The Weekend's Produce

i swear, the pictures do not do justice to the wonders that are my cookies! mais il n'importe pas. what's important is that i finally got to bake and my cookie jars are kept full [well at least until my baby a.k.a. cookie monster empties it in record time!]

the pie is supposedly blueberry cheesecake, but we didn't have blueberry preserves at home, and my son didn't want to put strawberries, so we agreed on chocolate shavings. thanks to tita glo and george, the chocos are all from that box of goodies you sent. tipid ko no?

So one night, my son and i were talking about greek gods and goddesses and their roman counterparts. he's fascinated with the idea of mt. olympus with all those powerful beings residing there. at one point during the discussion-cum-story telling, he probably had an overload of information and couldn't understand what i was talking about anymore. he said, "Mama, you're talking greek to me!"

Awed

it's one of those mornings, the kind that takes your breath away:
the grass still wet with morning dew, the sun peeking through the trees, the last of the april shower blooms scattered on the ground, the air still damp with last night's rain, the crickets still singing their song, the world gradually coming to life, with nary a car nor a soul to spoil the sight.
---it's good to be alive and to witness it all.

This summer, we lost our two lolas.
We buried Lola Elena last Sunday, thirteen days after we buried Lola Bebing.
While i know they've both had good, long lives, i feel sad at their passing. I guess there are really no words that can help soften the sorrow or lessen the loss that we feel from losing people we love. We lost Eric 18 years ago but the profound sense of sadness and emptiness never left us.
They live on in our hearts, in the memories of their teachings, and in the lives of all who know them. I console myself with the thought that now, my brother, my two lolos, and three uncles are in a place where nothing can ever hurt them again, and that they watch over us all.
And i hold on to memories. i never want to forget.

LOLA BEBING

My memories of her include her teaching my sister and me how to string tobacco leaves using pointed wooden sticks and then hanging them for the sun to dry before finally putting them inside clay ovens that looked like towers to me back then; her teaching me how to use her rustic clay kalan and how to control the flames by blowing thru a steel pipe that made interesting tunes as one blows thru it, her already singkit eyes narrowing even more as she smiled at my efforts (she'd mutter things in ilocano that i guessed meant something like when to blow hard, when not to); her dinners consisting of boiled black beans with plenty of marunggay leaves and ginger, or dinengdeng with sitao and fish bagoong; her taking us to the dried-up river where we would harvest camachile and sineguelas.

The tobacco barns/ovens
The toobacco leaves are hung within the barn as bunches at different levels. biofuels are burnt in a furnace. The heat produced in the furnace circulates and leads to curing of the tobacco leaves.

LOLA ELENA

She was one feisty matriarch, even masungit, na lola. I say this with no disrespect, for she really was the one I saw a lot of during my childhood. And she was strict. But i guess she needed to be for she was in the fish trading business.
What she knew about fish she taught my mom. I swear mom knows when’s the best time for fishermen to catch this fish or that, or when it’s safe to eat this fish, or that tahong, or this talaba. and I, in turn, was my mom’s assistant in the kitchen, negotiating my way around gills, scales, and nasty fish insides.
My cousins and I loved hanging around lola's sari-sari store. When she had enough of us, she shooed us with candies and choc-nuts as bribe. when that didn't work, she yelled at us at the top of her lungs, surprisingly loud for someone looking so frail (she was less than 5ft tall), but surprisingly effective :-)

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During the mass for Lola Elena, mom said a brief thank you to two exceptional people who have made Lola Elena’s last days comfortable and happy, two people who weren’t even her siblings, or blood relatives for that matter, but a hipag and a wife of a pamangkin. If there were any doubts or ill-feelings in the minds of some of those gathered in the church that afternoon, mom’s parting words, “hindi mababayaran ng kahit magkanong pera ang nagawa nila” was a fitting tribute to the two, and should lay to rest opposing thoughts.
these two people's compassion and devotion are inspiring, and very humbling.

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Taking care of our olds till their dying days is not an obligation, but a privilege, someone once told me.

My cousin, his wife, and their four kids, made up for the shortcomings of the rest of us. Next to them, we live closest to Lola Elena, and yet we didn’t really take care of her the way they did, didn’t visit her as often as we should have had.
I look at my cousin's kids and it’s amazing to see young ones with compassion that belies their ages.

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“Nawa’y sa paglisan ni Elena ay lalong magkabuklod-buklod ang lahat ng natitirang miyembro ng pamilya,” the priest said.

Mom, her younger sister, and her youngest brother, gathered in front of Lola Elena for the final farewell. They were flanked by their respective spouses. All around them were friends saying goodbye to lola in their own ways.
Four meters away, another brother was weeping, and wailing, “Sa pagkamatay nyo Ina, putol-putol na ang pisi ngayon.”
And I don’t know what I was grieving more for, for the Lola that we lost, or for that one poor soul who didn’t even make sacred the day, or for the future that would see the Macapagals falling apart, brother turned against brother, sister turned against sister.

Then I made a silent prayer, and a vow, to do my damnedest not to see that happen to my family.

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There was a time when the Macapagals didn’t need a holiday, or a birthday, or a wedding, to gather and partake of meals cooked by our uncles. Any day is reason enough to get together and share meals consisting of oysters, broiled fish, and of course, everybody’s favorite—nilaga, a mixture of pork, chicken, and beef, boiled together for hours then given its final taste by vegetables like cabbage, pechay, leeks, and saging na saba.

Those days are gone.

Three uncles have died. Lolo have long left us. And now Lola.

What’s left of the clan seems to be drifting and falling apart.

Why?

Envy? Greed? Misunderstanding? Ignorance? Distance?

Why is it so difficult to try to talk things out? To understand? To forgive?

We live but once. We travel this road but once. It’s a shame to spend the rest of our lives letting anger and pride get the better of us, feeding the dark recesses of our souls. C’est dommage. And it’s heartbreaking.

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I saw this in a site devoted to Lola Bebing:

MAY THE WHOLE CORPUZ-AMOYEN CLAN REMAIN STRONG AND UNITED.

May it also be so for the Macapagals.