Grandmother

I spent some of my childhood days with my grandparents. A sixth grader that time, I did some house chores for them like fetching drinking water from the distant Libuacan Spring, scrubbing the molave floor with coconut husk and assisting in their corn mill near the old house. Every day, before the sun sleeps in its abode, grandma would always ask me to join her rosary, mumbling those Latin prayers in bent knees and gazing intently the holy figures in the altar. My grandfather on the other hand, while puffing white smoke from his rolled cigar in his honsoy, would coax me to sit beside him in the veranda before we sleep. He would then recall exploits of his younger days. He would oftentimes belt out Visayan songs and gamely show his little skill with English words. Last week, my family and I made a trip to my parents who now occupied the old, ancestral house. It was a short visit. We have to rush back to the city for our younger son’s enrollment. As my family speed for home, my eldest son confided to her mother. “Mommy, I saw a little woman in one of the rooms upstairs. But I couldn’t see her face.” My wife looked to my son through the mirror. “Oh maybe, it was the housekeeper.” My son edged closer to her in the front seat. “Nope, Fena was with you downstairs. And she was wearing a duster. Fena wouldn’t wear one like that.” I looked at the young boy and asked him. “What’s the color of the duster she was wearing?” He looked up, recalling, and replied, “Dirty white.” I looked at my wife in my side and my two sons at the back seat. “God bless her soul. That’s her favorite dress color. Son, it was my lola you saw.”