Jovita and Jackie

She made me believe in the power of unconditional love to turn a life around. She made me believe that beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder, and a generous and loving beholder (like one’s mother or grandmother) will always make you feel like a princess with a 24-inch waistline — even if you looked like the cartoon character Little Lota.

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 Today is the 29th death anniversary of Jovita Arellano Reyes, my beloved maternal grandmother, my Nanay. Beloved wife and mother, Nanay didn’t even have enough photographs of herself to fill an album. But Nanay has a cherished place in the hearts of her children and grandchildren, and hopefully, the lives she molded will run a current of goodness and good examples to those they touch. The power of one good heart can never be diminished if those it touched continue to wield that goodness.

Today is also the death anniversary of Jacqueline Kennedy (her 15th), and somewhere in the space where my daydreams and reality fused, she was part of my growing up years. Jackie will be remembered by many and as long as there are those who like reading about her elegance as well as her courage, her style and her legacy in preserving what they describe as three hope-filled years in America (“Camelot”), publishers will come out with memorials about her. Remembering Jackie by Life was picked out of a bookshelf in a US bookstore by my Assumption classmate Yvette Pardo Orbeta, who says she remembered me the minute she saw the book. Well, I wear my heart and my idols on my sleeve, and even in high school, it was no secret that I had this unusual Kennedy idolatry that was so unlikely of a girl my age. Reading all about Jackie made me want to be part of the world that was shaping the news — even if I was only writing about it, and was not of it. She, too, touched my life.

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So two strong women who touched my life left this world on the same day. Life has poured adoration on the feet of Jackie’s memory, and let me pour mine on the memory of my beloved Nanay.

Nanay was the spoiler and she was never an advocate of tough love.

“Right or wrong, she will be there for you,” my mom Sonia recalls how her mother, whom she called Inay but whom I called Nanay, cared for her children.

“She was the mother who told you she would protect you whatever you did simply because you were her flesh and blood. That’s my Nanay,” my Uncle Caesar Reyes, Nanay’s youngest child, recalls.

Nanay was born to parents of humble means in Bongabon, Oriental Mindoro. Orphaned early, she was raised by relatives who weren’t always kind to her. But she was bright and topped her class and she attracted my grandfather Igmedio whose family owned vast tracts of land. With Nanay’s business acumen and Tatay’s hard work, they were able to parlay his inheritance into a network of general stores, a bakery, a gas station and a fishing boat. Their firstborn Sonia (my mother) was one of the first in their town to own her own European-made piano and attend an exclusive girl’s school in Manila (St. Scholastica’s).

Tatay always believed that they were just setting up the hollow blocks, and it was up to their children to build their dreams from there. But for Nanay, it didn’t stop with the hollow blocks. She would buy the concrete for you and help you pour it on the hollow blocks.

Perhaps in her desire to give her seven children (Sonia, Pat, Pedrito, Nestor, Jun, Edward and Caesar) a life better than hers, Nanay wasn’t at all a disciplinarian. And when she had money, and even when she didn’t, her motto was, “All mine to give.”

Whenever I would visit her, she would immediately take me shopping and buy me the nicest clothes even if it was a challenge to find the right style or size for me because I was awkward and overweight. I don’t ever remember Nanay asking me to diet or exercise because she knew it would pierce my sensitive pre-teen heart (God knows everyone else, whether good intentioned or not, was on my case).

Nanay just bought me clothes like I were a model for Cinderella (where she would buy a lot of my party dresses). I was never an ugly duckling in her eyes, always a graceful swan, even if I had the figure only a grandmother would love — and she did! At least someone other than my parents thought I was pretty enough to wear nice clothes! Oprah has three words to justify why one has to have the best in life. “Just because you were born.” Nanay made me feel that way. I was special just because I was born.

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Nanay always was of frail health, but that didn’t stop her from waking up at the crack of dawn to check on her stores, her bakery and her poultry.

When she was hospitalized 30 years ago due to pulmonary problems, we knew the end was near. I could still remember her moaning in pain in the room next to ours. When she was hospitalized for the last time in May 1980, her children and grandchildren took turns watching over her. But on May 19 that year, it was only her son Nestor, a doctor (who graduated cum laude from the UST) and my sister Val, who were with her in the room when she unexpectedly breathed her last. Val, then a little girl, was strengthened and not traumatized by seeing our grandmother die. I think it was then that Nanay bequeathed to Val her business acumen, for Val turned out to be the entrepreneur in the clan. 

When Val was about to give birth by Caesarian section to her firstborn Miguel, her doctor told her only two dates were available: May 18 or 19. Others would have balked at giving birth on their grandmother’s death anniversary, but Val knew it would be a blessing.

Val’s son Miguel turns 17 today, a fine young man with the smile and disposition of the angel he is named after and the gentleness of the great-grandmother who watched over his safe birth.

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Nanay taught us that a mother’s love can right all wrongs, and even when it defies logic, a mother’s love will make her want to give, and give some more, till it hurts, and hurts no more.

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