Birthdays and anniversaries

It is December, the beginning of winter if you live at a different rim of the Pacific Ocean, like I did 26 years ago. Twenty-six years have just flown by. How could they have just taken off without my even noticing? Look at me, I am old now, but do I feel it? I don’t. I still walk around in short leggings and long T-shirts. I am working again and enjoying it, changing again and loving it.

It is December. A deluge of birthdays descends. Wednesday, Dec. 1, my mother’s birthday. What happened last year? I was giving a birthday party for her at the Noli Center, home for Alzheimer patients. It was her 88th birthday.

Eight is my lucky number. My own birthday is profuse with eights. But her 88th was unlucky for me. She was mad at me. I came in bringing sotanghon and lumpia, I think, and cake and ice cream for everybody in the house. I came in with birthday gifts.

“Mommy, may I kiss you?” I asked. “My friends and children are sending you kisses to greet you happy birthday.”

“Heh!!!” she shouted at me, followed by a lot of indecipherable words, but enough to let me know that she was angry, that she didn’t want to talk to me, much less have me kiss her. Her hands were gesturing wildly, sending me away. I got the message.

“She doesn’t want me here,” I told the nurse, “so I am going home. You go ahead and have the party and enjoy yourselves.”

Was my heart broken? It was like my mother had kicked it again. She had kicked it a million times since Alzheimer’s disease took over her brain so it was no big thing. I had a week to get over it anyway before the next visit. So I went home and played Free Cell until my eyes fell out.

Dec. 2 is the birthday of my first cousin. Dec. 3, of my grandson Julian, who now lives in England. He turns 15 this year and he is so handsome. Last year when I saw him I had to say, “I know I’m your grandma, but you make me swoon.” Dec. 4 used to be St. Barbara’s feast day, until they dropped her from the Catholic calendar sometime in the 1950s. They said she was not a saint but some mythological creature invented by miners and others who liked to work with explosives. Could never understand that, but it’s either one of two things: She was the patron saint of terrorists and since they were Catholics who disapproved, they cancelled her name from their list of saints, or they’re waiting for me to die and then I can become St. Barbara. That is a joke, of course. I will never be canonized as a saint, like I will never get an award as an outstanding writer not because they don’t like my style but because they don’t approve of what I write.

Dec. 4 was my grandmother’s birthday but she always celebrated it on the 8th. Her name — our name actually because I was named after her — was Concepcion Barbara. People from Maryknoll College where I finished my high school don’t recognize my name as I sign it now — Barbara — because to them I am still Concepcion. But I like Barbara much better. Barbara feels like me. By the way, it is never Barbie. Don’t anyone dare call me that.

Dec. 6 used to mean nothing to me, but this year, it is the first anniversary of my mother’s passing. I don’t know if I’m over that. I know I have not wept over it, not after, but I sure wept a lot before, all the times she made me feel hated. Those were very painful times. All the times she did not see that all I was trying to do was be kind to her. All the times she accused me of living in my apartment, initially above hers, with a very good-looking man whom, she claimed, I refused to introduce to her. She would not understand that I lived alone, could not find the man she insisted she saw, would have loved to be introduced to him too but. . . where was he? Who was he?

Dec. 8 was my Lola’s birthday, always a big lunch at home with her sisters, cousins, and friends coming over and staying on beyond merienda. Dec. 15 was my Tita Caring’s birthday, my mother’s oldest sister, who married Pedro Sy-quia, whose daughter Mia is my boss now. Last year we celebrated Mommy’s ninth day in my house in Calamba on the 15th, my children, my cousins, and I, and we floated candles on the pond. The house that morning was visited by many butterflies, Eder, the housekeeper told me. I didn’t say anything, but I thought the butterflies were my mother and my aunt, who had passed away less than a week before she did.

Then a brief stillness descended after Dec. 15. The next birthday we celebrated was Jesus Christ’s birthday — Christmas Day. Then another five days passed and when I was small, I would be awakened in the dark, dressed in organdy and dragged over to the Luneta for Rizal’s death anniversary.

“He’s your great-granduncle,” my mother would whisper, “the brother of Lola Angge, who is the mother of your Lolo Morris.” Since I did not know my Lolo Morris and had never met Lola Angge, it was all meaningless to little me.

Today, I went to Calamba to do a few things. I picked up Eder who was going to her daughter’s house to help take care of her latest grandchild. The house was clean and tidy. She told me she had been crying all morning saying goodbye to it. “There were many butterflies and birds this morning flying all over the house,” she said.

 “Today is Mommy’s birthday,” I said. We looked at each other, into each other’s eyes. We both smiled sadly.

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