Dear Doreen,
After the announcement about my book went out in the trade press last Monday, I sat back in bed, cocooned in my duvet and favorite hoodie, with the comforting weight of the cat on my lap, and basked in the warm waves of virtual congratulations streaming from all over the world into my phone.
It was Mickey who said your name and invoked your memory. Congratulations Deepa! his message read. Our Merit English and Doreen days seem so long ago—and here you are, a PUBLISHED AUTHOR! Happy for your success!
And suddenly, there you were: a quiet presence, a soft place in the midst of so much noise. You have always been that soft place for me—and for many of us, your students, who owe so much of the tender beginnings of our writing lives to you.
Doreen, how I wish I could walk into your office and share my news with you. I know you would welcome it with as much warmth and attention as you did all the inanities, doubts and questions that I habitually barged in with when I was an Ateneo scholar struggling to find my voice, a small fish lost in a big pond.
Thank you for being the first to believe in my writing. You called me to read my first essay out loud in class. The assignment was to write fiction, and I turned in memoir before I even knew what memoir was. I didn’t even try to disguise it. But that didn’t matter to you. You understood it was the story that most needed to be told, and you gave it the space to be heard.
It would take me over two decades to realize how essential that story was to my very being. The story you allowed me to tell was the blueprint that contains so much of what shaped me and drives me, how I love and want to be loved, and ultimately, why I write. I wonder: would things have gone differently for me as a writer if you’d pointed out that I’d misunderstood the assignment or hadn’t followed instructions? Instead you pronounced it Excellent! and marked it with an A in your round, emphatic script.
I am an author today because of you: your open door and open heart. Your warmth and wisdom. Your kindness, generosity, and joy. Your encouragement and most of all, your care. I always felt you cared.
You gave me so much without even knowing it. I found my life partner in your class (who would have guessed?!), an unexpected love that grew into an unconventional life, whose story I now tell. Our shared life spans nearly seventeen years now, almost the age we were when we first met in your class. Both of us love books and food much as you did, and are raising a wonderful child who loves these things too.
On the night of your birthday (two days after mine), we’ve booked a beautiful seven-course dinner on a little island a boat ride away from Amsterdam, where we now live. In the firelight, with warm hearts and full bellies, we will raise our glasses to you.
I miss you and I am forever grateful for you. I hope you are enjoying the peace and the light, wherever you are.
With so much love,
your grateful student,
Deepa
P.S. I wish I could take you and Jo out to dinner. I think you’d get on spectacularly—she’s like you, except British and not Ilongga. And she can’t have sweets, either.
To have been taught by Doreen Fernandez, the Philippines’ greatest writer on food and culture (read her posthumous profile in the New York Times), is a privilege I will treasure all my life.
While cleaning out our tiny storage closet last week, my husband unearthed a box of old school papers, including some of my earliest assignments for her class. Reading them brought me back to who I was then—the seed of the writer in me remains surprisingly, remarkably unchanged—and who she was to me.
Doreen would have turned 89 this week, on October 28.
Perhaps looking back to the beginning is an essential part of celebrating how far we have come.
Did you have a Doreen in your life? A mentor, teacher, champion who nurtured the seed of who you are today?
Honor them in the comments, or better yet, honor them with a letter.
As always, thank you for reading. Here in Amsterdam, weeks of knife-edged rain have given way to misty autumn mornings that veil the city with softness and mystery, blotting her hard edges and blurring her sharp corners. The city knows that’s what I need right now; I wish that for you too.
See you in two weeks!
Beautiful, Deepa