About Francisca and Felicitacion, in Loving Memory
I need to come to terms with the fact that my grandmothers will never be spoken the way conventionally successful women are spoken of.
Today, I had to listen to a tediously long speech from an engineer, a lawyer, and a doctor who talked about their own mother, and I found myself unable to hold back tears as their speeches went.
I wasn’t supposed to cry. I was supposed to smile and clap for their mother’s memory, and pretend as if I wholeheartedly believed that the things she was able to do are all products of her destiny and efforts and sacrifices, as if everything was not made possible by the headstart and push that she got from her above-average material conditions in the first place.
As a feminist, I was supposed to be happy for the achievements of all women before me. However, I remembered the things that my grandmothers had to go through to survive, so I forgave myself for failing to celebrate all-out for an upper-class’ feat. I am a feminist, yes, but I am a feminist who saw how hard it is to be poor.
None of my grandmothers finished elementary school. None of them even managed to get formal jobs even when they worked their backs off all their life. My mother-side Nanang had to transfer from province to province just to work as a helper. She planted onions in Nueva Ecija. She almost got raped in Metro Manila. I know these only from the snippets of her life that we got from her elusive stories, because my Nanang, she never told us much. She spared us the truths under her darkened, scaly, and dried-up skin just to let us take delight in comparing our relatively smooth skin next to her. I have no other image of her save for how her collarbones protruded, how her skin clung to her bones like how my cousins and I clung to her for assurance everytime we got scolded by our parents, and how she laughed and smiled-- oh, those sharp cheekbones-- over the little things that we accomplished.
My Nanang let her looks wither away the way the rice that she planted did in summer, but my father-side Mama was able to keep her vanity. When I was young, my cousins and I used to amuse ourselves by guessing which eyebrow pencil my Mama was going to use next—the purple one or the red one?—and which color is up to grace her hair. My Mama sold sandals at the wet market. It wasn’t an easy job. Many times we heard her exclaim Aguy! and laughed at the foreign-sounding Bisaya word, which, I slowly came to realize, was mostly expressed in pain and frustration. In hindsight, every color she donned, every “Suki, what will you buy?”, every funny-sounding words she blurted blurred the fact that she had come to Ilocos to marry a man she met at a bar she worked at after leaving her whole family in Visayas. She passed away without ever getting the opportunity to visit her hometown again.
The story of both of my grandmothers is not a material that is commonly told in front of expecting eyes. They are two beautiful women whose beautiful life stories do not meet the unfair social definition of success. They both died poor, as housewives, without a name to leave here in this world except for the names of the children and grandchildren they managed to raise despite their limitations.
I am able to afford the simple comfort of now, yes, but I am here because of the sacrifices of women in my own bloodline. I wear heels to work but deep within me I’ll always recognize that in my childhood, I was cared for by hands that came with soil. I will always remember how Nanang teared up upon seeing the letters ATHENA and RAFANAN and PRESTO and SUMMA and CUM and LAUDE put together, despite her not knowing how to read. It’s unfortunate that my Mama passed away before I graduated, but I’m sure she’ll be as proud.
I need to come to terms with the fact that my grandmothers will never be spoken the way conventionally successful women are spoken of. But they gave way to me and taught me to dream big. When I tell others of my story, I shall tell them about my grandmothers and how they raised me.
It took much from them to get me here. I am their success. I may not be donations made to institutions; I may not be a room named to honor their name; I may not be an edifice built in memory of them; I may not be an event done only so they can be venerated; but I am a living success that breathes to prove they have done much in their lifetime.
I am the product of grit and determination that far exceed the grit and determination that a well-off woman needs in order to set up a charity. Look at me. Look at one of the souls that they nurtured.
(For my heroes, Francisca and Felicitacion, happy mothers' day. The knowledge that you are with me always, proud and protecting, is my moral compass as well as my driving force.)
