A family and shopping tradition

We had to start going back to the university at 2 p.m. whenever we would go to SM Carriedo. But it was always worth the trip. SM Carriedo always had quality shoes and bags.”

This was my aunt’s story. This was in the 1950s and is the earliest SM story I know of my family. I wasn’t even born then. My parents Angel and Rosalinda haven’t even met. But SM was already there in my family’s long and eventful history.

We belong to a family of traditions. The Pison family has been around even during the time Chinese junks used to ply the Iloilo River, which is behind our ancestral home. We have had breakfasts by the window overlooking the river and my grandmother once told me that it was the same river that brought my great grandfather, Donato Pison, Sr., to my great grandmother, Paciencia Tijam, in Bicol, Albay.

He brought her back and they built one of the first muscovado centrals or sugar mills for brown sugar here in Iloilo. And they built our ancestral house that still stands today complete with its apitong floorboards bought from ruined bridges and ships at the wharf in Lapaz.

My grandmother, Socorro Fuentes Pison used to frequent SM City and her youngest son Tito Dodot would bring her around in a wheelchair. SM was the only word in her vocabulary for malls; and panciteria was what she would say to me whenever she wanted to eat in a Chinese restaurant. Anything Lola Coroy would buy — from clothes to household and kitchen stuff — it came from SM only.

We keep traditions as we keep secret recipes like bas-oy — a certain kind of soup that we only eat in the family. Bas-oy was the Sunday tradition of Lola Pacing, my great grandmother. The soup would be served at breakfast time and it would be paired off with dried fish called guma-a. To this day, the tradition continues with the family of Damian Pison in Bacolod City. Damian, the eldest of the Pison clan, who was followed by Concepcion (Mrs. Amado Tirol), Antonio, Glicerio, Rosario (Mrs. Antonio Lanzar), Donato, Jr., Pedro (my grandfather), and Severo.

We keep traditions such as our May 1 reunion, a practice from the time when Lola Pacing was still alive. Lola Pacing, in her time, would gather all family members with the farmhands on May 1, which I grew up thinking was her birthday. Later on, I realized that she was celebrating Labor Day. The day would start with a Mass, and breakfast and games would follow. The family would then have lunch and dinner in the house. 

To this day, we still practice this yearly gathering even as we have reached the sixth generation of the Pison family. There used to be games in the house, too, after lunch as clusters of cousins, aunts, and uncles would gather and play. All that has changed now. After lunch, part of the group would go to SM and spend the rest of the afternoon shopping or in coffee shops. SM has been in Iloilo City long before Bacolod City, and so those based there like Tita Julie Sado and Tita Delia “Bibing” Bermejo and Manang Rose Lizares would shop for what couldn’t be found in Bacolod City. Part of the afternoon’s delight was carrying shopping bags bearing the SM label.

But we’re all hands-on with Tita May Daquilanea Pison, wife of Tito Victor Pison and mother of Resy. When she’s not at work and not at home, there’s only one place where she can be found. You can blindfold her and she can still locate every nook and cranny of SM City. Tita May is our SM icon. I almost fell for Tito Vic’s joke once when he told me that Tita May was having a “board meeting” with Henry Sy. That’s why we call her a board member of Henry Sy. To sit with Henry Sy — I thought that was colossal.

Our generations have grown as SM malls have grown. From the first store in Carriedo where Tita Pat used to shop, we have branched out to other places beyond Iloilo City. Tita Tessie Pison, who’s married to Tito Tony Escolar and has been living in Canada since I was playing with marbles in the backyard, wishes there were an SM in Canada. When she comes home for our annual reunion on May 1, SM is the only mall she associates with the country.

Tita Delia Pison Gelvezon from Australia and my mum Rosalinda Pison Piamonte from Los Angeles would always go to SM whenever they are home. Their sister Tita Cynthia Pison de Leon from New Jersey also does the rounds of SM City whenever she’s home on a vacation, as does their brother Tito Sonny from LA. And when they’re all about to go back to the US, there is the requisite feasting on ukoy and panara cooked by Tita Lanette Capilayan in the house of Tita Baking.

When SM first opened in Delgado Street in Iloilo City, mum used to bring us there to buy our holiday clothes. I grew up shopping in SM Delgado, and eventually started directing events in SM City in Mandurriao. These included the mounting of excerpts of a Panay epic for the mall’s first anniversary, as well as its Father’s Day event, “Dads on the Ramp.”

Between May 1 and the next May 1, we don’t usually see each other as a family. We have different lives to live, and for most of the year, the house rests quiet. But on lazy weekends, holidays, and even on frenetic mall sale days, we often bump into each other at SM City. Tito Bobby Pison will be there in his trademark shorts and T-shirts. Colors and brands change, but it’s always shorts and T-shirts for him. That’s how we are — a laid-back, very casual, no-frills family.

All that changes during our May 1 reunions, where we can get loud and chaotic. We become overly delighted at the sight of lechon on the table. What matters most is that we are together, and after the lechon at lunch, all it takes is for one to declare it’s time to go to SM with Resy Pison and our girl cousins will be leading the pack. SM has become part of our tradition.

Six generations of Pisons and SM. We can live and breathe there because the mall has more than enough for our family’s six generations. What fondly comes to mind until now is the image of Tito Dodot pushing Lola Coroy in her wheelchair around SM City.

Once in the US, my mom wanted to go to a mall, but she had to be in a wheelchair, of course. She asked me if I wouldn’t be embarrassed, pushing around her wheelchair, and I told her I had no reason to be, since she’s my mom. “I’ll bring you where you want to go,” I promised, “wheelchair and all.” I suppose Tito Dodot must be thinking of the same thing when he brings my 90-plus Lola Coroy around SM City in her wheelchair. It’s not an obligation. It comes with tradition. And I call it love.