my mother's mother's 80th birthday.
i had work in the morning. was supposed to go to makati's handlebar for a ska night w/ a friend. my mom brought along my daughter & niece to cubao where my 'nanay' (grandma) lives to celebrate her 80th birthday. they needed a ride home so i went there instead after shift.
when i got there round 8pm, the place was jump packed w/ people, half i only recognize by face & the other half, my relatives. my daughter greeted me excitingly with her usual cute wide smile & tight hug, smooches & the adorable 'love you' in the end.
being the last to arrive, almost all the food were already packed-to-go by my mom & others. i was able to sample a li'l of the 'papaitan' & 'pansit' only. beer was already served so i was already drinking alcohol while havin' dinner.
after a couple of bottles, i started grabbing the microphone every now & then from our elders who were busy on the videoke. (didn't i just mention before that i love to sing?). we went home before 10pm.
my nanay; who gave my baby a toy gun??
w/ my cousin & uncle; w/ my daughter
cousins; mom, sam, ian & trish
w/ sam & ian outside; my daughter w/ her yaya
my sister & myself lived at nanay's house while attending grade school & high school.
nanay took care of us like her own children. she cooked breakfast for us, washed & pressed our uniforms, heated the water for our baths every 4am in the morning, waited for us at the gate after school.. etc. we only go home to fairvew, our current address, during weekends. under her care, we learned to stretch our allowances, conserve the resources we had (since we couldn't always run to mommy & daddy those times), save money, be self-reliant & focused.
our lolo was stricter than nanay. lolo often scolded us whenever we played new wave or rock music on our radio or played guitar or used the phone longer than 10 minutes. he got more furious when we clattered around the house whenever he played his favorite old songs on vinyl records. one of them was the song 'unchained melody' which he played over & over again. i miss my grumpy lolo.... my lolo passed away 3 years ago from a heart attack. he was 76.
it was hard to adjust at first because we were, i admit, spoiled by our parents. i remember crying everyday after school, missing my folks. what our parents do to payback the days we weren't home was that they made sure they took us out every weekend & bought us at shoemart anything we wanted, literally anything. we moved out to live w/ our parents again before college.
this is for you nanay. i love you!
No comments:
Post a Comment