ife as a celebrity has its ups and downs, but Lucy Torres-Gomez knows how to count her blessings. Here, we catch up with one of our favorite personalities.

With her soft voice, long hair, and luminous white skin, Lucy Torres-Gomez is almost otherworldly. On the Monday evening of the shoot, Lucy is rushing to get back home to her husband Richard Gomez. The Philippine Fencing Team, of which he is a part, has won five gold medals in the 23rd Southeast Asian Games. There is a victory party in their home so she arrives at the studio (sans alalays) earlier than everyone else. She is in a rush, but she is calm. There are three layouts to be done, but she is unhurried. There are guests to attend to, but she is there talking to us, laughing with us. It is a gift, to be quietly serene amidst a raging storm, and Lucy wears it ever so beautifully.

Wife of the party

Sponsored by Mainland cheese, Lucy has a new book, The Art of Entertaining At Home. It is a mini recipe book from a self-confessed non-cook. Such contrast hints that there is more to Lucy than the public knows.

You see, Lucy loves to throw parties. “Nasanay na ko na even when before pa, when Richard would come home from training, Richard would call and say, ‘O, honey, I have nine guys with me. We'll have dinner there.' And, this would be really late na, ha,” she says. “So I got used to having food ready to cook. I'm lucky also because I have a very good cook and I always tell them that if they make adobo, to make lots. Kasi adobo is so sarap di ba? I love adobo. I can eat adobo everyday. So I put it in the freezer and heat it as needed. So the cook knows hot to cook adobo and adobo flakes. You can also freeze kare-kare, except for the vegetables. The vegetables need to be fresh.”

But unlike the typical gregarious hostess, she is gentle and soft-spoken. Her parties are laidback and relaxed. People need not dress up to have an evening of good food, she says.

The fencers going to that night's party in the Gomez home number 60 to 70, mostly hungry guys. Some of the fencers are kids, says Lucy. Some are not that young. Richard, she believes, is the oldest in the team at age 39. Lucy is 31. Good thing he won, too, Lucy comments, as he plans to retire from the sport.

For the fencing team's party, Lucy will be serving lechon, among others. “Everybody loves lechon, especially if you're feeding boys,” she says. The idea of a victory party was hatched only two days before. So, there was very little time to prepare. But because Lucy loves to eat, she knows where to get delicious goodies. Instant get-togethers are thus less formidable.

Not all her parties have guests nearing a hundred. She also loves having small dinners. For her last dinner, she had about ten people sitting around the dinner table. The dinner started at 7:30 in the evening, and ended at 4: 30 in the morning. They had to have breakfast made as well. That's Lucy: the party-throwing, perfect hostess.

Flamenco forever

For three years now, Lucy has been dancing the flamenco three times a week, for four and half hours each time. But she's far from being good at it, she says. “It's such a complicated dance. Layo pa.”

Flamenco, says Lucy, is not like ballroom dancing that's soft and flowing. It's an angry dance; it's rigid and fiery, with lots of stomping—a contrast to the gentle and delicate Lucy portrayed in the ubiquitous hair commercials she has appeared in. perhaps, that is the dance's attraction. It allows Lucy to be a bit angry, on fire.

Because she loves the dance, she plants to do it “forever,” or, at least, as long as she can. The show on Channel 5, Shall We Dance, just happened. She didn't learn to dance to have a show. There is a discipline in the dance not many people know she has imbibed. So when people come up to her and say, “Sample nga,” they don't know what they're asking, she says. Flamenco is so hard. “It's not like disco where you can just stand up and dance.”

In the limelight

Marrying Richard thrust Lucy in the limelight. “It's there,” she says of being a celebrity. “And I have always taken things that have been given to me. ” Being a celebrity has its perks, and its downside.

A nagging rumor that Lucy didn't pay attention to implied that she was caught on tape filching a watch in a department store. It created such a big hoopla that the president of the store actually came out with a statement that there was no such tape implicating Lucy. “I should've lashed earlier or I should've sued somebody,” she says now. She only retaliated in her newspaper column a year after the rumor sprung. “I'd like to think that I became stronger after that.” She can take anything now, she says.

“I guess I know it [a rumor] won't bother me that much for as long as I know it's not true.” In retrospect, she believes that it was during that time when she was so troubled that she felt so loved. People sent her messages of comfort and reassurance. Ultimately, she says, the choice of whether to dwell on the incident or to count her blessing is hers. She chooses the latter.

Richard loves Lucy

Being married to Richard is one such blessing. She can only hope that he doesn't become a politician even if she knows that he has no plans to do so. It's just that every year, he's invited to run or is rumored to run for a position in government. And when the rumor mills get going, nasty things come out. The nastiness is like a prelude to a politician's life that Lucy would rather stay away from. But if he does run, Richard knows that his loving wife will support him. “I will be behind him 100 percent,” she says. “It's a non-issue.” That is love.

According to Lucy, he reciprocates this love in an “unconventional way.” He is not, she says, the type to give her flowers on special occasions, although he's the type to give flowers for no occasion at all. Married for eight years now, they have, she explains, “a sturdy kind of loving,” though somewhat unconventional. Explaining this, she narrates how Richard proposed on the eve of her 23rd birthday. They were seated with friends. They were all tipsy. “He asked me, ‘Are you happy?' I said, ‘I'm happy the way we are now.' Then he said, ‘Will you be the mother of my children?' Then he asked, ‘Will you be my wife?' Afterwards, he said, ‘Will you marry me?'”

If he were conventional, Lucy explains, it would be a dinner date with the ring in the cake or there would be flowers and serenade. “But come to think of it, I would not have it any other way. I'm glad it happened that way.”

Juliana's mom

“It's hard being a mom,” Lucy states. Five-year-old Juliana, being an only child, is in danger of getting everything she wants. And Lucy is conscious of that. When she herself was growing up, she remembers having only two Barbie dolls, both hand-me-down from an older cousin, one of which had a bald spot because the cousin gave it a haircut. But those two dolls were precious to her.

When kids get everything they want, Lucy says, they become jaded. They don't appreciate what they have because they know they can always get another one. This is the same reason why Lucy doesn't want Juliana to enter showbiz. It's a world where things come easy. Too easy.

Good thing Juliana is still five and, except for an unexplainable infatuation for all things Britney and J.Lo, she is growing up to be a normal, well-loved kids. With her dad, she fences and roller blades. She can even run three straight rounds around the ULTRA track.

But when Juliana is with her mom, she is a girly-girl and unbelievably kikay. She dances and watches Britney and J.Lo. Juliana also likes the clothes. One time, the little girl looked at her closet and complained that she had nothing to wear. Her clothes, Juliana said, were loose, not tight enough or not short enough. “Kids today,” Lucy laments, “are so maarte.” It's normal. And Lucy obviously delights in the little quirks of her daughter's personality.

That's Lucy. Warm/ detached, part host/ non-cook, flamenco dancer/ soft-spoken—the simple/ complex pieces of a woman that make up the whole Lucy package. Her star shines brightly. Yet, it would not matter to her if all of that and its trappings went away. Faith, family, and friends are what sustain her. Oh, and of course, food, too, as you can't have a party without it.

Wine and cheese with Lucy

It was an evening we would soon not forget. When we received an invitation to partake some wine and cheese with Lucy Torres-Gomez, we did not hesitate. She is, after all, one of the most likeable personalities in showbiz. Through the years, I got to know her from stories told by my sisters, who interviewed her and styled her, and who had nothing but good things to say about her.

When I interviewed her myself two years ago, I was struck by her simplicity, how even with all the glitz and glamour that seemingly surrounds her life, she still seemed like a very down-to-earth woman. Like Marta Stewart-wannabes, we talked about organizing closets and wrapping gifts, and about scrapbooks and decoupage.

The Lucy we met at the Mainland cocktails was the same: a strikingly beautiful no-frills person. She sat down with us, and drank a glass or two. She showed us how to make cheese platter, asking Claire Betita-Samson of Cosmopolitan to help her. She made us feel so at home that we hardly noticed that we've had a bit too much to drink. We had a grand time, and would gladly go to any party that Lucy throws our way.

- -