By Jeneen R. Garcia
Lost and found

FIVE weeks ago, I put my transient lifestyle on hold. I went home to Davao.

Up until three days before I left, I was climbing Cebu’s highest peak in a typhoon, reluctant to admit I needed to be moving along.

How long would I stay? I don’t know, I told my friends. Most I didn’t even say goodbye to. Didn’t want to mess with goodbyes. Why are you going home, a close friend asked. I’m not really sure, I said. Tell me when you know, she said.

At the airport, a smirking check-in attendant informed me my baggage was overweight. It didn’t help that a few seconds before I had arrogantly declared that I would NOT be checking in my bamboo flute, because they were sure to damage my stuff. I pleaded, I argued that I could find a way to reduce the weight, but he just smirked.

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By Karlon N. Rama

THEY vowed to love each other for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health and that only in death would they part. But four to five couples call it quits every week in Cebu City.

From January to May this year, for example, a total of 97 petitions for the annulment of marriage had already been filed before the Regional Trial Court civil division.

All asking for the partition of all properties and some demanding custody of children, the petitions get raffled to special salas, called family courts, for hearing.

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By Mayette Q. Tabada

MARRIAGE in the country reserves a place of honor for the woman. When a couple weds, she is the cynosure of attention.

When the marriage dissolves, the Pinay remains the star. She is most often cast as the Victim, the Wronged Woman whose shrewish ways may have emasculated her man to the point that he had to beat her to show who was running the marriage.

For undetermined years until her children become financially independent, she is Beast of Burden.

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By Lawrence Lacambra Ypil

As for a moment, they bring
to their old throats a young laughter;
to their dark eyes the soft gleam