In my youth, my contribution to our community had been creative energy—crafting culture and arts policies, educating through exhibits, organizing performances, and showcasing Phillipine culture to international audiences. Decades later, as time brought physical vulnerability, I discovered the other half of that same bond: the humbling, beautiful experience of allowing the community we built together to hold me up.

But if I know Aggie, her true passion remains the music made with the instrument she was born with: her voice. When she steps up to a microphone, closes her eyes, and hits that first effortless note, the entire room falls silent. In those moments, she isn't singing to a crowd; she is singing directly to you. Music is her lifeblood, her spiritual offering to her public and her Creator.

And so, one Valentine's Day, I visited her at her new home, a home she created all by herself in a shell of a house in a subdivision project. I felt blissfully warm inside because I see the Bing that I know in every furniture and furnishing that she chose and in every way that she positioned them, like a museum curator putting up disparate objects that help tell one story.

She's a child who was wished for, welcomed, treasured. But I had to leave her while she was still an infant and when I came back one-year later, I couldn't coax her away from her yaya. Somehow, the maternal bond had been broken. It took a while before I regained her trust and affection. And when I did, she clung to me like a barnacle to its rock!