Essay Archives - Page 2 of 2

Simple pleasures of celebrating Mother’s Day under lockdown

A career woman through and through, the author is surprised by the speed with which she has learned to juggle and appreciate work-related responsibilities from home while savoring ECQ with her family, especially moments spent with her lovely, strong-willed daughter recuperating from brain cancer. By JOANNE GOLONG-GOMEZ I’ve never been…

Moveable feast rooted in childhood memories and mommy’s home cooking

The lockdown has brought this Brussels-based journalist-turned-chef back to her mother’s table, as she tries to assuage feelings of nostalgia, homesickness, frustration, fear and guilt. Like millions of people, including countless Filipinos now living abroad, seeking refuge at home during this pandemic, she’s using the extra time to push the…

Stand and deliver

My parents wanted me to have the best Christian education their modest means could afford. And, for them, UST was it. I don’t know if I turned out to be the kind of person they had envisioned me to become. But judging by the company I keep, I think they…

When kindness, more than the virus, becomes contagious

What could be bigger than the unprecedented problem right before us, as this pandemic continues to test our strength and resolve as a people? But as the author has also found out since the ECQ was put in place over a month ago, our love and genuine concern for each…

Easter musings: How a reset button came in the most unexpected and unwelcome package

Everything in life, be it good or bad, big or small, mundane or life-defining, offers us an opportunity to grow, turn over a new leaf and become better versions of ourselves. May we come out of this string of events and experiences better, wiser, kinder and more grateful. By ALEX…

Life under lockdown—Sorry, Mama, your hugs and kisses will have to wait

Overnight, and not with a small amount of sadness and regret on our part, COVID-19 has forced us to develop wooden hearts and nerves of steel, perhaps for our own good, as death soon morphed from mere statistics registered in China and elsewhere, to become personal and close…