The Beginning

Once upon a time, there were four girls locked up in a room...

It all began because my parents were quite paranoid about the security of their four daughters growing up in the big bad city of Manila that aside from to go to school they rarely allowed us out of the house. I remember I would have to sneak out to enjoy rides on a bicycle borrowed from a playmate; and that we had a neighbor who thought my parents were childless because he never did see us out.

Children must play, however, and us sisters found an outlet in arts and crafts. One of our favorite games involved the paper dolls we ourselves would make from thick cardboard. We would draw, cut, and color numerous dresses for them; would fashion for them complicated lives that included apartments whose floor spaces were defined by hardcover Time-Life books and cars that in real life were rubber Spartan flipflops.

We loved those dolls so much that we wouldn't just throw them away with the trash when they got too old. One got her head torn off at the neck, so we staged her death as a shark attack during a vacation near the sea. She was buried in our backyard, complete with a matchbox coffin and holy collected rain water sprinkled on the mound.

Nowadays, I can ride my bicycle wherever I want to, although I prefer my car that I drive often to the not-so-big, not-at-all bad, actually-quite-tame city of Montpellier to hang out with friends. But to be honest, I am rarely more calm and more content than when I am alone in my room, making fabric jewelry surrounded by my sewn-up dolls.