Vulnerable? Valuable!
She’s not a spring chicken anymore but her idea of exercise in the time of the pandemic is scuba-diving. That sport may or may not be at the extreme end of leisure activities for adults, but Lee is a super/superior senior whose constitution and state of health, honed for decades by her practice of tai-chi and her Buddhist beliefs, may be the secret – if you insist on labeling it a secret – of her strength, agility, and dare I say it, durability.
The truth is, and this may be the real secret, Lee survived a terrible accident many years ago when as a tourist doing the sights on two legs in Copenhagen she was hit by a speeding motorcycle. She overcame her injuries after a long series of surgeries, and when finally the doctors allowed her to come home, she had to pay for three seats on the plane (so she could recline) plus a fourth seat for her doctor from Manila.
Covid and lockdowns? They’re child’s play to this 86-year-old.
Seniors the most vulnerable in the battle against the virus? Call them valuable instead.
Lee is certainly one of them. So is Lolita Ching – in Chinatown, who doesn’t know Lolita? Producer of the long-running
Chinatown TV show, Lolita was Aliw’s choice for its
Special Award for Women Empowerment last Dec. 15. On awards night at The Manila Hotel, Lolita was cited for her work for the last 20 years on Chinatown TV, a program chronicling social and cultural events in the Chinoy community. She is, since 2016, also producer of the CNTV weekly news summaries.
The two shows are aired on IBC 13 every other Sunday. It used to be every Sunday, until the pandemic.
Milagros, a young octogenarian, isn’t one to blame everything on the pandemic because, thanks to the upside-down normal and quarantines, her perspective has moved from growing a garden of ornamental plants to nurturing a vegetable plot which she expects will nurture her sense of food security for her family and others. Where once she had beautiful rainbows blooming on vines, in the air, in pots and coming out of the soil, now she’s like a midwife eagerly watching and waiting to see what lovely, leafy edibles will be a’borning soon.