My Cousin Minna

by Mayang

This is a reprint of one chapter of “Gifts of Grace” Book 1 written by Grace Dacanay-Chong, and published by OMF Literature in September 2001. The book has been getting rave reviews and was in the bestsellers list for one year.

Minna is actually Myrna.  When she was a toddler and was just starting to talk, she could'nt pronounce her name right. And so the nickname stuck. Never mind if she is now in her fifties, a year older than I am,  and a  respected VP in one of the  biggest banks in the US, right smack in Manhattan.  

 We were pals.  We  were neighbors. We went from grade one to grade six in the same section.  We did practically  all our homework together. As we  were both of the same height and of the same build, our mothers (who are sisters) loved to dress us up in identical clothes, shoes, watches, hair-dos and ribbons.  Minna could have been my  twin sister, considering  we did so many things together -- singing campfire songs, practicing folk dances, campaigning in school politics, learning the boogie and rock n' roll, watching Elvis movies in the town plaza, and listening to Pat Boone on our transistor radios.  

On graduation day, we were mirror images on stage. Like a couple of frosty toppings on a birthday cake.  We wore the same white lacy dresses with stiff petticoats, spread  so wide they looked like tiny twin parasols, same Elgin watches, same Gregg shoes,  same Gold Toe socks.  

Between the two of us, she was always the better one. Her grades were higher, her singing voice better, her handwriting neater, etc. She had a franchise on all the  er's.

She was the class president, I was the vice president. Although I came in close-second to everything,  I was exactly that, second. So on our graduation program, she delivered the valedictory address and I, the salutatory address.  

Contrary to the universal human behavior of those in competition, I suffered no complex for being always second. It must have been because I never heard anyone make any comparison.   It was always she and I.  Myrna and May.  The duo. The inseparable pals.  

I looked up to her.  In fact, I never even wondered why or how she did everything better, er, er, er.  To me, it was the natural order of things.   But among all her er's, it was her talent for writing that kept me dreaming that I, too, would learn to write, someday. Even then, at age nine, she could write new lyrics for any song, verses that rhyme, and stories that had twists in the end.  It was always she (not the older or graduating students) whom our teachers or principal asked to write for everything that needed writing: school poster,  class song, section motto,  personalized get-well cards, etc.  She did them effortlessly and quickly.  Was I proud of her!   

I was even prouder of my cousin Minna when  she became the editor-in-chief of the newsletter of the  University of the Philippines High School in Diliman while I was composing, with immense difficulty,  essays for my English class, or diligently struggling with my journals at the Baguio City High School.  I would ask for a copy of the newsletter and sit in awe reading her poetry and editorial.  It amazed me no end  how someone from an unknown small town school could best all the other students, who were graduates of private Manila schools. I basked in the glow of her glory.   I could see it then, my cousin Minna's by-line emblazoned on many future national  periodicals or books.  

But (with apologies to Shakespeare) alas and alack, she pursued a course in business and abandoned writing. Disappointed  was too tame a word to describe what I felt. She totally let me down.

When she left for the US with her degree in Accounting,  we lost touch for some time.  Not intentionally, it was just a bad case of mañana habit. But I heard that she ascended quickly -- at record speed -- from an ordinary small bank employee in an obscure district to her current  position in New York, New York.  It was the right career path after all.  

Although we have been separated by time and space for years on end, I've always felt an irreversible bond whenever my cousin Minna and I would  get together. Each time I'd go to New York for a seminar or other,  she would come to my hotel  room and we'd talk till four in the morning.  When she came home to the Philippines two years ago  for a once-in-a-lifetime vacation, my voice became hoarse, literally, from talking.  When she headed "home" to New York after that, she decided to get herself a computer so she could communicate often and registered  her childhood nickname Minna  as part of her e-mail address.  

What is it about e-mails that always bring out in everyone, even those who seldom write,  like my cousin Minna, the compulsion to reach out? As soon as her e-mail was installed, she must have sat for days on that computer to shoot out, not one, but dozens of messages at odd hours, and at short intervals. Before her discovery of e-mail, she confessed to not writing a single letter to anyone, other than me in thirty years. An insomniac,  she e-mails me at three or four in the morning, which is great,  because  her messages would be in my computer when I open  my e-mail at lunch break.

I enjoy reading her messages.  Her gift of writing, although unharnessed, hasn't waned at all, despite lifestyle change or a career far removed from writing. The wit and ease with which she strung her words along, as a youngster, is the same and I still feel the same sense of awe at her gift.  

On a Friday the thirteenth in  August last year, God sprang a surprise on me.  Minna was one of the first persons with whom I shared the news.  

She answered in seconds.  "Congratulations, cuz!!!!"  the e-mail screamed, as it acknowledged my winning  the first prize in the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, Short Story for Children in English Category, my very first attempt at creative writing. After unusually stressful days as EVP/Creative Director in a multinational ad agency,  I had spent hours with my laptop writing  the story late into the night, as a self-prescribed therapy, off and on for months.

"You deserve it.  You have a God-given talent and I'm so proud of you!  Send me your piece, quick!"     

That e-mail from my cousin Minna, whose talent -- even when we were carefree and wide-eyed -- inspired me to flirt with writing, meant more than any congratulatory message I ever received.  I felt as though she passed on to me a gift that was rightfully hers. But sending her my piece was another story.  

Although proud (ecstatic may be more accurate) with the recognition I had just received from Palanca, I was filled with doubt and dread. I read and re-read my manuscript word for word a dozen times, looking for lapses, before finally having the courage to send it out in cyberspace.  My covering letter was very tentative, "This is my very first attempt in creative writing.  I still have a lot to learn. The award may have been just tsamba. Please tell me what you think, honestly.  I won't take offense." Then I bit my nails.

What she wrote back made me blush and shrink. "I am in awe of your talent," she began,  as though taking the words out of my mouth about her own.  "You are a writer. You worked for it. You  should cast aside any semblance of humility and accept the kudos and tributes that you richly deserve. You have a gift. Use it!"

Thoroughly understanding my fear and frazzled nerves, the way only my cousin Minna would, she was more than encouraging. She was exaggerating! She must have known exactly what a fledgling upstart would feel after hearing from her role model.  

Like a knee-jerk reaction,  I bowed down and tightly shut my eyes to chew over my  latest discovery.

"Cast aside any semblance of humility..." she wrote. Yet in all humility, I realized that my cousin Minna and  I (and I believe all of us) are recipients of a gift in different forms. In my case, all I needed  to do was recognize and acknowledge it so I could  begin to work at being a good steward of that gift. For a long, long time, I was too busy admiring and gushing at what was hers I hadn't had time to discover and hone mine. "Use it!"

I think that maybe, "someday" is now.