And finally, we have moved into our new home. I write this in my old-new writing room--old because it used to be my father’s office and all his shelves remain; and yet new because in the middle of it sits my bright yellow couch. My father’s law books have been packed and given away. Instead, my own beloved books sit on these old beloved shelves. I feel all warm and cozy, wrapped in some eternal hug my father gives me from the great beyond.

"Yes, we have moved into this house," I say with finality. The cars are finally park-able in the garage. There is a doorbell! Thank heavens there is a doorbell! We have a found a rhythm to our days. We have even found a good system for turning on and off lights and locking doors. The children take care of locking doors in the bedroom area. Fear has diminished with this task. A sense of responsibility has slowly become part of their lifestyle. Having their own rooms means their own self-care. Once in a while, babyhood rears its head: a sudden fear of the dark, a child moves into our bed, a few sniffles here and there. Par for the course for the difficulty of moving, I say, and embrace the lapse. Someday, they will no longer want me.

This is our third home. Our first was a three-bedroom apartment on a small street. We knew there were two (pun intended) many bedrooms but it was near my parents’ house. At the time, my husband’s work hours were in the evenings and it seemed safer to stay close to home. After my own work, I would hang out in the old house and he would fetch me. Or in those years when blackouts were such a great part of all our lives, I would while away the darkness with my siblings.

At dinner, a couple of weeks ago, the children asked about the men I had loved.

Love comes up a lot at our table. I have a 16-year-old son, a 13-year-old daughter and a nine-year-old little boy, so there’s a lot of ribbing about boys and girls. I don’t like the kids feeling embarrassed about all these new feelings they’re having, so I like to join in about having crushes and all that jazz.

I have a couple of favorite crush stories, ones I tell even to my students. There was the glass guy, the light bulb guy, and the fish balls guy. The glass guy was my crush when I was in Grade 4, and it was my first time at a school fair. He was the DJ at the main booth, and I stuck to that booth like a leech, in awe at his ability to speak on the microphone. When you’re young, you don’t know that you like someone because that someone has the very thing you wish you had. How mysterious is the truth that falling in love with someone is a little bit about falling in love with oneself or a possible version of oneself. At the end of the day, he gave me his school glass. It was sticky with Coke, but it felt like a metaphor. I still didn’t know about metaphors and their power then. I just knew that it stood for something.

Mr. Light Bulb was a guy in high school. He asked me to the school dance, and I had on a pretty pink dress with green flowers. I was wearing green shoes, too. I think dreamy nymph maiden was the look I was going for. He waited for me at the school’s Administration building with four red roses. I never could figure out what four stood for: “I love you, maybe?”

This dance was a huge thing, as it came at the end of the Marcos years. The years before this, in between the fair in grade school and this dance, were lean years; years our school did not allow for frivolous things. So a dance and to dance with such freedom was something I felt deep in my bones. I mean, in grade school, our bags were constantly checked and classes were sometimes cancelled because of supposed bomb threats.

While dancing to Mike Francis’s “Let Me In,” I told my crush how pretty the gym looked that night. It was festooned with blue lights and the whole gym lost its sweaty and gray self, and in its stead was this sky-like ethereal, massive thing. He looked at the blue lights and at me, stopped dancing, and without even tiptoeing, un-screwed one of the blue light bulbs. He handed it to me, still hot with electricity coursing through it. It was the singular most beautiful thing to happen to me so far in my life.

In 2007, I was reborn a runner.

At the time, running was not the fad it is today, so I ran in my pajama shorts and t-shirt. How easy it was to wake up at 5:30 a.m., simply lace up, and go out the door. After decades of gyms and whatnot, my running philosophy changed to keeping it simple: no membership fees, no parking, no gadgets, no fuss. Running appealed to the aesthete that I am. All the other things to think about always waylaid me and gave me reasons to not work out. Running? This seemed simple enough.

I’ve always been the kind of a gal with an exercise regimen. Yes, I don’t look it and “there’s the rub,” but I do always exercise. But I am not size 6 thin and never will be, and I’ve accepted that about me. Age, surgery, hormones, children, and the wear and tear of dis-ease have done things to my body. Like most people, I bemoan the shape I have taken. But on most days, I pat my mommy tummy and thank it for all that it has done.

So I came to running, confident. I was a treadmill expert. Who knew a treadmill was very different from a road? Of course, at first, I could only run for three minutes, and boy was that hilarious. I also thought running could be as instinctive as walking. Apparently not. There’s a way to land the feet on the ground to make sure the knees are protected. I eventually learned, over time, that the quieter the run meant less friction on the ground, and that meant I was moving more efficiently. Those first three minutes are stuck in my mind. How effortful it was to find that correct breathing to sustain the labor. How intrinsic to moving are breath and posture. One learns about breath and posture in different ways, but for me, I learned it the most in running.