Marivi Soliven

 

This has been a brutal year for loss. My mother passed away in April, and my book baby daddy died today.

We all knew this day was coming. Robert Alejandro had been struggling with cancer for eight years, surviving on his partner Jetro’s Budwig Protocol diet. But eight years is a long time even for a slow-moving cancer, and the last update on Kuya Robert’s Healing Journey was grim: irreversible organ damage. Because of the time difference, I’d lately gotten in the habit of waking at 2 a.m. to check that page for updates.

Which is how I found out before dawn on Election Day that Robert was gone.

Robert was one of my oldest, dearest friends, the one who helped launch my storytelling career. We met in our early twenties at McCann Erickson, matched up as a junior copywriter/art director team by Emily Altomonte Abrera, It was our first ad agency job.

For years we sat across from each other in matching gray cubicles, close enough that we could swivel around and sit knee to knee, to brainstorm ideas for the next print ad. After working together on several campaigns, we thought so much in sync that he was practically the other half of my brain.

Jenny Villalon Tapales managed our major accounts, which included Johnson & Johnson, Makati Commercial Center and Shakey’s Pizza. Jenny herded us over to the client offices and commiserated with us when our best ideas were shot down by imagination-challenged clients (you know who you are).

 

Jenny Villalon Tapales managed our major accounts, which included Johnson & Johnson, Makati Commercial Center and Shakey’s Pizza. Jenny herded us over to the client offices and commiserated with us when our best ideas were shot down by imagination-challenged clients (you know who you are).

Even back then we knew we wanted to do more than create print ads for sanitary napkins, shopping centers and pizza. One day Robert asked if I had any children’s stories he could illustrate. Coincidentally, I’d been working on one in my spare time. Robert turned that prose poem into 32 pages of whimsical delight at the Children’s book illustration workshop sponsored by the Goethe Institute in Manila.

He loved the story so much that he suggested we try to get it published!

We went from one publishing house to the other, and after being roundly rejected, we met with Jose Ma Lorenzo Tan at Bookmark with fading hope. We showed Lory the illustrations, and I left him a folio of my other stories because, what the hell? We were used to seeing our best ideas rejected.

Lory passed on the War of the Rose People, but a day later asked Jenny if I could get back to him about another story. The Unicorn (Bookmark, 1992) was the first book baby Robert and I birthed. It’s been out of print for decades, but people still come up to me and say how much they loved that story, still have it on their bookshelves, don’t want to pass it on to their own kids.

Robert, Jenny and I eventually left the ad agency and found other paths. Robert co-founded Ilustrador ng Kabataan (INK) which has mentored generations of marvelous artists and started his own boutique design studio. Jenny took a graduate degree in Education and now runs her own school; and I returned to UP Diliman to teach. Which is where I met my husband John Blanco and went on to write 16 more books.

Despite our separate paths, the three of us kept in touch. When John and I decided to marry, Robert hand-wrote in calligraphy the names of guests on our wedding invitations.

All 150 of them.

As if that weren’t enough, having attended our wedding as one of our sponsors, Robert drew me and my husband into the illustrations for my last Children’s book, Chief Flower Girl (Tahanan Books, 1998). Forget the crystal fruit bowls, silver gewgaws and jusi napkins — the second book baby we birthed was the hands down the BEST wedding gift we received.

Chief Flower Girl has also been out of print for decades, but women still tell me how they read the story to their nieces and nephews as they prepared for their own weddings.

The last book baby Robert and I birthed was the Tagalog edition of The Mango Bride, translated by Danton Remoto and published by National Bookstore in 2015.

Robert was diagnosed with colon cancer a year later.

Jenny and I continued to meet up whenever I went home to Manila, but Robert could no longer join us. For months I sent him daily messages to which he responded with emojis. It was my way of eliciting proof of life.

Robert was an incredibly kind, generous and gentle soul. He never judged, never lectured, even in my worst moments of inanity and insanity. He stepped up to be the better angel in my feckless twenties.

I will always miss him, but am comforted by the knowledge that the books we made together will continue to delight our readers long after even I am gone.