ancestors, clans, and holy ground truces
The graveyard is one of those old middle class European graveyards where every family has a crypt, and the crypts form a small city of white marble and somber angels. My mom points out the tombs that belong to branches of family that I'm half familiar with, and how you can almost trace the geneaology of the city by the middle and last names etched in stone. It's the first hint I have of how long my father's ancestors have lived in this town, and it's a strange experience.
For most of my life, I've grown up only knowing my immediate family, with cousins, aunts and uncles as distant peripheral elements that I'd run into during the occasional holiday. I was used to living in places where nobody knew us, and where my family lived in its own isolated shell. But, here, it seems everyone knew my grandfather and his father before him -- engineers who laid some of the first roads that connected Manila with the other provinces and shared their wealth with their neighbors and friends.
We pay our respects, then walk a few blocks to Tita Patsy's house, which sits near a cramped side street, directly across from the barrio's police precinct. We knock at the gate, and a housekeeper greets us. We say who we are and ask if Patsy is around, and the housekeeper disappears for a minute, then opens the gate and we see Patsy as she walks down a staircase from her second-story entrance.
"Jesus Christ! Chino! What are you doing here?"
"Well, we were in the neighborhood and my mom..."
"No! I mean what are you doing in the country? What brings the prodigal home?"
I've been asked that question a lot, and now I just say that it's been too long and I wanted to see the city again, remind myself of what I left behind. And she laughs and says, "Homesick, na? It's strange how this city can do that to you. Come in, have a drink. Tell me of your travels."
As we sit down to glasses of coconut juice and water, we talk about the city and what I remember of it. We tell her about how we tried to visit the old house, but that it was closed, and she shakes her head and says that it's a pity that our family had to sell it -- that it breaks her heart everytime she walks past it; but it breaks her heart everytime she walks through Pasig and sees what it's become. Crowded, dirty, overdeveloped. A McDonalds sign towers over a town square that once had a gorgeous fountain fueled by a river that's been paved over and drained. The police building across from her is new, and she tells us about how it used to be jail.
"Can you imagine? I'd come home and listen to these criminals hurling abuse at me from their windows. Day and night. It was horrible. You know, I grew up with the fellow who's the current chief of police, and I refused to speak to him after he put up this embarassment. Then one Sunday, we're at church and he sits next to me and says, 'Senora, we're on holy ground now, so can I ask for a truce?' And he sat there, apologised and next year, the jail was moved to another part of town."
It's personal connections like that which make me wonder what my life would've been like if we never left here. Would my life be likewise enmeshed? Networked tightly with the classmates, cousins, second cousins and distant relations who worked their way up into whatever parts of society they'd be in now? Would we have these sorts of conversations, making policy and business decisions based on friendship and clan allegiances?
Part of me realizes that this wouldn't be the case; that my parents were both fairly Westernized in their outlook, and were never fond of the overwhelming intimacy of Filipino society. You didn't have a friend whose parents weren't connected to yours through a few degress of separation. You couldn't date someone without setting off gossip reports in a manner of seconds. They raised us separate from that, and my generation in general seems to prize worldliness for clannishness.
But I still can't help but wonder at the social fabric that wove itself around my parents and grandparents, and what sort of person person I would've become if I let that drape itself around me as well.
For most of my life, I've grown up only knowing my immediate family, with cousins, aunts and uncles as distant peripheral elements that I'd run into during the occasional holiday. I was used to living in places where nobody knew us, and where my family lived in its own isolated shell. But, here, it seems everyone knew my grandfather and his father before him -- engineers who laid some of the first roads that connected Manila with the other provinces and shared their wealth with their neighbors and friends.
We pay our respects, then walk a few blocks to Tita Patsy's house, which sits near a cramped side street, directly across from the barrio's police precinct. We knock at the gate, and a housekeeper greets us. We say who we are and ask if Patsy is around, and the housekeeper disappears for a minute, then opens the gate and we see Patsy as she walks down a staircase from her second-story entrance.
"Jesus Christ! Chino! What are you doing here?"
"Well, we were in the neighborhood and my mom..."
"No! I mean what are you doing in the country? What brings the prodigal home?"
I've been asked that question a lot, and now I just say that it's been too long and I wanted to see the city again, remind myself of what I left behind. And she laughs and says, "Homesick, na? It's strange how this city can do that to you. Come in, have a drink. Tell me of your travels."
As we sit down to glasses of coconut juice and water, we talk about the city and what I remember of it. We tell her about how we tried to visit the old house, but that it was closed, and she shakes her head and says that it's a pity that our family had to sell it -- that it breaks her heart everytime she walks past it; but it breaks her heart everytime she walks through Pasig and sees what it's become. Crowded, dirty, overdeveloped. A McDonalds sign towers over a town square that once had a gorgeous fountain fueled by a river that's been paved over and drained. The police building across from her is new, and she tells us about how it used to be jail.
"Can you imagine? I'd come home and listen to these criminals hurling abuse at me from their windows. Day and night. It was horrible. You know, I grew up with the fellow who's the current chief of police, and I refused to speak to him after he put up this embarassment. Then one Sunday, we're at church and he sits next to me and says, 'Senora, we're on holy ground now, so can I ask for a truce?' And he sat there, apologised and next year, the jail was moved to another part of town."
It's personal connections like that which make me wonder what my life would've been like if we never left here. Would my life be likewise enmeshed? Networked tightly with the classmates, cousins, second cousins and distant relations who worked their way up into whatever parts of society they'd be in now? Would we have these sorts of conversations, making policy and business decisions based on friendship and clan allegiances?
Part of me realizes that this wouldn't be the case; that my parents were both fairly Westernized in their outlook, and were never fond of the overwhelming intimacy of Filipino society. You didn't have a friend whose parents weren't connected to yours through a few degress of separation. You couldn't date someone without setting off gossip reports in a manner of seconds. They raised us separate from that, and my generation in general seems to prize worldliness for clannishness.
But I still can't help but wonder at the social fabric that wove itself around my parents and grandparents, and what sort of person person I would've become if I let that drape itself around me as well.