Memor Mater

As children, we all start off egocentric and unable to recognize our parents as persons by and in their own right.    For a long while, they’re simply our providers, the soothers of fevered brows, the suppliers of answers to the conundrums that beset our minds, the authority figures we, time and again, test our wills against.  To my mind, our myopic visions of our parents are testaments to their complete surrender to these roles at the expense of themselves.

For example, I always thought your grandmother never cared for clothes.  Her spartan frugality when I was growing up left no room for vanity and the accoutrements it demanded.  Good food on the table and education for her seven children - her priorities always seemed clear and completely displaced all other concerns. Looking at her pictures as a young teacher, however, one is immediately struck by how she was always smartly dressed in the ultra-feminine fashion of those decades.  A cousin of hers once told me that your grandmother’s clothes were always prized hand-me-downs for their fine style and material.  Firmly but politely declining your Lolo Antoy’s offer to design her gown as a young bride, she went to Naga City and commissioned one fashioned after that worn by Armi Kuusela, the first ever Miss Universe, who went on to marry the Filipino businessman, Virgilio Hilario.  This is a far cry from the mother I knew who, when not dressed in those severe public school teachers’ uniforms, always seemed to favor shapeless sundresses or dusters, as she determinedly went about those household tasks she endlessly performed throughout the day.

With the objectivity that hindsight brings, I can now say that we would have grown up under very different circumstances had your grandfather possessed even half the ambition of your grandmother.  I have come to view her personal drive as a product of the fact that she was the third child and the eldest daughter of a brood of eleven.  With very little prospect for further education during the post-war years, she overcame her compunctions and asked her maternal grandfather, Leon, to support her.  She told me that she always wanted to be a doctor but faltered when he asked her what course she intended to pursue and how she thought she could help her.  Although a landowner, your great great grandfather had little predilection for education and was known for his parsimony.  Made diffident by knowledge of these traits, she downgraded her ambition and told him she intended to become a teacher and would make do with a can of milled rice for monthly support.  With this and the allowance provided by her brothers Fortunato and Salvador who were then G.I.’s in Guam, your grandmother went on to earn her teaching degree from the Daughters of Charity of the Collegio de Sta. Isabel in Naga City.  Throughout her life, she wondered how her grandfather - who could very well afford to send her through medical school - would have reacted had she stuck to her original intentions.

Your grandmother spent most of her life as a teacher it’s a bit of a stretch to imagine her as a student.  I was told, however, that she was very competitive, literally burning the midnight oil preparing for her classes the following day.  At the 40^th reunion of the Mabini High School graduating class to which she belonged, a classmate of hers told me that she was always in the top-five, vying for better grades with classmates whose parents were professionals.  She was supposed to be quick with her retort and was, for said reason, generally perceived to be quite the “suplada”.  When words failed her, she gave others this look that left no doubt about her reproof and the depths one has sunk in her estimation.  If she appeared hard on others, however, I know for a fact that your grandmother was hardest on herself.  She deferred to your grandfather’s superior intelligence, categorized herself as average and, for this reason, always strived to improve herself.  

She was what was once called a wide-reader, your grandmother, and it is from her that I have inherited love for books and an almost compulsive habit of correcting other people’s spoken and written words.  At a formal function where the emcee and the speakers kept bungling their tenses, I heard Auntie Pina mumbling how fortunate they were that your grandmother wasn’t there. I’ve been told that, in her spare time as a young girl, your grandmother always had a book within reach.  As a typical middle child forever demanding notice, I discovered early on that the surest way to command her attention was to ask her about the meaning of an unfamiliar word.  While your grandfather may have been the writer in the family, your grandmother’s reading habits and retentive memory made her the better storyteller during those long-drawn blackouts in the 1970’s.

Your grandmother was pious but never superstitious.  Not for her were the devotional practices and nostrums housewives of her generation were known to resort to when confronted with a child in the sickbed.  Although poor, your grandmother told me that they had a family physician upon whom she was always sent on an errand to call whenever a younger brother or sister was sick.  Born out of her experience as a young girl, however, her one concession to superstition was the belief in “aswang”.   Studying by the light of the moon while tending to the caldroun of coconut milk she was tasked to slowly cook into oil, she told me that she suddenly became aware of her immediate surroundings getting dark and the air filled with the flapping of a great wing span.  Summoned to take refuge in their house by her frantic Aunt Ramona, your grandmother never forgot and tired of telling her one close encounter with this dreaded supernatural creature of Filipino folklore.

Your grandmother was contemptuous of showing her emotions in public to the point that she was completely dry-eyed during the wake and internment of your grandfather.  The one indication of the extent of her grief was her stubborn insistence on a necrological service befitting, according to her exacting standards, of one who spent the greater part of his life as a public servant.  Even years afterwards though, she had great difficulty letting go of the memory of our father.  Finding your grandmother awake early one morning, your Lola Telia remembers her blurting out out of nowhere that she’d rather take care of people forever than have them die on her. She was, by then, already struggling with Parkinson’s disease and had taken care of our ailing father for more than ten years while practically scraping the bottom to see us through our college education.

The one emotion she had very little control over was merriment, though. Your grandmother had a very distinctive laugh, similar to that of your great grandmother Petra and, on occasion, your Aunt Tingting: a high pitched, prolonged “huy” that is, more often than not, accompanied by tears in the eyes.  Once, I tried to con your Aunt Tingting and Uncle Alvin, who were reading the forbidden Tagalog comics at the second floor of our old house, into believing that our mother was on her way up.  Asked to do her usual spiel while I tried to duplicate the sound of her steps on the wooden stairs, our mother all but rendered the absurd project impossible with her uncontrolled mirth whenever she tried her agreed-upon voice over.  Among the things I was very pleased with myself about was the ability to make her laugh.  

For all her ideas of what is prim and proper, your grandmother also had a wicked sense of humor.  This is sort of hard to imagine since, as the more hands-on parent, she had to be stern as the disciplinarian by default.  Already nearing her retirement and exasperated by all the dares for her to dance at a party, she stood up and awkwardly swayed to the music while slowly raising the hem of her dress, executing what could only be described as her estimation of a striptease.  So unexpected and out of character was the stunt that your grandmother reportedly reduced the room to the great hilarity that became the high point of the evening.

These are just a few of my vivid recollections of your grandmother that I hope to be able to share to you.  Tomorrow, July 22, is her birthday, the feast day of Mary the Magdalene after whom she was named by your great grandparents.  She would have been 84.