That was all Maria Kalaw Katigbak was to our gang’s eyes – Pinkie’s very hospitable mother. I have vivid recollection of her frequent check-ins on Pinkie to ask if her friends slept well, if we were comfortable, and if we were being served good food. The scrapbook is a must for recording high school activities. My scrapbook has many photos, notes, souvenirs of fond memories of those happy slumber parties at the home of Maria Kalaw Katigbak.

Those slumber-partying friends were not cognizant of the accomplishments of Pinkie’s mother. All we know is that she made sure we were having a good time in her house. Then, we knew nothing of Mrs. Katigbak’s local and global undertakings and successes.

That she did graduate school with honors, a beauty queen, married the prominent physician Jose Katigbak, a loving and efficient mother, grand- and great-grandmother, Girl Scouts leader, educator, journalist, religious leader, morality implementer as movie and TV chief reviewer, civic activist, author, patron of seminarians, community worker, senator, a lot more. To me then, she was just our friend’s Mama.

"Maria Kalaw Katigbak – A Charmed Life" was launched before the holidays. Author Monina Allarey Mercado (Anvil Publishing) chronicles Mrs. Katigbak’s extraordinary life. Two nights in succession, I stayed up to read all about Maria Kalaw Katigbak. I could not put down this book about a charmed life.

It was, as well, a sentimental journey: From the first chapters, I learned everything I’d always wanted to know about Mrs. Katigbak’s beauteous and famous mother, Pura Villanueva Kalaw. Even the book’s photos are reminiscent of fun times of long ago. Pinkie, inevitably, was mentioned on many pages of the book. Here and there brings on a deja vous. Oh, yes, Pinkie’s violin recital...I was there!

The foreign service took me to distant countries; lost touch with Pinkie and gang, to return almost half a century later. What a joy to find that the gang is intact, and has stayed connected.

Pinkie’s parents are gone, so are mine. Lately, the gang has been trying to get together every so many months for a lunch or a day’s outing. How marvelous that we all are still well, and still friends.

Missed most events in the Philippines for those decades I was away; was unaware of the rise in success, stature, national prominence of Maria Kalaw Katigbak. In her biography, all her joys were recorded. And her sorrows, too – the worst of which were narrated at length by Mrs. Mercado – the events surrounding the August ’92 fatal heart attack, at age 47, of her beloved only son, Butch (chapters 44 and 45).

At the Katigbak home in the ‘50s, Butch, age seven, would pop up from behind us, Pinkie’s friends, to do a surprised tug or hug. I remember him repeatedly tapping at my shoulder, then dashing off, loudly laughing, wanting me to chase after him. A very sociable boy, curious; maybe feeling left out by the presence of the big girls. Such a delightful boy must have grown up to be a delightful adult – one I never met.

Maria Kalaw Katigbak – A Charmed Life. Mercado’s book opens in 1911, February 14, a beautiful day! Teodoro Kalaw comes out of the birthing suite of the Philippine General Hospital where he had just joyfully seen his first baby, Maria Emilia Kalaw.

In the last paragraph in the biography, page 347, Maria’s husband, Dr. Katigbak, for the first time visits the graves of his wife and son. That was January 1993. Mercado wrote that by the following June, Dr. Katigbak and Maria Kalaw would have been married 59 years. For far longer, he was with her than without her.

But without Maria, he lived only two years more.