The gathering twilight
We have three octogenarians in the house, all of whom we love dearly, and whom we are honored to care for — my mother Emy, 83, Beng’s father Jess, 87, and Beng’s mother Julieta, also 87. My father Joe passed away 16 years ago, and my mother divides her time between my sister in the US and her children here, but as the kuya I suppose I get first rights to having my mom around. Beng’s elder brother Jess Jr. died way too early, and her younger sister Mimi works in the US, so her parents have moved in with us.
I’ve been extremely fortunate not only to have married Beng, but also to have married into her family. I couldn’t have wished for better in-laws. The wedding took place on my 20th birthday after Beng and I had been together for less than six months, so I hardly knew my in-laws, and they hardly knew me (something that might’ve been said, I suppose, for my bride as well). But as things turned out, our families made a good fit. Both our mothers were or had been teachers who didn’t think twice about working in places like a post office or a garments factory when they had to, and our fathers were men with sharp minds and high ambitions who may have stumbled here and there, but who quickly got back on their feet, dusted themselves up, and moved on.
My father-in-law Jess is that unusual combination of engineer and thinker, businessman and inventor, tinkerer and theosophist. He had a long and successful career in air cargo, traveling around the world, and then he went into trading and spin casting fabrication; late in his life, bitten by the mechanical bug, he invented a device that uses water to improve mileage in gas-powered cars. You’d think that a proud and accomplished man like him would be difficult to get along with — and in his driving days he did show a fearsome temper, usually directed at other motorists who tried to cut across his path — but at home, he was an easygoing guy, full of humor and optimism, unwilling to let life’s labors and disappointments get the better of him.
As a son-in-law, I wasn’t always on my best behavior, but he was ever the gentleman; in my wild 20s and even woollier 30s, I’d sometimes straggle home in my Volkswagen from a drunken binge with my buddies at three in the morning, and Papa would open the gate without a word of reproach but rather a kind inquiry as to whether I had had my supper. When Beng and I were flung apart by distance and by my vagrancy, Papa had only three words of counsel for me: “Win her back,” and I did.
While he never finished law, he knew his statutes, especially as they applied to business, and was generous with his expertise, sharing it with many others who went on to become far richer than him. His family would tease and reproach him for letting himself be taken advantage of by yet another operator, but guileless Papa would take it all in stride. He was a careful and capable writer, and one of his prize possessions was his Olympia typewriter, on which I pecked away at many a Palanca entry in the 1980s.
Sometimes the dialogue at the dinner table approaches Chekhovian theater. “There’s no end to these medicines,” my mother-in-law would say, poring over a list of the day’s capsules and tablets. “There’s no end to this pain,” my mother would answer, rubbing her aching knees. I ask my mother questions about her childhood and it seems to cheer her up: the youngest daughter of a Chinese-Filipino landlord in Romblon, she grew up riding horses, accompanying her father on hunting sorties for wild duck; they once owned a batel, a native sailboat, that traveled all the way to Manila laden with copra and other cargo, only to sink in a storm on the homebound leg of its maiden voyage. “Tatay had bought new shotguns, and they all went down with the boat,” she recalls. She remembers her ate Rosalia, her protector from the bullying of other older siblings. “But she died very young, from a dog bite.”
I remind myself that I — the writer of biographies for many other famous people — should sit down with my mother and record everything she can remember before further aging wipes it clean off her brow. She’s well aware of that threat, and actively seeks to fight it by keeping her neurons busy, playing games on the iPod Touch that’s become her lifeline, next to her cell phone. She uses FaceTime to call my sister Elaine in the US, and takes pictures of her fellow seniors in their Tuesday Circle with the digital camera on her iPod. She now has to use two four-footed canes to move around, and she laughs when now and then she can’t remember a word she needs, but my mom will enjoy life to the last lick of her macapuno ice cream.
My mother-in-law Julieta prefers to watch TV in the living room from her favorite chair, where she sits knitting. Her eyes and her hearing are weaker now, and she’s prone to fall asleep after a few minutes of viewing, but her mind remains sharp, and she’ll often comment on the news in a way that will make me take notice. She was a beauty in her youth, one of Jaro’s loveliest, and she never lost the regal demeanor that comes with that kind of natural privilege. She was the one who taught Demi how to read; for me, her ever-welcome gift has been a steaming bowl of pancit molo. In all the 38 years of my marriage to Beng, I’d never heard her or Papa utter a mean word to or about me. Indeed I feel spoiled and pampered, so that when we asked Beng’s folks to move in with us, it was by no means a burden, but long-overdue payback for a lifetime of kindness.
Papa’s been bravely struggling with illness for some time now, and last week, Beng decided to bring him home from the hospital, where he could rest with the family in the gathering twilight of his life. His other daughter Mimi and his granddaughters Demi and Eia were boarding flights home from the US as I wrote this piece. It occurred to me how we writers can write so extravagantly about the world at large but sometimes forget that our worthiest subjects have stood beside and behind us for ages.
To our three octogenarians — and especially for Jesus M. Poticar Sr. — these belated but heartfelt thanks, and may the rest of our days together be filled with love, peace, and hope for more joyful meetings in another life.
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E-mail me at penmanila@yahoo.com and check out my blog at www.penmanila.ph.
