QC HOME Outgoing President Aquino says he will go home to the newly renovated family residence on 25 Times Street in Quezon City after he turns over the presidency to Rodrigo Duterte on June 30. RICHARD A. REYES
NO. 25 TIMES Street in Quezon City is now a spanking new home, awaiting the return of its resident on June 30.
President Aquino, who would by then be simply Noynoy Aquino once more, is looking forward to returning to his old address.
He told the Inquirer in a recent interview that he hoped the changes in the house would make his return less sentimental.
“I hope there was a section there that there’s no memory of … ” Mr. Aquino said.
The Aquinos have been on Times Street since 1961. Theirs is a home that was not only witness to how a young couple raised a family but how this family ultimately became an integral, exceptional part of the country’s politics and history.
Straight ahead from his old room, the President said, was his parents’ bedroom.
“Then you look to the left, that was where Daddy’s wake was. Then go to the dining table where so many discussions took place. Go inside the kitchen, that was where Mommy cooked. She had her studio, then you go to her garden where she tended her plants,” he reminisced.
His mother Cory’s kitchen appeared to be extra special for the famously tight-knit family.
The late former president was known to be a good cook. Spaghetti with huge meatballs was a specialty.
“You get to the kitchen … My mom would prepare any of her specialties and we would talk there while I wait for her to ask me if I wanted to taste the spaghetti sauce,” Mr. Aquino smiled at the memory, as he added:
“She made so much sauce and when the noodles weren’t ready yet, I settled for bread. Then she would tell me to wait for my sisters.”
In the course of the interview, held with Inquirer editors at Malacañang last month, the President also remembered their home in Boston where they spent a precious three years as a family, even if it was in self-exile.
The red brick home on Commonwealth Avenue was just as special as the one on Times Street.
Boston home
In 2014, the President returned to Boston for the first time since he made the heartbreaking trip back to Manila to bury his father in 1983.
He visited the old Boston house with his close friends. The new owner kept the house practically the same, except for the lighter wood varnish.
“I never got beyond the ground floor. The memories, they kept flowing,” he said.
Beyond the dining table, he said, was the television where he first heard of his father’s assassination.
“I don’t know how I looked but I had three friends with me. And they wanted to leave because they already felt sentimental. So, I had to ask them, ‘How can you feel sentimental when it’s the first time you’ve been to this house?’” the President said.
He said his sisters had been discussing the renovation of the Times Street home for quite some time. It was the second Aquino daughter, Pinky Abellada, who oversaw the remodeling.
The President said his sister asked him for his suggestions for the house but would always overrule him. Ultimately, he said he gave Pinky blanket authority to take charge of the renovation on the condition that if he didn’t like it, they would swap houses.
Inheritance
But he said, smiling: “I really have to thank my sisters.”
The President inherited the family’s Times home after his mother died of colon cancer in 2009.
While he had seen pictures of it, Mr. Aquino had never been to the new home. He joked that if he visited it earlier he might not return to Malacañang.
Hence, the President will see the new house for the first time on June 30.
Mr. Aquino, 56, left Times Street for Malacañang six years ago a bachelor only to return still without a first lady.
Will he be living alone in the new home?
He looked at the Cabinet secretaries flanking him at the interview, telling them, as everybody laughed, “Don’t answer when someone asks a question.”