A long, long time ago, Kris Aquino and I sat together by the steps of the Guest House (the official residence of then, President Cory Aquino).
We goofed around at the foyer in Hacienda Luisita and various presidential sorties around the archipelago. I was her trusted listener in casual conversations about school, love and crushes, while others pounded the Malacañang beat.
That is how I will always remember her: always wearing her heart on her sleeve and always excruciatingly vulnerable.
She was a school girl dreaming of and headed for stardom.
Young, pretty, fresh, impulsive and the country’s most popular teenager, she had the particular gift of making the hardest stuff.
Even for a presidential daughter codenamed, “Bunso,” she seemed appealingly easy — a playful free spirit said to have blown away cobwebs inside the palace with her girlish laughter and chatter about dates, clothes, parties and even school chores.
She was surrounded by people, who would trip on their shoelaces to give her everything she wished for. She had also somehow managed to become the most-loved performer on TV and movies, regardless of being dubbed “Taklesa Queen” because of her propensity for random, spontaneous, tactless, blush-inducing remarks.
But she took her movie roles to heart. She was great at memorizing her lines and giving it dramatic and emotional expression that merited only a few takes for a neophyte.
At the Palace, we saw a perfectly adjusted lovable little princess: intellectually-curious, socially-conscious and oozing with fun and spontaneity.
The then 18-year-old Kristeta was a template for the ideal presidential daughter. She managed to wrangle a degree at the Ateneo, which was swarming with scholars, majoring in Political Science and Humanities, and graduating in the top 20 of her class.
She found herself pitted against other young movie stars, who were also brimming with hope, dreams and talent. Like her, they had combative creativity and audacity.
But Kristeta was sweet and gentle, with nary a minutiae of weakness. Even then, she was resolute and indomitable.
I remember one evening, Pres. Cory had invited a couple of Malacañang reporters to watch Kris on her TV show. She was making a dramatic entrance, blasting in a rock number.
The catwalk was improperly constructed and she suddenly fell, disappeared and vanished from the stage into a filthy dark hole — five feet below, right into a mangle of uncovered pipes.
Initially the audience just tittered. So did we. But that was an accident waiting to happen — the result was a hospital stay and she had to wear braces on her neck for a while.
I’ve seen Presidential cool disintegrate. Pres.Cory was so horrified I thought she was going to have a heart seizure. And irony of ironies, that fall was mild, compared to what would be Kris’ future falls.
The young girl grew up. She fell in love not just once nor twice, giving her mother incurable heartaches.
Inflamed by love and interpreted gently at first, they were amusing. But soon enough, her affairs of the heart started to wound herself and those around her.
At first, it would seem that love merely became clouded over, surrounded by mental mists that still connected to softness, innocence of the spirit with hope and faith, and a sense of trust and wonder — in that rapture called love.
But what is real doesn’t go away. The truth does not stop being the truth, just because we’re not looking at it.
She was the 7-year-old campaigner that was featured on the front page of New York Times and Time Magazineas she wooed the crowd to stand with her imprisoned father at campaign rallies during the infamous 1978 parliamentary elections.
Her father, Senator Benigno Aquino was assassinated in 1983 and is now a national hero.
Fast forward to 2009. A nation watched her mourn another death — the hurt and pain of losing another parent. There’s also the agony of a failed marriage, with its haunting repercussions.
But in her durable heart, these are the bare bones of the past — another yesterday she can’t change, no matter how it wounds; so firm with her tenacity and good will.
Once more, she wiped her tears, straightened her back, held her head up high, with astonishing strength.
She will continue to shimmer in the firmament of renown — out there beyond celebrity, beyond fame, with her certain ineffable aura.
