The house of spirits

Winner, Lifestyle Journalism Awards 2006 sponsored by The Philippine Star, Stores Specialists, Inc. and HSBC

Kevin Piamonte is an associate professor of Humanities at UP Visayas. This British Council scholar at the University of Warwick, England, also directs theater productions and writes fiction. He lives with his 97-year-old grandmother, Socorro Fuentes Pison, the sister of National Artist for Music, Jovita Fuentes. Piamonte has traveled extensively, but the journey he enjoyed the most was a road trip in Luzon with his American-based sister, Kathy. He hopes that the trip has, in a way, Filipinized his sister.

I live in the house of spirits. The house is old. Very old. Huge wooden doors with a solid iron hand for a knocker open to a basement that leads to a winding staircase. The staircase continues to narra and molave floor panels. Chandeliers hang on ceilings with wooden carvings on the edges for accent. In a few months, the house will be a hundred years old. I often think about what I am doing here in this techno-mania age. All my friends live in modern-day houses where gates are remote-controlled and sunroofs are common luxuries. In this house, we have the cuartitos (small annex rooms used for changing clothes), we have the banggirahan (an extension of a kitchen window where dishes are dried after washing) and we also have the pantaw (an area like a balcony where clothes are washed). We have carved bauls (wooden crates) of alcamphor in the rooms to accompany the tocadors (old cabinets).

I was born in this house. Or so I thought. My mother brought me here when I was a baby. My lola, as she claimed, was smitten by my charms. She refused to give me back to my mother. At first I would spend some weeks here, other times I would spend with my parents in their own house. Eventually, the constant moving brought me much- needed permanency and so I was assigned to a room in this ancestral house. The room incidentally was where my lola used to give birth. It was as if she was giving birth to me, her apo. I stayed. I grew up in this house. I grew up being awakened to breakfast, called to the lunch and dinner table, but not before having to dress up properly for a banquet. I ate with servants around the table not holding fly swatters, but swishing those long sticks with shredded manila papers to ward off flies. At mealtimes, my lola would ask me if the dishes were to my liking – if they were properly seasoned. If I said no, she would admonish the poor cook. I grew up and became a chef, but that’s another matter. It’s not the reason why I write this.

The house of spirits was built for about P2,000. I would laugh every time I remembered my lola telling me this because to build a house like this now would surely cost millions. It was at that time in 1906 when my great-grandfather labored on our salt farm built on adobe beds and built this house. It was this house that my lolo inherited from a lottery when he – out of luck – pulled out a paper marked "X," which made his brothers and only sister shake their heads in disbelief. Out of sheer luck. These days, this would be unheard of. Houses were won from tambiolos after buying hundreds or thousands’ worth of groceries. Certainly never with a paper marked "X." Besides, these days "X" would be something obscene. Eventually this became the house where pamanhikans were observed, but never without the close scrutiny of my lola who would, well, never look at the groom-to-be as somebody of her liking. Typical mother-in-law. There was always something wrong. But the weddings came and the family tree branched out.

At times, we were an extended family. This never became permanent. My lolo would always encourage everybody to move out and seek their lives somewhere. Not me. I was bound to stay. I wondered why. Up to this day, even cousins who would stay had to move on. They were too noisy. They would use the phone too long. They never dressed properly for meals at the table. These complaints my lola would quietly tell me. I never argued with her. I was taught not to. But my lola loved gatherings. She would look forward to the family and the much-extended units. The house became a place for big parties where family reunions were held every May 1 to coincide with my great-grandmother’s birthday. The great family tree would gather its branches from Davao, Manila, Cebu, Bacolod and Roxas City. And the branches didn’t end there. Canada, Australia, L.A. and New York had representatives as well. Every May 1 was a gathering time like harvest time. The rooms would be occupied and games would be played in between the feasts. Sometimes I would see streamers in some hotels announcing the grand reunion of this and that family. Ours was a grand reunion every year. I would often think we were an odd lot, like we were being too clannish. But weren’t we supposed to be in constant reach of each other as a family? As a Filipino family who would revel in the closeness of kinship? Sentimental, but not in the mushy kind of way.

My lolo died some 10 years ago. He with the paper marked "X." I thought the house would fall apart. Not structurally. I thought the family would not see the reason why they would visit again. But they came constantly. And constant with the times where marriages would fall apart and get annulled, where Filipinos would seek jobs abroad and overstay. Strangely, such occurrences never happened in my family.

Perhaps I credit this to my lola’s constant insistence that the family should gather and pray every night – a practice she has passed on to her children. It is in this house that we have been taught to lead the rosary. Because it is in this house that the altar sits in the sala, laden with a dozen saints waiting for daily prayers. She had her heartaches in this house. So have I. But it is a house of spirits, benevolent ones who would listen to prayers of heartaches and thankfulness. It is a house that brought us tradition as solid as its grounds and walls, unmindful of the changes in times. Unaffected. It is a bahay na bato.

Now in the house we have a washing machine. Lola believes hand-washing is better. We have a microwave oven. Lola believes microwaves will give us cancer. We have a food chopper. She believes chopping vegetables by hand will retain their nutrients. She has retained her banig. Foam is never good for the back. At 97, she believes in walking, not in the wheelchair.

Soon this house will be a hundred years old, wrapped by the frequencies of technology, of times that move so fast, and yet this house stands, hardly moving, unmindful of the erratic shifts and unpredictable changes of its surroundings. I stand with the house, yet I sway and swerve with the day-to-day registry on the Richter scale of the technological wave, only to be held back by traditions of the family. I move with the times, but whenever the huge wooden doors of the house close in on me, I remember tradition. It is never suffocating and not contradictory with the times we live in. Tradition becomes my grounding in these modern times, even if at night I sleep in an antique four-poster bed with my cellular phone beside me.

In the mornings, I would walk with my lola to the capiz-shell windows. As we parted the windows, she would say that she used to see caritelas passing on the street below. I wish I would see the caritelas, too. Of course, now, Expeditions and CRVs pass by. Often, an old woman with a basket of maiz on her head would walk along shouting, "Maiiiiiiiz, maiiiiiiiiz!" I would think of sweet corn in the supermarkets. But then I would look at my lola and feel the spirits of this house. And I would think, perhaps that old woman would have walked along with the caritelas, too. Who knows?