Patricia Barretto

Before there was a ceremony, there was a six-month paper trail. A religious conversion, a stack of legal documents, monthly trips back to Manila just to stay legally in the city I call home.
We almost let it overshadow everything. Then my mother-in-law made one simple request, and the everything changed.

The first day was spent getting my bearings and trying the touristy things. I quickly realized this wasn't the vibe I wanted. The Burnham Park of my childhood memories was now overrun with kiosks selling food and trinkets. Session Road, once filled with people walking bundled up against the cold, was thick with smog from idling cars.
The second day, I decided I would take it slow.

The uncomfortable truth is if we don't make an effort, relationships become superficial. You only get updates if you follow people on social media, and social media shows maybe ten percent of someone's actual life: the curated, polished version. The rest—the messy, beautiful, complicated, real parts—only comes out over dinner, over wine pairings, over a vegetable course that makes a picky eater take a few brave bites.

We tend to hold on to versions of our friends frozen in time, preserved by the context of when we knew them best. For me, Frances had always been tied to that first marketing job, to who we both were back then.
But sitting across from her over dinner, I was meeting someone new. Older. Wiser. Different. And so was I.
In the past six months, I've reconnected with friendships from my past. Getting to know them again, I've begun to see the subtle shifts in how we've changed and how we haven't. What anchors us now isn't what we used to do together, but our shared pursuit of growth and the ways we're each becoming someone new.

Inside, the energy was everywhere. People sampling wares, haggling over prices, wandering between stalls with no clear destination. I had my list. I had my plan. And then I didn't.

There's a specific kind of store that sells things nobody needs. Miniature cars and trains, novelty keychains and pins. I wandered past a couple of these at REXKL and caught myself lingering and picking up a miniature car, turning it over, putting it back down.
Who buys these? I thought.

Standing in line, I saw a painting of a naked man with a gasoline pump as a penis and I knew this wouldn’t be a typical museum visit.