MEDIUM RARE
Traveling up in the air on a plane with journalists, Pope Francis was asked what he thought about same-sex unions. As the story goes, the Pope replied, without batting an eyelash, “Who am I to judge?”
My favorite couple, “Mader” Ricky Reyes and Cris Aquino, have been together for 49 years. In all that time, according to Cris, “Never a harsh word, never a loud word” between them. For the last 49 years. At Mader’s birthday party two weeks ago in their palatial home, Alta Vista, high up on a hillside with a rear balcony looking down on SM Marikina, Cris and Mader mingled with their friends from way back, it was like a reunion.
The couple have four children, two boys and two girls, and they joined professional musicians in entertaining their guests with songs and dances. The eldest child is marketing manager of a multinational company. Whether they’re fulltime employees or they’re still in school, the rules of the house apply: dinner at home at 7 o’clock, rosary and evening prayers at bedtime.
For the party, Mader was dressed in black, his T-shirt glittering with flat sequins. All in black he was, the better to accentuate the diamonds glittering on one ear, two wrists, around his throat and on his fingers. If Mader collects diamonds, Cris collects cars, vintage and brand-new, parked in a garage as big as the main house.
This is their house No. 14, counting back to their first cozy apartment once upon a time. I gaze at the red-carpeted, grand staircase lighted overhead by a constellation of chandeliers, I try to count the number of cherubs painted on the ceiling, I’m drawn to a grand piano in one corner of the living room. The dining room is dominated by a l-o-n-g table for 24. For tonight’s party, Mader’s siblings and cousins have arrived from the US to sing the happy birthday song. Who could sing better, louder, more theatrically than the great, the incomparable Dulce?
A pity that Helen Gamboa and Hans Sy had left before the show could begin.
This early, I’m predicting Mader’s party next year will be an even grander showstopper complete with fireworks, firecrackers, and showers of diamonds falling out of the sky.