Zita Los Baños turned 60 in December in a milestone birthday she was unwilling to celebrate.
The arcane notations of the Chinese superstitious suggest that zero, or anything that concludes a cycle, is a harbinger of bad fortune.
“You must celebrate 59 years of your life but ought to skip 60,” Zita shared.
It forbodes an ending. It portends demise.
So, when the family recently gathered around to sing a limerick about how Zita made a difference in their lives, she’d much rather cut the drum roll and get over with it.
Reckoning familial memories with Zita was, nevertheless, steeped in an outpouring of ugly tears.
“It didn’t sound quite like the party,” she tittered. “It was a eulogy!”
Zita does not fear death. She may knock on wood, but it sounded more like she’s still raring to go.
The cake materialized demanding a prayer. And, somewhere, many must have been hoping they could blow the candles and make a wish for her, too.
Good health. More glad tidings. Perchance a surprise visit into the night: A golden bachelor delivered express, and Zita would not even hear him knocking.
And — voila! — a wedding ring.
Single
Zita has long abandoned what little desire she had for marriage.
She remains single but nary advertised; never once felt like a peer to a league of successful celibates, who, smothered in grief when asked “You’re how old?” are compelled to confess they’re more valuable when married.
“I didn’t analyze much a life without family or children. I didn’t treat it as a project. I enjoyed my independence too much.”
Zita has a career many married women only dared hope after being thrust into having kids, and an equally fulfilling path to happiness, milling around platonic, professional landscapes, breaking glass ceilings and becoming Asia United Bank’s first vice president.
Perhaps heir apparent to corporate presidency.
She manned crucial back offices in charge of treasury products, fixed-income securities and forex, and ultimately credited for the small bank’s big breakthroughs in automation.
“We’re brought up to help each other in a family that’s not even middle-class. Never quite changed to this day. I would drop everything for family. Need makeup? A high-school prom? I would always make myself available.”
Women inhabiting an “ideal” world are imposed with timelines and questions as if they have beyond-use dates, as if, pressured to procreate to belong to their times, a man is any port in the storm.
“When you were younger, you thought you would have it all figured out at 26. Maybe 30 was a reasonable margin. Then you thought 35 was okay. Time flies when you’re least expecting.”
Patience? Destiny? Zita thinks there’s a spirit in the universe that’s in charge.
“Did I pray for it? Maybe. In passing. But not seriously. Maybe God thought I didn’t pray very hard or led a novena in Baclaran for the love of a man or for my sake, so he didn’t give me a life partner.”
Even the churchiest church person among Zita’s friends had sworn to the lord her eternal piety for an outcome she needed sharpish, perchance supplant a rather stoic and defeatist view about attraction: “Why are you betraying your heart, Zita?”
Suitors
Many suitors came calling — men with testosterones on overdrive, real sweethearts redolent of romance novels, the unassuming toad waiting to be kissed to transform into a prince.
Zita remained insulated like a Disney princess in her ivory tower, afraid to nip the proverbial apple or prick her finger with the spindle of courtship and deceit.
She would concede to blind dates her friends would arrange, and cancel at the last minute.
Rarely, if ever, she’d be disarmed of her defenses, hit by the heady buzz of a teenage crush.
She strained her body to ask for the guy’s number.
Only she was in it for the dopamine.
“Once, I mustered the courage to make the anonymous call. I watched it ring, then hung up.”
More like scurried away behind the couch covering her eyes.
Most days, Zita would indulge in chick lit and rom-com.
The characters would grow apart and, of course, Zita would be sad; then the stars would align to bring them back together and, of course, Zita would be happy.
“I blush. But never did I wish it to happen to me.”
It’s easy to get caught in the fervor of fairy tales: That there’s a dramatic heart beating under the idea that marriage and the happy ever after confer a more interesting life.
Then you reconcile to the reality of tragic romances: wives with absent husbands, wives trapped in dull and the chaos when the man of the house returns.
Does it give one the family bug?
At 60, Zita is bereft of such emotional import whenever asked if she’s too old to get married. She loves to see happy families, seeing marriages work.
And even when they don’t work.
Love
“A friend told me: ‘Better off alone than live through an unhappy marriage!’ I said I would have been okay to be in a relationship, have children and eventually fall out of it. What matters is you love at all. But you can’t when you can’t feel it. I wasn’t blessed with that kind of life.”
How do you miss something that wasn’t even there in the beginning?
Zita is good on her own. She would sleep, eat, move aimlessly about in a world she doesn’t feel any remote need to share with anyone.
She sees couples huddled under the stars. Pairs cheek-to-cheek on the floor, holding hands. Warm bodies tucked together marinating in one of those nightmare specials. Women squealing when spurned, but had princes charming on speed dial.
There were weddings, solemn exchange of vows, a promise on the finger in the name of God.
Nobody has to pop the question, but she wouldn’t have to try too hard to hear differently if it ever comes it’s her turn to answer:
“Zita, do you have yourself and only yourself — for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health — to love and to cherish until the day you die?”
“I do.”