I didn’t care about little things when I was young and dumb

We never had a junior prom. 

That was the year Ondoy hit Manila and flooded my house knee-deep, causing water damage to beautiful wooden furniture we wouldn’t have it in our hearts—or pockets—to replace for years. We had a nook outside by the gate that was only there because there was nowhere else to put it, table and all, and that was where we ate our dinner, candlelit but not quite something to romanticize. This is just like Villa Escudero, we joked anyway, remembering the restaurant we had dined at that was next to a waterfall. Pretending the current at our feet was anything but rainwater and devastation. My dad and I walked around our neighborhood the next day, surveying the destruction the typhoon left in its wake. 

Months later, the administration of my high school would announce that in light of recent events, they wouldn’t be holding the annual junior-senior prom. It was done out of respect for the victims, they reasoned, and there were also budgeting concerns because the school suffered its fair share of damages. 

I don’t think about it these days, but once in a while it would come back to me. At the time most of the students would talk about it like it was the end of the world. Part of it didn’t make sense to me—couldn’t there have been a compromise, especially for the seniors? Now, though, it’s just another little anomaly about my adolescence that makes for a good conversation starter: One year, we skipped the prom. As in, we didn’t hold one.

I always meant to skip my junior prom anyway. The idea of dressing up stressed me out, I didn’t dance, it wasn’t worth such a hefty expense. I thought it would be cooler to hold an Anti-Prom Party as an act of nonconformity instead. At the time my favorite movie had been 10 Things I Hate About You and I fancied myself akin to Kat Stratford, was never one to go starry-eyed when it came time for the prom scene in a teen movie regardless. Not even with Heath Ledger in a tux and Letters to Cleo performing “Cruel to Be Kind” in the background. 

But senior year was different—this time, I wanted it all. To satisfy the curiosity of what it was like, to have this last hurrah.

The truth is, I barely remember much of the prom I did get to have. I’ve lived twice the life I had at sixteen, after all. I have no idea why I don’t have a single picture either. When I look back on it, I think of how beautiful my friends all looked and how I wished I could always keep them with me. And did you really go to high school in the late aughts/early tens if your prom playlist didn’t include “Can I Have This Dance?” from High School Musical 3 and “So Close” from Enchanted? 

It was also a night of so many firsts for me. First time shaving my legs. First time curling my hair. First time wearing contacts, which I ditched within weeks and never tried again because I thought I lost one while applying them one morning and turned out it had been sucked into and stuck inside my eye socket the whole day. 

First dance after first dance, including one with the boy I’d written most of my lovelorn poetry about. We’d drifted to each other’s sides like we hadn’t even been thinking about it, pulling together into something that couldn’t decide whether it was a waltz or a slow dance. His hand hovered at my waist, but the other was warm and solid in my own, and we avoided eye contact until we had to part. Don’t ask me what song was playing—I wouldn’t have even been able to tell the morning after.

Months later I would see Prom, the utterly forgettable and mostly forgotten movie, in the cinema on my break. I was completely alone in the theater, the sole ticket sold, and it was an interesting enough experience that I started a new blog and wrote about it as soon as I got home. That blog became a place for me to develop my writing voice and document my teenage years. By then, I was a freshman in university, and it hardly even occurred to me that my own prom wasn’t even all that long ago. It had been only four months, but everything in my life was different, and for once I wasn’t dwelling on the past. 

I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to finish this. None of this had been on my mind in years, until one day I recalled that little blip when I was fifteen where tragedy struck and our prom was canceled, except the tragedy wasn’t hyperbole and had nothing to do with the prom. But there’s one thing I really wanted to write about, and it’s this: 

My prom dress was born out of a magazine clipping, an ad in Vogue for Louis Vuitton’s Fall 2010 collection. Three women primping and preening in a dressing room wearing gorgeous dresses with vintage silhouettes. One of them had her hands at her waist, and immediately I knew that she was wearing my prom dress: Sabrina neckline, sleeves up to her elbows, sheer bodice and delicate layers. 

My mom and I went to a house somewhere in Novaliches or Fairview, the torn-out magazine page clutched in my hands, so we could have a designer recreate the dress. Midnight blue lace and a bubbly, swishy layered skirt, so it would look less like I was attending a funeral. (My mom’s words.) I’d never been so excited. It turned out so beautiful. 

We borrowed a clutch from my aunt, and we searched for the perfect shoes at the mall: rounded toes, wedge heels for comfort, gleaming with gem accents all over. I would wear them around the house before the big day, head spinning with images of my new life as someone who actually wore heels instead of ballet flats and Converse. 

So much of that night was about me becoming a new person. I was graduating high school soon, I was finding my identity and independence, I was growing up. 

Only, not just yet. My parents drove to the fancy country club banquet hall to pick me up. The first thing I removed was my corsage, as soon as I saw them. They brought me flip-flops and helped me out of my heels. My curls flattened out. I had the contact lens incident not long after. My dress was tucked away in a closet, but it might as well have been permanent storage. And as for the shoes? It wasn’t long before I never saw them again. 

I went right back to my Buddy Holly glasses and my rotation of flats and sneakers, but that didn’t mean I stopped trying to discover who I could become—they were just part of who I was, and they weren’t all I had to be. By then I knew better than to box myself in. And, wow, if that isn’t the most Kat Stratford thing of all.

You could get what you want or you could just get old

Yesterday I wanted a tiny cake. 

Not a bento cake, although I have tried them once or twice. I’m talking about the pre-made three-inch cakes covered in sickly-sweet, powdery frosting from a cake stall you’d often walk right past at the mall. If you can’t quite understand what I’m referring to, I don’t blame you. You wouldn’t know they were even there unless you stopped and really looked, past the Barbies wearing heavy chiffon skirts (I celebrated my seventh birthday with one) and the racecars sporting shiny red fondant paint jobs. They’re usually displayed in a line beneath the glass counter, and people don’t typically peruse specialty cake stores unless they have a reason to. 

My first taste of these treats probably counted as more of a cupcake, years before cupcakes really blew up as a trendy dessert. My mom managed the showroom of a Maco Kuchen in Shangri-La Plaza, and sometimes I would get to visit after school and close up with her, after which we would take the MRT home. On the fifth floor on our way to Shaw Station, we would stop by the Art Cakes stall just before the exit and buy character cakes—deep, dark chocolate batter baked into palm-sized aluminum cups and decorated with the faces of cartoon characters. We’d get Tom and Jerry, or Tweety and Sylvester, or Elmo and Cookie Monster. 

The cakes came with plastic forks, and even after twenty years my sense memory of them is so strong that sometimes it feels like a phantom limb: my teeth scraping against smooth plastic, frosting on my lips, the dense, slightly bitter chocolate cake complementing the saccharine buttercream. 

I don’t remember which came first: my mom leaving her job at the showroom so she and my dad could start their own business, or Art Cakes’ closure. Either way, this routine we had eventually became just another thing we used to do. 

I got to have them again once or twice over the years, delighted at the discovery that the Cakes ‘r’ Us near me had little cakes, too. They no longer came in cups or frosted with animated icons, but they tasted just the way they used to in my childhood memories nonetheless. Most of the time, though, I let myself pass the shop and the cakes by, either too preoccupied with the life I’ve come to live or too shy to come up and just buy one out of the blue. 

The last time I had a tiny cake was five years ago, bought on a whim from a similar type of cake shop in Megamall on a day when everything seemed to be falling apart and I found myself turning to any source of fleeting comfort I could think of. It was a new year and I had just gotten diagnosed with depression and I didn’t want to go home just yet, so I decided, fuck it. I went up to the stall, picked a cake out from the day’s display, and took it down to the food court. It was decorated on the sides in stripes of different colors, the frosting piped downward, the top of the cake a plain pale lavender and framed in dollops of chocolate frosting. No pastels, no patterns, no rainbows, just vivid shades. 

And it tasted the same. Of course it tasted the same. I ate less than half and took the rest home, and I showed it to my mom and we laughed about me being silly and nostalgic and spontaneous. I asked if she wanted any and she said she would have a bite. 

When bento cakes became popular, I adored them for their cuteness and how creative they could be: puffy frosted flowers, faux watercolor, even the chic minimalist ones with short and sweet messages piped neatly onto solid colors. But every time I take a bite, I just end up missing the flavor I know best: like yesterday’s birthday cake, just a tad more bittersweet. In more ways than one.

I can’t remember the last time I passed a cake stall at the mall. There are the fancy bakeshops, sure, only they never have exactly what I’m looking for. In my mind I want to believe I can walk into an SM and find another one. I can even picture the exact places I’d try to look. But I’m pretty sure they’ll no longer be there. Just another thing we used to do, just another thing I took for granted. Just another thing I can’t bring back from the life I was lucky to share with my parents.

(Recently I realized I’ll never have a 13 Going on 30 “Vienna” scene because my parents won’t be there when I turn 30.)

The tiny cakes I grew up with weren’t as sophisticated or pretty as bento cakes. They were kitschy and colorful, piped with standard, impersonal greetings: “Congratulations!” “I love you.” “Happy birthday!” Not much room for personalization. (Literally. They were too small.) But they were cheap and they were still cute and they were good, the perfect last-minute pick-me-up for a celebration with someone dear to you—or for yourself when days felt too ordinary or too gloomy. 

What I’ve learned from them—and my mom who always shared them with me—is that I don’t need a special occasion. There’s always a reason to enjoy the little things.