The author at 15 years old, with her sisters Pinky and Marie, 1982.
My family moved into our home – a two-story residence of wood and brick along East Capitol Drive – on December 24, 1972. It had four bedrooms (the better to accommodate a family of two parents and seven kids), a dining room, a sunken living room, a yellow-tiled kitchen and a pocket garden with hanging plants. That year, our Christmas tree was a rubber plant, and the next day, we woke up to the sound of tricycles. Our house was built on the steepest point of the street, so at 5am, we were roused by the noise of the engines that grunted under the weight of the flip-flop-wearing tricycle drivers as they began their routes.
Life was wonderfully simple. On summer mornings, we rode our bikes to the community basketball court, braving Kapitolyo’s steep inclines with courage and agility I no longer have. My cousin Fides, just half a year older, had regular sleepovers at our place. When we got hungry, we bought taho and dirty ice cream from sellers who peddled their wares on our streets daily.
During the schoolyear, it took five minutes by car to get my younger sisters and I to St. Paul College Pasig (the three older ones went to St. Paul College Manila). But we were usually late (no thanks to me) and Michi, Pinky and Marie suffered for my tardiness by singing the Philippine national anthem in the corridor while the rest of their punctual classmates filed into the classroom.
Our neighbors were our friends. Linda Gomez was a Bayanihan dancer who lived in the house to our left. On Sunday afternoons, she came to our garden through a gap in our hedge to chat with my mother, who sat on a woven mat with at least one of her daughters, a copy of Panorama magazine by her side. Her daughter Eenna and I were in the same grade; her son Boyet had a childhood crush on one of my sisters; and her niece, Stephanie, became my youngest sister Marie’s best friend. Whether we were going to church or to the parlor, there was always a familiar face to say hello to.
And then there were the very familiar faces of Kapitolyo, because they were celebrities. Singer Sylvia la Torre and her daughter Che-che, who had a brief showbiz stint as a teen; basketball player Atoy Co; actor Paquito Diaz; and Batibot’s Ate Sienna, who was a friend of ours. In the late 1980s, a famous singer moved to our street. We dialed his number just to listen to him sing on his answering machine, and then hung up. Thank goodness there was no caller ID in those days!
The author (bottom right) having dinner in the pocket garden of the home, circa 1975, during a sleepover with cousin Fides and sisters.
We had one telephone, so telebabad or talking for hours was out of the question. Once a male suitor called Mica or Rissa, the rest of us didn’t stand a chance of using it that night. But Marie had a clever system with her classmate Teresa, who lived across the street. When she clapped her hands from our balcony, Teresa clapped back. It was their signal for them to meet out on the street. Who needed texting back then when you could clap?
We attended Sunday mass at Holy Family Parish, a church with no walls. When I was 10, Rina and I were picked to participate in the Easter celebration. I read a poem, “Pasko ng Pagkabuhay” (“Easter Sunday”) in a very soft voice, while my sister — dressed in a white gown and Styrofoam angel wings — had to lift the veil off the statue of the Virgin Mary using a long stick. I still remember the horrified gasps among the elderly ladies in the crowd when Rina inadvertently lifted the veil and the elaborate wig fell off Mother Mary’s head!
The year I turned 12, my dad bought us a CB radio. This gadget, which required each of us to have a handle or alternate name, opened us up to a whole new world of friends — kids our age who lived just a few streets away. It was like a club, with its own language. When we spoke into the CB radio’s mic, we used radio terms like “10-4”, “Roger dodger” and “Good buddy”. We attended “eyeballs“ – CB lingo for a face-to-face meet-ups among CB-ers – which took place in the local basketball court, in a room in the Barangay Hall, or even on the steps of our house. Those were fun days.
There were no major shopping places near us in those days, but that was fine. Our little barangay had just about everything we needed. Before dawn broke, my father drove us to Doughmaker’s Bread – a bakery just two minutes away – to get hot pandesal for breakfast. Aling Loida’s sari-sari store down the street was where we got our supply of Choc-Nut, Nips, Bazooka Bubble Gum, Rabbit candy, Coke and Mirinda. For special occasions, my sisters and I pooled our allowance to buy gifts for our parents (i.e. a Php50 pearl necklace for Mom, plaster horse bookends for Dad) from Chemie Drug, a pharmacy that sold little trinkets and provided balloons and chairs for birthday parties too.
Rissa, Rina and I took jazz dance lessons in a room of the Kapitolyo Barangay Hall. I still remember the mosquitoes buzzing over our heads while we did our high kicks across the hot room. Three Sisters was where we ordered the noodle dish pancit bihon and pork barbecue drenched in a sweet secret sauce. It was the only decent restaurant in Kapitolyo for a long time until Café Juanita opened in 1990, the year I fell in love with their sticky toffee pudding.
The Calica family with paternal grandmother in the living room. Check out the fake fireplace with stockings on the right.
We all got our hair cut in Kapitolyo’s beauty parlors, which were plentiful and had the most interesting names: Lilac, Chartreuse, Barbie’s, and Glamourama to name a few. Mom took us to Lilac when we were kids to get our regular bowl cuts, and when we were obsessively growing our hair past our shoulders in our teens, we went to Barbie’s, where a talented male hairstylist named Alex trimmed our tresses with surgeon-like precision (usually no more than 1/2 inch at a time) for many years.
At Christmastime, Rina did all our decorations. She created a fake fireplace one year, and then designed a wooden red sleigh to hold all our gifts for another. Carolers from nearby Barrio Pineda came to our doorstep, singing Yuletide songs with tambourines made from bottle caps and wire. In the beginning, our custom was to give them coins (many of them were from less privileged families), but later on my family organized gift bags filled with a sandwich, a carton of juice, and an assortment of candy. It was a Christmas tradition that went on until I moved out in my early 30s.
These days, East Capitol Drive has become one of Metro Manila’s famous foodie streets. While I am thrilled with the many new places to dine here, it has become too commercial for my taste. More business means more traffic, and at this point in my life, I prefer a quieter, calmer environment to live in. But I’ll never trade the memories of my years growing up here for anything. One of my sisters still lives in Kapitolyo with her family, so whenever I am back in Manila, I always visit the old neighborhood. While I enjoy the baby-back ribs in RUB Ribs and the sumptuous Pinoy and Asian fare at Ninak, for me nothing beats Three Sisters’ barbecue and pancit bihon, and Café Juanita’s sticky toffee pudding. What can I say? You can take the girl out of Kapitolyo, but you can never take Kapitolyo out of the girl.
Maya Calica’s latest project is “Good Night Lala” by (her mom) Corazon Ordoñez Calica, which she edited and illustrated. It is published by Adarna House and available in bookstores citywide. Do you want to share a story about where you used to live in Metro Manila? Send us an email at manila@coconuts.co with ‘I lived here’ in the subject title.
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