My Virgo Titos: Eduard and Manuel, Thanksgiving 2007
My Virgo Titos: Eduard and Manuel, Thanksgiving 2007
Three Perseveranda brothers at one table in Hiddenbrooke — and a tribute, this zodiac season, to the two who were born under the same sign as me.
It's Virgo season, which in my family has always meant one thing before anything else: which of the titos are we celebrating this year. Two of them share the sign with me. Tito Ed was born September 4. I followed him on September 12. Tito Maning's birthday lands right after mine, still inside the same stretch of the calendar. For years that overlap turned into a standing joke and then into a standing tradition — a Virgo table, gathered around whoever's birthday get-together it technically was.
This photo isn't from one of those birthdays. It's Thanksgiving, 2007, at my house in Hiddenbrooke, Vallejo. But it has all three brothers in one frame, which by itself makes it worth pulling out of the archive this season.
Many Filipino families layer a Western zodiac sign over a Chinese one — a habit centuries deep in Chinese-Filipino intermarriage. Tito Ed and I are both Virgos, born 24 years apart, which means we're both Horses too. Two zodiacs, same overlap, on purpose or not.
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Pasasalamat — pah-sah-sah-LAH-mat
Thanksgiving, or gratitude. The English holiday and the Filipino value happened to land on the same table that November.
Three Brothers at the Table
Seated left to right: Eduard, Ronald, and Manuel — my father in the middle, flanked by his two brothers. Everyone was dressed up that night, which is its own small detail worth keeping: a Thanksgiving nice enough that three grown brothers put on real clothes for a family dinner in the suburbs. Standing behind them are the sons — my cousins Brian, Paulo, Glenn, and Melvin, and me, in the middle of that back row.
Tito Ed — Marikina, Chess, and a Shared Horse Year
Of the three brothers, Tito Ed was the one who spent the most time with me as a kid in Marikina. He's the tito who signed me up for my first and only chess tournament, held five minutes from my street at SSS Elementary School, off Carmine and Sapphire. I didn't win the chess tournament. I remember that he's the reason I was there at all.
Tito Ed was born September 4, and shared two things with me: the Virgo sign, and the Chinese zodiac Year of the Horse — 24 years apart, which works out to exactly two full Horse cycles. He's been gone since 2020, but a birthday tribute like this one isn't new for him on this site; we ran one on his actual birthday this year, Maligayang Bati sa Langit, Tito Ed!
Tito Maning — A Mile Down the Road
Tito Maning was the more out-and-about of the two when I was young in Marikina — the young uncle who was always somewhere, doing something. But he eventually bought a house just a mile from his brother's in Vallejo, and that's the Tito Maning I actually grew up with: close enough that my sister and I helped raise our cousins. His birthday landed right after mine, which meant he never missed the Virgo table either. We wrote about him more directly once before, in Tito Maning: Hindi Kita Malilimutan.
A September Ritual
For years, the three of us — Tito Ed, Tito Maning, and I — turned my birthday get-together into a Virgo celebration, whoever's actual birthday it wasn't. That's the tradition this photo doesn't show but this season always brings back. A Thanksgiving table in Hiddenbrooke in 2007. A September table, most other years, somewhere else.
Here's to my Virgo titos in heaven.
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Founder & Editor
J.F.R. Perseveranda
J.F. (Jonjo) left the Philippines at age nine, spending a lifetime bridging the gap between his Marikina roots and his Chicago/Vallejo upbringing. A proud Hogan Spartan from East Vallejo and resident of LA/SF, he founded PinoyBuilt not just as a digital archive, but as a cultural compass for his three children to navigate their heritage, language, and identity with Pinoy Pride.
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