In Ilocano (the parents' primary language), balasang is the word for a young woman who has reached the marriageable age, which in my parents' day would've been 15 or 16. A balasang presents herself to the world well-groomed, well-dressed, and well-mannered. Graceful and radiant, with no sassy mouth nor a defiant bone in her. Alas, that was not me.  Mama did her best to polish me up with the stylish, stiff, and sophisticated outfits that she bought for me. I felt uncomfortable, awkward, and fake in them, preferring, and still do, the bohemian style. In my early 20s, when I worked in the San Francisco Financial District as a clerk typist, I wore a Mama outfit when everything else was in the laundry hamper. To break the monotony of the outfit, I'd wear something silly with it. Once I wore wool knee-high socks and clogs with a pink polyester dress that had an attached two-toned bolero-type jacket.  I looked as atrocious as it sounds. Still, in the early evening, whil

I spied with my little eye a wife trimming hairs out of her husband's nostrils in front of the Hotel that once was on the corner of Sutter and Powell Streets in San Francisco. I was sitting on the #2 Sutter bus heading westerly home on a sunny day. Hahahaha! This 30+ year mental image still gets me laughing. The couple was probably in their late 50s and early 60s. I pegged them for tourists, but they could've been native-born San Franciscans. I simply loved how they were comfortable with each other. I like to think the Husband and I are comfortable old farts like that couple was. And, yes. I've trimmed the Husband's nose hairs. But only in the privacy of our home and only when I cut his curly locks and bristly (not grizzly) beard. So far.