DWP - traditions: prompt

traditions

The one Christmas tradition I like best is the Noche Buena, the midnight "supper" on Christmas eve. In our household, when my five siblings and I were young, our mother would wake us up at midnight to have our Noche Buena. Because we were really poor, she and my father would cook a special meal for us: a whole egg for each child, cooked sunny side up, with a piece of hotdog, fried, and my father's specialty, spaghetti with corned beef sauce. Instead of the cheap margarine, we had on the table half a pack of real butter, and instead of the daily morning rolls, we had a loaf of bread, the one in white plastic bag with colourful circles. The meal was repeated in the morning for breakfast, after we had opened our gifts.

Intead of stockings, we used old socks that each child hung on the Christmas tree (which was a large branch of a tree with lots of twigs in it, leaves pulled out and the branch painted with white, and instead of the shiny Christmas balls, we hung our little toys, then Mother finished it off by tying the multi-coloured lights around it). I can still remember those socks stretched and bulged to the max with the little toys our parents painstakingly wrapped and put inside the socks. In any case, the gifts were little toys, and back then, we never asked what we wanted for toys. Our mother seemed to know which ones we liked.

After breakfast on Christmas Day, Mother dressed us in our new clothes - the only new ones we would have all year - and hauled us all to the church to hear Mass. Then we either walked or took jeepney rides to our relatives' homes, where they have all kinds of special food on their table. Our aunts or uncles would give us money. Of course, there are favourite aunts and uncles, and there are favourite homes where the food was really abundant.

Christmas in Manila was not complete without the carollers. They could be anyone, from a man playing a guitar or a group of young people with really good voices, to an annoying drunkard who just wanted to have more money to buy booze. The unforgettable ones are the group of little children in the neighbourhood, each one clutching an improvised "musical instrument": a makeshift tambourine made of flattened bottle caps (cork underneath removed) and stringed into a wire; a discarded Dole pineapple can for a drum beaten with a little branch from the neighbour's tree; and best one is a comb covered with cellophane from cigarette packs.

These children would sing, mostly desafinado, mostly yelling to make sure they are heard, as there would be other carolers nearby or other loud sounds from other houses, and of course the barking of the dogs. If they didn't get the houseowner to come out to give them "alms", they kept singing in front of the house, until they got money or they got shooed away (some people would throw water at them if they're really bad). After they sang, and they got money, if they didn't have someone in charge of getting all their collections, you'd hear them bickering.

"We should divide it," one says.

"No, the lady gave it to me!"

"Yes, we agreed that we take turns in taking the money."

"It's not fair, you got twenty-five cents and I only got ten!"

"I sing the loudest, I should get more."

"You suck!"

Sometimes a fist fight would settle the matter, and yet, on to the next house they go carolling afterwards.

-o0o-
Other readings on the Christmas theme:

Silent Night

Christmas past 1

Christmas past 2

Christmas past 3

Christmas past 4

revisiting the past

rummaging through my things, i found an old notebook (from the early 70's) with the very corny poems i wrote for a lost love . by "corny" i mean they're too much of a cliché. let me share it here then:

WHERE YOUR MEMORY DWELLS

a certain thing keeps bothering me
the flame of your love has gone
the warmth that once loomed around
was replaced by cold unkind.

the tears i occasionally shed
like water ceased your fire
the fears i always had
now in my life had stayed.

in simple verses i now write
the memories of a forgotten love
where once your memory dwells
in the silent home of my heart.

the smile i once saw in you
have taken me far below
to where you once confessed your feelings
when you said you loved me so.

in simple words you had me uttered
the words i always knew
but never in my life had i said
only when i met you.

the place where once we sat
before a dim candle light
where our eyes did really meet
and our hearts beat fast.

the park we (once) twice strolled
where different stories were told
where the rain once fell on us
and brought your arms around me close.

the church where rests your world
far away from my own
i had once aimed to see you there
but price was there and took control.

the prayer(s) you offered me
which only fools could realize
and which wisemen and i never believed
your kind of world and paradise.

these things i always knew
had known and will always know
and on the days ahead i will recall
that once i loved you so.

in simple verses i have now written
our love that you had forgotten
and in my heart i have kept your love
and your memory forever dwells, forever remains.

that's exactly how i wrote it, in small letters, no caps (channeling my inner e.e. cummings, maybe). and apparently i wrote it on september 2, 1972 at 10:30 p.m. i do not understand entirely what i meant in my poem - especially the fourth stanza - not to mention i think i broke all the rules for writing poems, structure-wise or whatever. but, oh, boy, i wrote poems then. and long ones, too! how i sustained it for that long is hard for me to fathom. now i can only manage a haiku or two, and i need prompts to do them.

i know at the time, i was so in love with this boy, Benjamin, and i can categorically say he, too, was deeply in love with me. he was the measuring stick for the next boyfriend, and the next, etc. (not that there were so many) and it always made me wonder, during quiet times and my mind drifts to that part of my young life, how it would have been had we belonged to the same religion, married and had a family.

and if there is such a thing as time travel, that is the one past i would gladly live again.

In Memoriam

In your forty-first year of life, thirty-five years ago, you died. The last five years of your life were a struggle, having had a stroke, leaving the right side of your body paralyzed. To us, you died of a broken heart, when a daughter you loved so much chose a wayward life. You brought us up well, even though we were poor, but you cannot accept the fact that each one of us had been pre-ordained with the path we had to take in life.

Suddenly life had no meaning for you. You said, "What's the point of living if a person cannot do as he pleased, like the simple task of wiping one's nose, or walking five yards to pick up a cup, a glass, a pencil, whatever." And for five years, there were no weekly housecleaning, no daily clothes-washing, no long walks in the afternoon, no more spontaneous trips to the corner store. Once a free soul, you had become a prisoner. So when the opportunity for you to leave came, you just grabbed it. You had had a rough life, not that it was your choice, and dying was liberation from this prison.

Well, I still miss you, even now, especially now. You're supposed to have enjoyed a good life with me, with us, your family. You were supposed to have watched your children as they married and had their own family. Your grandchildren had been deprived the love of a lovely and caring grandmother, just like us when we were young.

But I now play the role you never got to play. I am now a grandmother to two beautiful boys. And you know what? I see you in one of them. The youngest, Darren. I noticed how one day, he was contemplating a toy and he was slowly pacing the living room with his hands behind his back, with that serious look in his face. It brought you back instantly in my mind because you have done that a number of times when you were still alive.

I still remember how you looked: your big brown eyes, your naturally red lips, the widow's peak that framed your face, the curls of your dark silky hair that I never inherited, the creamy touch of your skin, your cheeks with a spray of freckles that you tried for years to erase with Pond's cold cream.

I remember that day when I was still a toddler when you tried on your sister's red lipstick. You had never worn lipstick at all in your life. You examined yourself for a long time in the mirror. Then you had a small taste of the lipstick and you winced your face, you didn't like its taste and so you wiped your mouth with the towel until the lipstick was gone.

You made me a dress - the purple sack dress with white crocus prints, white puffed sleeves - which you sewed by hand, the one I wore to the dance with Benjamin, a long time ago. You loved Benjamin, but not enough to let me marry him because of his religion. And Benjamin loved you, too. He cried when he learned you had died.

When Benjamin and I parted ways, largely because he wanted to marry me but he belonged to another religion, you had told him that you would want us to marry Catholic and then he can take me to any religion he wanted. But Benjamin would not disobey, not his own parents, nor mine. You said I can do anything I want, you knew I would anyway. But I love you too much, I was willing to let go of anything just not to disobey your wishes.

And so Benjamin and I we broke up. You saw how hurt I was and yet brave enough to put on a strong face. I got that from you, you know. I cried when one day, on my birthday, you handed me a large box wrapped in birthday paper. You told me it was from Benjamin, he had come by and asked you to give me the gift. I sat on the steps willing myself not to cry. You nudged me to open the gift. I did. It was a knitted dress, in pink and green with dark green trimmings. I had just started at my first job, he wanted to make sure I had a good dress to wear to work. I kept the dress but never wore it. You always asked why. You knew why, of course.

It must be painful for a mother to watch your daughter's heart break. One day, I got ready early for my evening class. I wore my baby pink mini dress, the one I wore when Benjamin and I first dated. I felt your stare. I turned and asked you what the matter was - I was ready for the admonition that my skirt was too short. But instead you asked, smiling but with the same sadness in your eyes, "Are you thinking of him?" I shook my head. But you had thought correctly.

"Does he make your heart beat faster? Do you often think of him? If you do, then you are in love." Then you looked away, with the impending smile in your lips, but with the sadness in your eyes that seemed to long for someone long ago lost, but not forgotten.

You asked me one day, "If I die, will you marry him?" I said, Of course not. Did you believe me? I guess, you did when you said "You are strong. You know what you want. I admire you. I wish I was like you." That was one of the most memorable things you as my mother ever told me. You admired me. You wished you were like me. And all these times, I wanted to be like you, but I couldn't be. I did not inherit your patience, your capacity to bear hardship, your acquiescence to my father, your quiet enthusiasm. Only in my later years would I realize that you didn't want me to be like you. You liked me and loved me the way I was, am and had always been.

I still call your name whenever I get sick, or when something hurts, especially at night. I really would not have cared if you would show up, ghostly and all, as long as you come when I call, just like you did when I was young.

Oh, Mother, how I still miss you after all these years.

PROMPT - an omen

The dream came to me when I was six.

I was crossing the large sewage pipe over the Tripa de Gallina river, to cross over to Nichols Airbase or the airport, I should think. But even though the pipe was fairly wide, the cylindrical shape made it difficult to just walk casually over it. I walked rather slowly for I was afraid I'd fall off. I was even more afraid to look down and see the depth of this place I was trying to cross.

Mist was coming from below and with it a heavy smell of sulphur. As things are wont to happen in dreams, the scenery suddenly changed. The pipe became just a very narrow piece of earth and on both sides the fog became denser. I thought I saw some green color which I supposed were foliage or maybe even moss. The air felt cold. I ran and with each step the ground disintegrated beneath my feet. But I reached the other side. My feet hurt and when I looked down I saw that my feet were bare and I was walking on pieces of broken glass, much like the Smokey Mountain that has not even created yet when the dream first occurred.

The dream came back when I was twelve. This time it was longer. After walking through the landscape of broken glass, I arrived at a clearing. At the far end stood a single house. Even though it was daylight, I could see the flickering light inside through an open window. I start to walk towards the house. Suddenly I found myself walking through a maze, lots of turns here and there. Then the maze became a maze of houses on stilts, typical of the poor people houses in the Philippines of old. The houses, some made of wood, some made of cogon grass. The houses were built very close to each other and arranged like a maze. I walked in between the houses and each time there would be one or two people going the opposite direction, I had to stop to let them through. One thing I noticed, the people were faceless.


At seventeen I dreamed the dream again, starting from the narrow pipe bridge to the pieces of broken glass, the clearing, the single house, then the maze of houses and the faceless people. It is longer yet again. When after some time I got through the maze, I saw the house, with its windows wide open, the breeze gently blowing the white curtains. The odd thing was that the curtains were swaying out instead of in. There was an old man, American from his speech, who asked for directions to somewhere I couldn't understand. I said I didn't know so he decided to walk with me towards the house. Even though the house was only yards away, it seemed that we were walking for a long time. The American was asking me questions, and it occurred to me that he, like the other people in the dream, was faceless. I shivered from the cold even though the sun was shining brightly and the wind has calmed down. I saw that there was no cloud in the sky that was very blue. When I looked back at the faceless American, he was gone and I was standing right at the steps going up the house, the curtains still swaying out even when there was no breeze.

When I was twenty-one, the dream came back in its entirety. So I told myself I would go inside that house before this dream ended again. I went up and I saw that the house was empty except for a big box right in the middle. I went inside, curious to find out what was in that big box. The box reminded me of an old baul (army chest) we had at home when we were young children, only this was a lot larger. Suddenly the box opened and I saw my mother sitting inside the box. She was smiling.

"What took you so long?" she asked. It was bright outside but inside the house it was cold. "Who was that man?"

"Ma, how come the people had no faces? I talked to them and they talked to me, but they have no faces, and somehow, their voices seemed familiar."

She smiled again and said, "That's because you have yet to meet those people."

"Ma, what are you doing inside the box?

"Oh, I'm just resting."

A few months afterwards, my mother died.

The dream never came back in my sleep again but it was forever etched in my memory. I could never will it back but I understand that the story has ended. The old American man appeared again in another dream that was a precursor to a major event in my life. And, as I grew older, I realized that some of those faceless people were the people I had already met and became my friends.

i miss....#1

the rain in Manila...i loved walking in the rain. the last time i did, i had a new pair of shoes on and there was a heavy downpour. i didn't want my shoes to get wet so i took them off and walked from buendia avenue and through bel-air in makati to get to my apartment in pilillia ave. i forgot now the name of that street, i guess it was bel-air avenue. i could've taken a tricycle but it would've been a futile exercise anyway because i was already wet.

so shoes in hand, i walked on the paved sidewalk, under a canopy of trees, the pouring rain coming through the leaves, my hair heavy with the wetness and my office clothes clinging against my body, rainwater trickling down my arms like tiny rivers. i sang jose feliciano's "rain" song, not loud, only in my head. sometimes i kicked the water; at times i jumped and reached out for a tiny branch or pulled a leaf. i pushed my hair back with one hand, dripping pair of shoes in the other.

sometimes some passing cars honked, others offered a ride, some sped up where there was an accumulation of water on the street so that i'd get splashed. the honking, i don't know what it was about. the ride offers i never understood, although kudos to them because for sure they realized they give a ride to a wet person and their seats are going to be wet, too. now, the splashers, i usually gave them the finger. so you'd think, you're already wet, what difference would that make? my sisters asked. the difference was that i got wet on my own terms, and the water coming from above had got be cleaner than that which already accumulated on the ground.

when i got home, the rain was still pouring hard, so i went straight to the back where we do laundry and where we hung clothes. i took my shower in the pouring rain, shampoo and all. it was so liberating. it was my own way of communing with nature.