Day 12. Those that went before us have walked paths that we may never fully understand. Talk about a time when you learned something important about your family history.
I never knew much about my mother's family. Unlike my father, whose siblings and parents all came stateside at varying times to create a clusterfuck of Filipino nutjobbery on the East Coast, my mother's family, with a couple of notable exceptions, chose to remain in the motherland. I only met them once, when I was five. Twice, if you count the flight my mom took over there when I was one, but I don't remember it. My strongest memories of that visit were a volcano and a whole lot of moist hot (Jesus shit, it's hot over there), so you could say I didn't pick up much of my family history from them.
It wasn't until I was older, old enough to know that there was pain without knowing what it felt like yet, when I found my mother sitting on the bed, her eyes misty as she stared at an old photo. "Who's that?" I asked.
"Your Lolo," she said with a sad little smile.
I knew of my mother's father. He'd passed away young, long, long before my history even began. I hopped up on the bed beside her, peering at the old black-and-white, trying to find myself in his features. "Who was he?"
She had been wanting to talk. I know this now, even if I didn't know then. But I listened, rapt in my data-gathering, listening to the story she had to tell me.
He had a twin brother, but his parents only had money to send one of them to college. He had always performed better in school, so it was assumed that he would go, and his brother would work at one of the factories that dotted Batangas. But this idea did not sit well with him. So one night, he told his brother to take his place, and stole away on a ship to America.
His time here was difficult. He worked full time, went to university full time. He faced rampant racism and constant discrimination, but never backed down. Graduated top of his class at UCLA, attended a PhD program at Columbia. And one semester short, in the throes of homesickness, he left.
And started a successful farm business. And married. And to honor his time in the States, gave his youngest daughter an American name. And suffered a heart attack at 45, and on his deathbed, demanded an oath from his son that one day I would swear to my mother on hers.
I listened to her, watched her eyes as they grew distant, watched her lips curl upwards as she spoke. She wasn't my mother then, she was someone telling me a story, sharing a memory so that somehow, someway, her father would still be alive. It was then that I first learned that people never really die so long as someone remembers them.
I am no man of faith, despite my mother's earnest efforts. I have no certainties about the afterlife, but I assume the worst. But even in this, I am comforted, knowing that even a man I'd never met, a man who was never alive when I was, has a story to tell the world.
I never knew much about my mother's family. Unlike my father, whose siblings and parents all came stateside at varying times to create a clusterfuck of Filipino nutjobbery on the East Coast, my mother's family, with a couple of notable exceptions, chose to remain in the motherland. I only met them once, when I was five. Twice, if you count the flight my mom took over there when I was one, but I don't remember it. My strongest memories of that visit were a volcano and a whole lot of moist hot (Jesus shit, it's hot over there), so you could say I didn't pick up much of my family history from them.
It wasn't until I was older, old enough to know that there was pain without knowing what it felt like yet, when I found my mother sitting on the bed, her eyes misty as she stared at an old photo. "Who's that?" I asked.
"Your Lolo," she said with a sad little smile.
I knew of my mother's father. He'd passed away young, long, long before my history even began. I hopped up on the bed beside her, peering at the old black-and-white, trying to find myself in his features. "Who was he?"
She had been wanting to talk. I know this now, even if I didn't know then. But I listened, rapt in my data-gathering, listening to the story she had to tell me.
He had a twin brother, but his parents only had money to send one of them to college. He had always performed better in school, so it was assumed that he would go, and his brother would work at one of the factories that dotted Batangas. But this idea did not sit well with him. So one night, he told his brother to take his place, and stole away on a ship to America.
His time here was difficult. He worked full time, went to university full time. He faced rampant racism and constant discrimination, but never backed down. Graduated top of his class at UCLA, attended a PhD program at Columbia. And one semester short, in the throes of homesickness, he left.
And started a successful farm business. And married. And to honor his time in the States, gave his youngest daughter an American name. And suffered a heart attack at 45, and on his deathbed, demanded an oath from his son that one day I would swear to my mother on hers.
I listened to her, watched her eyes as they grew distant, watched her lips curl upwards as she spoke. She wasn't my mother then, she was someone telling me a story, sharing a memory so that somehow, someway, her father would still be alive. It was then that I first learned that people never really die so long as someone remembers them.
I am no man of faith, despite my mother's earnest efforts. I have no certainties about the afterlife, but I assume the worst. But even in this, I am comforted, knowing that even a man I'd never met, a man who was never alive when I was, has a story to tell the world.
This was beautiful, love. And maybe there's more of him in you than you know and there are a stack of stories waiting to be told.
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