MEDIUM RARE 

Now that our Christmas tree is up and dominating the living room, let me sing praises to what makes it different.

First, it’s not new, it’s no longer young and fresh. Next, many of the ornaments hanging on it are older than the tree, and they come from cities near and far, from Hong Kong and Paris, Shanghai and New York, Dubai and Divisoria.

About 30 percent of those lovely, beloved ornaments — I can’t imagine anyone making anything like them anymore — come from one source, and that was the factory in Pasig that turned out Christmas ornaments exclusively for export to the US and Europe many, many years ago. The factory was one of the first, if not the first, in Ruby Sy Coyiuto’s long line of achievements.

Today, Ruby is known as the CEO of Forever Flawless Face and Body Center. Accordingly, it’s Ruby’s audaciously flawless dream to have Dec. 8 declared “National Flawless Day” to mark her company’s 23rd year. In her younger days, Ruby was simply the daughter of my classmate, Lourdes Co, in Immaculate Conception Academy, where we were a class of 11.

When Ruby recently invited a group of lifestyle writers, including my daughter Pat-P, to join her for lunch, I jumped at the invitation – lunch would be one way to connect, though from a distance, with her mom, who rarely goes out of their house in Pasig these days.

Sitting beside Ruby, I could see a young version of her mother: she’s as much a go-getter as Lourdes used to be, she’s got spunk and she’s all business (though she also bragged about her steak and sinigang, or was it adobo?). Unlike her mother, however, Ruby wears a bit of makeup — after all, she’s the exclusive distributor of Mesoestetic’s Age Element Firming Solutions; in short, creams for firming the skin, for firming eye contour, or as she calls it, “professional-grade solutions for dermatologists and aesthetic practitioners.”

It’s no longer enough to be born with good skin, but do consider its natural enemies: sun, diet, stress, the march of time, life with its ups and downs. Forget cosmetic surgery; can a 70-year-old hide her 70-year-old arms, hands, fingers?

Just remember what Elizabeth Taylor said about ageing: “I have earned every wrinkle.”