Her name was Concepcion Barbara Arguelles Vda. de Cruz. That was the way she signed her checks. “Vda. de” meant “widow of” in Spanish. She was the widow of Mauricio Cruz, my grandfather, the son of Maria Mercado/Rizal with her husband, Daniel Cruz. My grandmother was a fine, strong woman with character. I grew up with her and as I grow older I realize that my grandmother was my mother and my own mother was my best friend.
Most people called her Conchita or Conching. I simply called her Lola and we had between us the love-hate relationship that often existed between mother and daughter. My first memory is of her in our house on Roberts Street in Pasay City. I would have breakfast with her. My mother had already gone to office. She would be forcing me to eat something, but I was never hungry for breakfast and would not eat until one day, I discovered the pleasure of dunking my pan de sal in toyo and calamansi. That was delicious for me. If you gave me that, then I would eat.
My mother would bring me to kindergarten at St. Theresa’s College in San Marcelino, now Adamson University. I studied under Mother Redempta. I remember looking out of the window and seeing my Lola standing there waiting for me to be dismissed and my heart would lift.
She took me marketing with her. She would drag me from the vegetables to the meat to the fish section, pulling me firmly and walking quickly so that I bumped into many bilaos of clams and fish. I hated those marketing rituals then, but now cannot remember them without smiling and laughing. If she was going to visit the chicken section, she first brought me to the car and left me with the driver. She spared me that malodorous place. Then before going home she would take me to choose either beaded slippers or embroidered shoes or little yellow ducks to take home.
Lola was a wonderful cook and she knew how to eat. Once, we passed by a mango tree in bloom. She asked if we could pick a ramo of mango flowers. When we got home she chopped it up, mixed it with onions, tomatoes and a little bit of patis and we ate it with fried bangus. It was wonderful, fresh, delicious. I never had mango flowers again because today, all of them are sprayed.
She also brought me to visit all her relatives. Strange, these days my cousins ask, “Was Cayetano Arguelles, my grandmother’s father, the brother of Tomas Arguelles, once a prominent architect in the Philippines?” Yes, I said. Tomas was an architect, but Cayetano was an artist. He was part of Father Blanco’s group who drew the flora of the Philippines then. If you see a lithograph with the initial C. Arguelles, that is our great-grandfather. I believe they had a sister who married a Quisumbing. When I was a little girl, my Lola used to take me to a house in Quezon City where she used to visit her Quisumbing cousins. I was very little then and don’t remember who specifically.
I remember in my late 20s, when Eva Estrada Kalaw was Secretary of Education, her daughter Chingbee, who was my classmate, sold me four C. Arguelles lithographs, which they found somewhere. That has been divided among my four children now, part of my legacy. It was the work of their great-great-grandfather.
These days, as I sit at home working on costume jewelry, I know that I have always been what they now call a craftswoman. I have always worked with my hands. My Lola taught me to sew. My mother taught me to embroider. My aunt taught me to knit and crochet. I have always been interested in working with my hands. I am taking jewelry lessons under the magnificent chandelier of Portia Leuterio. I think these skills I inherited from the Arguelles part of my family.
I hope one of my children also gets it. I have a grandson who loves to knit and once made a bracelet for me. But of course, his grandmother on his father’s side is Chita La’O Lopez, a granddaughter of Tomas Arguelles, brother of my great-great-grandfather.
I love my Lola now more than I ever loved her growing up. Now I see clearly the contributions she made to the family. If she were alive today, she would be 130 years old and still I remember her and realize that more than a grandmother, she was my mother, the person who taught me how to live and how to cherish our connections.
You see, we are all related by drops of blood. It is in our senior years that we begin to understand how and where the blood runs and the particular combination of traits that makes us the people we are today. And we are grateful — at least, I am — tremendously grateful to the heritage that made me the person that I am now.
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