1. My brother just got promoted to a managerial position!
2. The guard in our townhouse complex just had a lung operation
3. Somebody gave my mother a big box of Mars chocolates which she is now giving away to the kids in the neighborhood
And then she turns a bit somber and tells me, Hey I called Ilocos because of some issue with our rice crops and then when your Lola learned that it was I calling, she kept crying and wailing your name asking for you to visit her! Your Mama kept telling her to stop crying!
I kept silent, filled with a long-drawn guilt and that instant realization that I have been a prodigal grand child.
My Lola is my father's Aunt. But because my father's mother have died when I was but a few months old and because it was practically Lola who financed my father's education, I grew up considering my Lola as my father's mother. And mama, her only daughter, is for all intents and purposes, my father's eldest sister.
It's not that I have forgotten about her. I remember her always, and send some small gifts everytime my Mom or my brother goes to Ilocos. But I have not gone home to Ilocos in four years. Usually, it have been my Mama and my cousin ( and my nieces and nephews) who would come to Manila. But my Lola, with her frail condition was always left behind.
There is also this persona non grata thing with my father which hungs in the air and has sometimes made me feel that my Lola and Mama would not really miss me after all. My father, being far more wealthier than I am, has the means to pamper them : he had the family house rebuilt into a mansion for them, he bought a van for them, and he gives Lola a monthly allowance. To my mind, what could I possibly offer more in the face of that? Or to be honest, it is this: Why would they miss me when there is nothing more I could give them?
But maybe I am just being stupid. Maybe my Lola misses the younger me. The easy-go-lucky me who would take a bus to Ilocos on my own to stay for a few days, treat my nieces and nephew to Jollibee and stay late at night listening and babbling about our family's treasure trove of gossip.
Maybe my Lola misses the even younger me who would dance to music, who would make a face during mealtimes when I get to be chosen by Mama to do the daily prayer before eating. Maybe she just wants to know that despite being older, with my own dreams and frustrations, that I miss her too. That to me she is still the strong and very vocal Lola that I know.
This January, I promised her, I will come home. All I ask is that for her to wait for me
