“Happy Mother’s Day!” To Amparo “Ampy” Medina Reynoso-Hilario

 

My wife looks like that most of the time, a caring woman, if strict, passionate. I took that photograph with my Eastman Kodak handy camera, point & shoot, 17 years ago, on Sunday, 13 June 2004. Always a simple lady, born 30 October 1945, she was 59 years old; I was 64. I loved her the first time I saw her!

Got married in Bay, Laguna 18 March 1967, birthday of her father, Gabriel Reynosofrom Tayabas, Quezon; she did nottell me – did not tell her father either, and he was mad! (When you are in love, you do foolish things.) Tagalog, Ilocano – extrovert, introvert. 

Our children:

Cristina Marie (Tina)
Jose Mario (Jomar)
Maria Lorena (Dida)
Paul Benjamin (Jay)
Teresa Leonor (Techie)
Cynthia Mae (Cynthia)
Julio Salvador (Dinggoy)
Jennifer Claire (Jenny)
Ernest Charles (+) (Ernie)
Daphne Cassandra (Daphne)
Neenah Bonafe (Neenah)
Edwin Dante (Edwin)
Graciela Antonia (Ela).

No, I cannot remember the dates of birth. Too many! I have to ask Ela, #13.

Ela was barely 7 months old when Amparo Medina Reynoso and Frank Agapito Hilario joined the New Year’s Day 1991 Marriage Encounter (ME) Seminar sponsored by the Bukás Loób sa Díyos (BLD) Community, now the BLD San Pablo District. I readily joined because I knew I had been not as much a loving husband as I should, and Ampy wasn’t perfect either! (I learned much later she had doubted that I would say “Yes” to the ME invitation – we never talked church or religion! It’s a long story but at that time I was already an agnostic.)

As ME prerequisite, we had to get married in church; we chose the San Antonio Parish Church and got a church wedding 29 December 1990. Note the name “Graciela Antonia” – Ela was born on the feast day of San Antonio De Padua.

The church wedding and ME brought us closer, much closer – I am not a very demonstrative person, unlike my wife. Look at the above photograph again: She is all smiles as she offers the whole bunch of luscious-looking rambutan. (As luscious as those lips!)

Many years ago, I asked her why she chose me among her several suitors, including a Professor of UP Los Baños, and I was only an Instructor. She said it was because I was the only one who made her laugh! Ha, ha. I don’t remember any of the jokes, but they must have come from the pages of the Reader's Digest, my favorite reading matter when I was in high school in Asingan, Pangasinan. And how could I have afforded to buy that magazine when the Dionisio Hilarios were not well-to-do? The library of our school, Rizal Junior College (HS Dept) was well-stocked with reading matter: books of classic English literature, American magazines like Life, Newsweek, and Time. I was a lucky voracious reader.

Differently, Ampy took up Stenography and, as she was good at it, she passed the government exam. She chose Los Baños as first priority of assignment. And that’s how we met. And the rest is our story.@517