I notice blue scribbling on a yellow post-it note taped between elevator doors as I wait along the lobby of my Chelsea building. “Re: mask,” the note begins. My neighbor Carole waves ahead of me. “To the pretty girl with salt-and-pepper hair. Please call Dave, at 917-…-….” The doors open and Carole and I file in to once again plant our feet on pairs of decals as we head up. “And here I was wondering how one dates during COVID,” I say, catching my neighbor’s eyes. Carole’s face and neck slowly turn beet red around her mask. She blinks back tears and points to my head. “Go for it, pretty girl. Call Dave!” She cups her mask with both hands and bursts into a giggle. “You know?” I concur, as I wave and get off first, separating our trail of laughter, each of us heading back to our respective single lives.

I lean into my open apartment door and drag two Farm-to-People box deliveries inside: Contact-less. Human contact-less. Into the kitchen freezer I stack the meats and seafood; produce, tofu and blue eggs into compartments below. What healthy dish for one to prepare for lunch, I ponder. The empty boxes I collapse and set aside for recycling; and off the mask goes finally.

Still mindful of COVID protocol, I start to sing to myself, in front of my kitchen sink. Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday happy birthday happy birthday to you. I let the faucet water run longer. With gusto hum a few more times. I flick the last drops and retrieve a text from my BFF. “You could try zoom dating.” I click on a web link she emailed earlier: "Video chatting and Zoom speed dating act as a great screening tool…”

I stare at the suggestion of entering the newly familiar platform of human connectedness: “Zoom”—Breakout rooms. Clearly framed faces. Unmuted voices. Sharing top "personal values." (What exactly are those, in real time?) “Speed” ?—not in my present vocabulary. “Dating” ?—how does that go again? How does one begin... I turn to inspect the goodies inside the refrigerator. How does one begin... Grandma Inang’s sinigang recipe would begin with a big pot of water brought to a boil; the centerpiece around which the family gathers on the wide wooden banka boat that sets out just past the inlet into open sea. Farther out fishermen from larger boats set traps to catch the tangige white fish, droves of which are caught to sell in the big city. But my local family of farmers savor the mudfish that swim freely in the water closer to land. Into the simmering pot Inang would add freshly harvested arinda fruit—guava, tamarind, or kamias, creating a slow fragrant brew into which the fresh catch wriggles whole, heartily topped off by newly harvested green leafy scallions, kangkong, pechay. Ladled onto bowls of aromatic rice in clay, Inang’s sweetly sour concoction satisfies any hungry spirit.
What would the recipe be then, for a new relationship?
What can I hope for late at 65 alone
mornings nights sweatless on my pillows
running towards visions of an island mate kisses smiles loins…

In my narrow kitchen I opt out of the wild-caught Atlantic salmon and cut up the other white meat. I fill a steel pot halfway with Brita-filtered water, which I bring to a boil. I touch and inhale the assortment of seasonal ingredients spread out on my emptied counter. Love onions. I peel and throw in a whole yellow one. One onion starts my soups. I cradle a large green-and-red heirloom tomato and proceed to chop; scoop juiciness of the imagined kamias/guava into the bubbling water. Fresh lemon juice I extract twisting a fork, and I throw in the rind for good measure. Brewing sourness, I reach for a ripe peach, take a bite; slice the rest and throw that in. Fresh figs intrigue me, don’t really know what to do with them; so I throw two halved pieces into the mix. My hands and taste buds work fast in fusion as the water continues to boil down. I add more Brita-filtered water. I drop each cube of locally butchered pork belly I season with pinches of coarse sea salt I keep with my collection of salts. Red and green kale is a leafy no-brainer, and I press chopped delicious and hearty layers atop the simmering brew. Bubbling brown rice cools down in a timed Chinatown-bought cooker. A few servings of freshly assimilated sour and sweet, for one. Thrilled, my nostrils inhale the depths of blue green that follow men who fish into the far-flung overnight.
Hungry for sun for air for water
dormant quarantined deflecting
I have enfolded deep within
Hot love of the tropical persuasion has been hard to top. Or put out. Let alone replace.
I return to my laptop click on the link.
What would it feel like, I still wonder, to cross over and never come back?
My heart races.

“I see you made it!” Dr. Lorman’s voice is garbled behind the Hazmat—the new normal, besides the temperature swipe to my forehead and a COVID questionnaire to obtain a pass to the 43rd floor dentist’s office. For three months I had carefully chewed on the other side of my temporary post-root canal tooth. Capping a crown was not an essential pandemic emergency. “Let’s get this done quickly, shall we?” Dr. Lorman is his usual assuring self. “I can barely breathe in here but, you, my dear, can take off your mask.”

A poke poke poke a tap tap tap

Under artificial glare a precision-guided judgment

1980s soothing music pipes in, at odds with the surreal quality that engulfs New York City’s Phase 2 reopening. Stores are open but empty of customers; or closed; or boarded up—either permanently or presumably recovering from recent looting. Citi-bikes run; and Revel-ers—kinda like Manila’s motorcycle angkas innovation—speed along ominously with no special license required. Otherwise, light vehicular and foot traffic followed me to the dentist. I let Dr. Lorman’s framed colorful photograph of Maui waves wash over me to lull the pain about to come from reopening a deep wound, and close my eyes.

Pulp-heart chamber hollowed numb-shaved

Decay excised stench free

A-swipe a-ching ching ching hundreds of dollars more to go —

“You’re good to go, dear.” I take his hand-held mirror, after I sit up for a mouth wash.

It’s there, though, a dull throbbing American ache

Ever-present flavors of fish sinigang, champurado, halo halo

Cold juice strained stained hot espresso mornings

Tenderloin Worcester smothered martinis shaken

with such fuss

Pus

Resealed for another lifetime.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

The windshield cracked
Your hand bled
As did my heart
The engine running
My tears
Raining
Pouring in puddles
In your father’s blue Lincoln

I will not
Do you hear me
I will not give up on my dreams
But a silhouette

A future nascent
Bursting with laughter and vigor
Swimming in the promise
Along an early evening Brooklyn street

Your fist pummeled through glass
My ears splintered
My hand twitching
Soft around my belly
Life’s cord
Disentangling the truth
Through scattered shards

Fingers, toes kicking
Heart dancing
Death knocking

I will not
Do you hear me
I will not give up on my dreams

I will not do it for you.

Hoy, teka nga! This is Tita Sioning! Ay naku! We must have passed right by you! We didn’t recognize you.

By 1998 I had traded my 1970s miniskirt for plus-size Capris; Marikina high heels for comfortable Tevas; shiny black knee-length tresses for a salt-and-pepper bob. My malnourished 85 pounds self at 16 stunned at 200 pounds in middle age.

Like a hawk my Filipina elder followed me around at the Christening feast held at their Sacramento home. Look at me, look at me, ha. You should try not to fill up your plate like that. Come here. Here’s a smaller bowl. It’s better to take smaller portions at a time, just a spoonful of rice with your adobo. There, some pansit—

My California relative took pride in scrumptious spreads that symbolized prosperity, tasty and filling celebrations befitting hard-acquired success. But she felt obliged to remind me that cleaning up a bountiful food plate demanded an unappetizing scolding. Eating all and anything on the plate is a positive act, but eating in excess unfairly robbed precious nourishment from another—food fed the really, really hungry. My bodily appetite shouted that I had assimilated into a thoughtless selfish self-involved American who had shamelessly forgotten her cultural upbringing and starving birth-nation.

My fat Filipina body was not beautiful.

Adding a small measure of prosperous American fatness to my 1972 impoverished Philippine skin-and-bones frame would have been an acceptable level of resistance to sin.

And what could be more sinful than to leave a 15-year marriage?

My mind, nerves, heart—my body could no longer bear the accumulating pain; following two pregnancies in 1983 and 1991; and unrelenting stress that accelerated in 1995 when I pushed back against Mom and the in-laws and left my husband. Thankfully, family prayed, that I did not incur wrath from the Catholic church; already I had gone against the cultural grain and wed on a weekday in downtown Queens City Hall. Weighed down by pressures defiantly I went for it all—a new job, my own house, financial independence, a happier family. But disquiet followed me into the Bronx cottage—bobbed my waist-length hair again to secure a higher paying corporate job, enrolled and graduated my first child from college, underwent two more major surgeries, returned to college myself—before I ballooned into my 200-lb persona.

Neither a demure mahinhin moral Filipina maiden nor a sickly American waif runway beauty ideal I was meant to fit.

Aba, nagdalawang tao ka na!

Two people? Am I really two people in your eyes?

[Photocredit: Nestor Redondo Art Gallery. MALAKAS AT MAGANDA: Men, Maiden and Myths. 1979. (http://www.alanguilan.com/museum/redondo12.html]