I knew, Christine was picking me up in Lawton. Since then, we have become inseparable. So indivisible are we that I have been practically "adopted" by the Dayrit family for the last 10 years. That goes without saying that I live in their house as a member of the "Royal Orphanage," the term we use to refer to our wing of the house and the main house which is happily lived in by Christine’s sister Michelle and her family.

Yes, I am very close, too, to Christine’s siblings that in one of the board meetings (where I sit as an "honorary member"), Mark, Christine’s only brother, suggested that they adopt me so I could have legal rights in the Dayrit family constitution. I had to caution Mark that though his proposition touched my heart I also stated that my parents are still alive and never will they give me up for adoption. That elicited loud laughter from them. "And when you adopt me and I get married," I continued to tell the five members of the board, "we will also talk about the rights and privileges of my future spouse. But did you ever realize that I am getting married to a guy?" Everybody was in stitches after I delivered my seeming valedictory. End of conversation.

Laughter and happy thoughts bind Christine and I. In our home, Christine and I have an unwritten rule not to welcome negative thoughts. The sofa in our sala is a mute witness to many a conversation we had about life and love (We talk about our respective love life and shriek like budding teenagers who are beginning to be bitten by the love bug); dreams and destinations (Christine, a travel writer for The STAR, and I share the same passion for traveling and we plan our travels together. In fact, we are in charge of scouting for a place abroad for the yearly Christmas family vacation); happiness and hippy-ness (Upon waking up in the morning and before we eat our breakfast, my "hippy" mood will have me don my blanket around my body and sashay like a supermodel in front of Christine who’s busy reading the morning papers or writing her column). Always, always, our friendship is replete with laughter. Our combined energy is enough to light up anyone’s world. We are only two in our wing of the house but it is as if there are 30 people living there. We laugh our heads off at the most simple joke. Because there’s so much joy in us, we never fight. Truth is, we don’t have time to fight because our friendship is, for lack of a better phrase to use, a bed of roses. Of late, we have been talking about our grand plan in life.

If our friendship were a TV sitcom, I would be compelled to say we’re Will & Grace. What Will Truman is to Grace Adler, I am to Christine. Both of us share the same trait that serves as the key to our lasting friendship: fierce loyalty. We know how to stand up for each other. We don’t leave each other behind. Those who are not in the know are quick to brand me names. I can’t blame them if they cannot believe that such friendship of fairy tale proportion truly exists.

Thinking about each other’s welfare is one thing I learned about our friendship. When she’s busy attending to the expansion of Miladay, I end up attending to her other meetings. When she knows I am going home tired from the office, she will whip up something in the kitchen and serve it to me piping hot when I arrive home.

Christine has shown me that friendship is a 24/7 commitment. Once, I could not leave work to attend to my mother who was rushed to the hospital in Laguna because of hypertension. Christine arrived in the hospital long before I could call on her. In another instance, in the middle of the night, she had to drive for me to the emergency room of Medical City because of severe abdominal pain. She is very close to my family that she is the only one who can convince my father to see a doctor in times when he dreads going to the hospital.

Every single day, the minute we open our eyes in the morning, the first thing we ask ourselves is "Balita?" Balita may sound such a simple word but it is our way of checking on each other. Balita is also the last word we hear from each other before we sleep.

Friendship is the easiest thing to find on earth but it is also the easiest thing to lose. But those who know how to make friendship grow reap the reward of having someone to share their lives with.

You only meet your once-in-a-lifetime-friend once in a lifetime. I’m more than glad I have met mine.

(For your new beginnings, please e-mail me at bumbaki@yahoo.com. You may also snail mail me at The Philippine Star c/o Allure Section, R. Oca Jr. cor. Railroad Streets, Port Area, Manila. Have a blessed Sunday.)