Marj in My Mind

Alice Tan Gonzales

I remember that afternoon in 1981 when writer Tony Tan, a colleague, took me to visit Marj at her home in Dumaguete. A few other friends of theirs arrived, and she and her then hubby took our little group to North Pole, the popular watering hole of the city. Marj and I did not exchange so many words; nonetheless, she made me feel welcome. What I remember most about our first meeting was her warmth and sincerity, and her grace. Marj was a young mother of two then, and a budding writer; I, on the other hand, was unmarried and not a writer. 

I would leave for Iloilo the following year, get married, and start writing in Hiligaynon in 1988. But for so many years after that first and only meeting, I kept Marj in my mind, sometimes asking friends who knew her how she was. It was as if she was an intimate friend of mine, though communication between us was nil and I was certain she would not remember me. My sentiment was sustained by an intuitive sense that given time and opportunity, we could be real friends because we shared something in common. No, I don’t mean the creative spirit — of which she has mammoth — but something more basic in the human soul.  

I met Marj again in 2004 in a writers’ workshop in Bacolod where we were both panelists; she was a celebrated poet by then, and I was star-struck. Unfortunately, the tight schedule left us not much time to bond. Still I perceived the warmth, sincerity and grace that she exuded the first time I met her, and more than that, I perceived Marj the poet at work in every critical commentary that she made in that workshop. 

I then read a little more of Marj’s works and became more of a fan of her poetic brilliance. It was therefore with much enthusiasm that I suggested her name as the 2015 Visiting Literary Artist of the Humanities Division, UP Visayas where I had been teaching since 1982. Marj gladly accepted despite the modest honorarium and the not-so-grand accommodations, and she gave of herself generously. What a delight it was to listen to her lecture on literature and read her poetry! What a pleasure it was for us faculty members of the Division to dine with her and take long walks with her at the Esplanade! And for me, what a joy it was to finally have long, intimate talks with her in the course of her eleven-day sojourn in Iloilo! 

We would occasionally e-mail each other after her stint in UPV, our exchange of messages becoming more frequent after we discovered each other on Viber. When Marj told me she was inviting me to contribute to the Festschrift to mark her 70th birthday in 2023, I was moved. I did not imagine that she had read my Hiligaynon works, her own regional languages being Cebuano and Bol-anon. I perceived in this gesture a trust and respect for a regional writer like me, a trust and respect that could only come from a generous, gifted writer-friend. 

I have chosen to contribute to Marj’s Festschrift my binukot (well-kept maiden) short story, the only one that I wrote first in English before I translated it into Hiligaynon, my usual practice being the reverse.