The diff between then and now

We are very good friends even if we are a generation apart. Our families have been friends for generations so talk between us has always been easy.

“My mother recalls long chats with Tito D. who told her all the family secrets,” she says with a smile.

“All families have secrets,” I said. “I remember being told that Tito D.’s mother was a bailarina — the precursor of hospitality girl. He was supposed to have been a toddler when his parents married then had more children. I could not tell. By the time I met them, his mother didn’t look like a bailarina. More like a gracious grandmother.”

“What about the other Lola who married late? She married a widower, who moved into the house with his married daughter. In that house lived Tita N. I heard she was a smoker who wore pants all the time. That was funky in those days. Tita N. was no longer too young then. Well, the husband of the stepdaughter of Lola L. and Tita N. fell in love and eloped to Europe. That must have been a shocker in those days,” my friend said.

“I imagine so,” I said, “that’s why they had to elope to another country. But what’s the difference between that and in-laws who fall in love and have children? I know a brother and sister who married total strangers who met within the family enclave. One day, brother-in-law and sister-in-law fell in love and moved in together. I don’t think they had to go to Europe to do that. But that happened later in the ’80s.”

“There are interesting stories in my family,” she said. “One of my grandaunts was a historical figure but few people acknowledge the fact that she was bi-polar. Family members say late in her life she moved in with her son. Her husband dutifully came to visit once a week. He sat and drank two beers while she riled and berated him for two hours. Then he would leave. For me the fascinating part of the story is that no one has said she was bi-polar.”

“Until a few generations later when some of her great-grandchildren had nervous breakdowns and were diagnosed as being bi-polar. That was when I first heard of her being bi-polar. That’s another big mystery that is finally being unveiled now. How many generations later? Three generations later! This reminds me. In 1988, when I just returned from the US, we were having lunch at my cousin’s house. My mother, her brother, and sister were talking while I was drinking coffee after lunch. Suddenly I heard my aunt say, ‘Didn’t Lola Maria leave her husband?’ That got my full attention. ‘Did she leave her husband?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ my aunt said. ‘He was a gambler. One day he asked if she had money because he wanted to go to the cockfight. She said, ‘I will put my last peseta on the table. If you take it you will come home to an empty house. We will go to my parents and you will never see us again. And she did exactly that.’ Then why did you all refuse to talk to me after I left my husband? You made me feel like I had broken all the family’s rules when in fact I was carrying on a tradition.” They all laughed uncomfortably but I felt piqued, irritated even. With that laughter they created a rug under which the answers were quietly swept.

“Your great-grandmother Maria Rizal left her husband?” my young friend asked.

“Yes, she did, and she made a royal success of herself after that. She acquired a lot of property. She became a boxing promoter in Laguna. And if you ask me, she is the most interesting of his sisters because she broke the rules and rebuilt her life by herself. It must have taken tons of courage to do that in her day. Me, I am proud of her and equally proud of myself and my cousins who have carried on the tradition.”

What’s the diff between life then and life now? It remains the same, pulled this way and that by passion and mistakes — the stuff of life — but somehow set somewhat straight, as people grow older. What gets in the way are folks who are loathe to admit that they have a love child, or an illicit relationship, or anything that does not fit the norm they or their families have defined.  Those are the people who force others to not talk about what really happened. That’s the only difference I see between then and now. Now, at least, people are more open about their mistakes. I find that refreshingly honest at last.

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