#* narrative

The interview takes place after dinner. It is a humble home in quezon city considering the magnitude of their influence years ago. It’s homey and the lighting is nice. My interviewees are Fernando Veloso Avaznado (dingdong) and Richelle Ann Loyola-Avanzado (Jessa). their daughter, Jayda (who is 12 turning 13 this year), ambles on into the scene later on. They were married 15 years ago, and just days past, they’d celebrated their anniversary (their day is on March 18 and I had the pleasure of interviewing them on the 23rd).

We start with basic questions, “where did you meet” etc, etc. It goes without saying (and I suppose it’s pretty obvious) that they met through the entertainment industry. It’s not just one definitive moment. They ran into each other a couple of times (same guestings, same concerts, same after parties maybe- though not as often for the latter). I remember for a fact that my uncle was in different relationships over the years just before they’d met. Their first “official” meeting was in January of the year 2000 at a show in Pampanga and Dingdong was a special guest, where they would be doing a duet. During rehearsals, they finally got to exchange numbers. What they had initially thought as a 15-20 minute conversation had turned into hours and they spent lots of time on the telephone (they were also quick to point out that it was still landline back then).

Dingdong says that at the time, he knew he was ready to settle down or that he felt in his heart that that was what he wanted. Jessa says she had been impressed initially, not even at his best foot forward, but that he was a person in show business as well(who, therefore, would understand its woes). In the course of getting to know each other, they found out that they were both home bodies, and which one complimented the maturity and temperament of the other one, how they were capable enough to take care of themselves. Much later, they would start to think "here's somebody I can see myself growing old with." Though the age gap of eleven years did prove to be a hurdle. It's a little odd, they had noted, but then Dingdong mentioned, it may be true what they say about girls maturing faster than boys. They were glad to be in the right place at the right time.

The challenges and blessings in married life come in droves. There's having kids, there's the early years, and the later years. It's a kind of duality and there's a good and (not necessarily) bad side to things. They said that "familiarity breeds content" and that the person's personality and their lifestyles would manifest over the years. Married life is so different from courtship days in that you find out a person's sleeping habits up close, how they'd use towels (and disregard that their partners would have their own!) or where they pressed the tube of toothpaste. You would just have to take the good with the bad and make adjustments along the way. It's a constant learning process.

To young people in relationships and planning to get married, they said that, when you're in love "feeling mo eto na, pero hindi pa pala" -there is a lot of growth that happens without so much as blinking, but it's important to figure out how to grow together and it's important to nurture friendship on the onset because it's likely all that will be left coming old age.