Loribelle Spirovski

Hi, Sarah.

Well, it's funny because my mum isn't the most sentimental person, I suppose.

So she doesn't really hold on to very much.

I think that's one of her secrets to ageing gracefully, to be honest.

But she, I mean, it's all little scraps of visual imagery, I think.

A lot of it is climbing coconut trees.

She was a great climber when she was a child.

She lived in a tiny island called Katanduanes and her parents had a large house there.

And she grew up with her eight siblings and they ran a small general store when she was a child.

And so she would have a lot of stories about that little store and kind of, you know, wrapping the peanut brittle and the little, you know, candies and things.

And it's so funny.

One of the things that I remember most, weirdly, is they would have a few different brands of toothpaste.

So they were a general store, like everyone will buy everything there.

And the neighbours will be like, oh, can I get the Colgate?

And my mum will be like, which one?

And they'll pick like a different brand because Colgate became like a catch-all term for toothpaste.

Like they almost didn't know that it was toothpaste.

They just called it a Colgate, if that makes sense.

A huge one.

Filipinos, I think, are pretty well known around the world for being a very musical culture.