Lola's pet
This week I have spent a lot of time remembering. Maybe it’s part of growing old. There are days when you think of someone and you can’t get her out of your mind. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my grandmother. She raised me, you know. She was like a mother to me, I realize now, but I did not realize it then. Now, I realize that Lola was a mother to me and my mother was my bestfriend.
Mommy and I lived with her mother, my Lola, in many houses, the last one being in Sta. Mesa. But when I was a little girl I spent all day with my Lola. I knew she was diabetic, could not eat rice, would pop Chiclets into my mouth and have me chew the sugar off then pass on to her mouth in a lips-to-lips kiss. I was very small then, maybe two years old and we spent a lot of rollicking times on her bed.
Then we got a car and a driver and Lola would go to market maybe three times a week. She would always bring me with her. I hated going to market with Lola. I was small and she would drag me through. I would run into the bilaos of fish. To make up for all my grief she would always buy me something — a dress, embroidered shoes, a tin school bag or best of all, little yellow baby ducks, which then were sold for five centavos each.
I loved those little ducks. We would bring them home and I would make them swim in a shallow washtub that looked like an old softdrinks cap — a batya. Eventually I had a whole brood of those ducks and they grew to be adults. They had a smell about them, not unpleasant but a clear duck smell. But I also then had a dog, a Dalmatian who, my mother pointed out, was a hunting dog. You know the story. Boo, my dog, began to hunt the ducks. He caught them and laid them at the feet of our cook, Trining, who cooked them into asado.
I remember the first day I was served the duck. I asked if it was chicken. Lola, in a quiet voice, said no, a duck. I began to cry. Why did you cook my duck? I sobbed. She explained that Boo had killed it and the best thing to do was cook it. I am not going to eat it, I pouted.
We had a lot of good times, my Lola and I. She taught me how to cast on stitches for knitting early. I think I must have been five. She had me help when she was making mango or ube jam. It was my role to go with her to market and bargain for all the rotting mangoes. Then it was my role to peel the mangoes and rub them against a washboard to get them to the texture she needed to turn them into jam. I was party to the whole jam-making ritual but she did not allow me to stir. Just watch, she said. She would wrap the maid’s arms with muslin and fasten them with big safety pins. This was to protect the arms from injuries of the cooking mango and sugar mixture. I remember those days.
She taught me to sew on her sewing machine. She taught me to cook, to smell the food while I was seasoning it. If it smells good, it’s seasoned right, she would say. She would experiment with recipes. She made mechado with tomato sauce and mechado with a brown sauce. I like the latter better but have not rediscovered the recipe. Lola’s mechado was to die for. My cousin Toto and I would have it for merienda when we came home from school.
Lola used to wake up at around 4:30 every morning. Before going to bed she would ask us if we wanted to be awakened. Yes, please, at 6:30 a.m., I would say. Then in the deep dark she would wake me up, hija, hija, what time did you want to be awakened again? She did the same to Toto until one night Toto and I had stayed up talking and giggling and headed for bed at around midnight. We all slept in Lola’s room then. It was the biggest room in the house with a lot of big windows and a lot of beds. As we were tiptoeing in Toto turned to me with a naughty look in his eyes. Then he went to her and shook her a little, Lola, Lola, he said, go to sleep now, it’s almost midnight. To this day more than 50 years later I laugh aloud about that night.
Yes, my grandmother was a mother to me and I love her deeply. You do not stop loving a person because she is dead. You think of her, more as you grow older. Sometimes I think I am now Lola’s age when I became aware of her age but look at me, I look so much younger. Then you realize every generation has its way of aging. I insist on being a Baby Boomer, though I missed it by a year. Baby Boomers are funkier and younger looking than their grandmothers. My grandmother died when I was pregnant with my youngest daughter, more than 40 years ago. I cried then and missed her on and off all my life but now I miss her more than ever. It’s because I am her age now. Now, we have more in common than we ever did.
She was an imperfect woman who loved her sons more than she loved her daughters, I think. She did not tell her children or her grandchildren that she loved them but now when I think of her I know she loved me and Toto just a little bit more than all the rest of her grandchildren. And as I grow older I realize I loved her a lot more than I ever showed her. She may have been imperfect factually but when I think about everything I know how to do — cook, sew, knit, crochet, make jewelry — I know I owe all my skills to her. My grandmother taught me all my skills. I will be always grateful to her.
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