ani

08/31/10

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♥

 

“ano na ang ga-idlak kristine ha?” (what’s that flash about kristine?)

 

both in their most surprised tone, Biing and Santos asked her. she was taking photos of them after she has spent some days dancing like mad in front of her lola, having long almost-shouting talks with her lolo. (home for her has always been not a place but a feeling. like a fat woman’s comfort in hugging her self happily in her nakedness. that queer feeling of being at home with a frame of many layers.)she grew up with them. Grew up not just in form but in a kind of growth that the molecules of the body cannot quantify. Santos taught her how to fly kites, ride a carabao, pull grass from the ricefields, recite poetry, laugh like a big man and wish on stars. Biing showed her how the heart works. 

 

Biing lost her memory. What she knows now is all bout “at the moment”.

 Lola: sin-o ka? imo ni dala nga pagkaon? (who are you? did you bring all these food?)

 Santos is deaf and blind but he knows what the world looks like just by feeling.

 Lolo: ay ikaw ni Kristine. Indi ka na kalbo ba!  (This is you Kristine. You’re not bald anymore)

 

 

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Living with them again for some days has given me this happy-sad nourishment. I have reflected on how it is to live without nostalgia, recall, remembrance. how it is to have faith in feelings and how to communicate by touching more. My  grandparents are two of the richest people i know. i am grateful that i spent my earliest years with them. come to think about it, they are the biggest influence on why i am not fascinated with too much material things, that the key to a much easier life is by simplifying. most of all, i learned from them that poverty does not only include the mouth and the pockets, but the spirit. and from a barrio girl that i was, they have encouraged me to find passions from dreams. because it’ll lead me to places that feel like home and homes that feel like a thousand of marvelous places (without having to go that far).

 

Lolo is a handsome moreno. he liked pomade in his hair. he liked collared tops and khaki pants. he used to stay a lot in tubaans. Lola is petite and graceful. she keeps a few hand-sewn floral bestidas.  I have both their younger, much stronger selves’ images in my thoughts. And, in my heart, we would always be three children— sitting on a bamboo chair, talking and giggling about stories of World War II, AM radio drama and Manila. 

 

we would always be old people, sitting on a soft bed in a hut, sharing silence and inaudible stories of home, memories and death.

 

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