All of the facts, none of the flavor
It is a wonder how someone like me, who does not talk, could possibly be related to someone like Lola Marcia, who talks nonstop.
Mom says she's faster than Yahoo! news updates. Sometimes, on my way down to the dining room, I hear her already talking--to no one. I wondered if it was a fear of silence that forced her to fill every second of dead air with anything she could think of.
Stories we'd rather not have shared with the rest of the world have already been spread at her regular barkada lunch and weekly prayer meeting. We joke (half-meant) that we should keep things from her if we don't want other people to know.
It's an even bigger wonder how we coexist. Over the year I've spent living with Lola Marcia, I've learned Mom's evil habit (which I could never accept or understand before) of spacing out and not hearing the stories. The times I do listen, I've learned not to be so quick to believe.
She watches the news every day and turns what she sees into kwento for the next morning, telling the stories with such confidence. When she talks, it seems like she was there when whatever new scandal took place--suicides, plunder of government funds, hidden camera sex videos. She's preaching gospel truth.
Stories are repeated at least three times a day, with a careless change in details each retelling, each successive version far more elaborate than the first.
She claims the love of her life, who died a few months shy of their fortieth wedding anniversary, spent seven years courting her (which seems quite impossible when you realize that he would have then had to start when he was a little boy) before they finally ended up together. She tells stories of how they ended up getting married only as a consequence of her cousin eloping, and further clarifies "Ah basta ako, hindi ako nakipag-tumbling sa Daddy niyo noon." She thinks he was a secret agent.
So I (very lovingly) have a lot of trust issues and very little patience.
Why listen to stories that are anything but the truth? Why bother staying an extra twenty minutes after dinner, twenty minutes I could spend doing something far more productive, just to listen to an inaccurate repeat of the TV news?
But then again, maybe truth is overrated. Maybe the truth gets in the way.
In telling the story of my father's life, it's impossible to separate fact from fiction, the man from the myth. The best I can do is to tell it the way he told me. It doesn't always make sense and most of it never happened... but that's what kind of story this is.
Most men, they'll tell you a story straight through. It won't be complicated, but it won't be interesting either.
And I suppose if I had to choose between the true version and an elaborate one involving a fish and a wedding ring, I might choose the fancy version. But that's just me.
A man tells his stories so many times that he becomes the stories. They live on after him, and in that way he becomes immortal.
The truth is, there would be a lot less to life without the crazy, implausible, unreliable stories.
Mom says she's faster than Yahoo! news updates. Sometimes, on my way down to the dining room, I hear her already talking--to no one. I wondered if it was a fear of silence that forced her to fill every second of dead air with anything she could think of.
Stories we'd rather not have shared with the rest of the world have already been spread at her regular barkada lunch and weekly prayer meeting. We joke (half-meant) that we should keep things from her if we don't want other people to know.
It's an even bigger wonder how we coexist. Over the year I've spent living with Lola Marcia, I've learned Mom's evil habit (which I could never accept or understand before) of spacing out and not hearing the stories. The times I do listen, I've learned not to be so quick to believe.
She watches the news every day and turns what she sees into kwento for the next morning, telling the stories with such confidence. When she talks, it seems like she was there when whatever new scandal took place--suicides, plunder of government funds, hidden camera sex videos. She's preaching gospel truth.
Stories are repeated at least three times a day, with a careless change in details each retelling, each successive version far more elaborate than the first.
She claims the love of her life, who died a few months shy of their fortieth wedding anniversary, spent seven years courting her (which seems quite impossible when you realize that he would have then had to start when he was a little boy) before they finally ended up together. She tells stories of how they ended up getting married only as a consequence of her cousin eloping, and further clarifies "Ah basta ako, hindi ako nakipag-tumbling sa Daddy niyo noon." She thinks he was a secret agent.
So I (very lovingly) have a lot of trust issues and very little patience.
Why listen to stories that are anything but the truth? Why bother staying an extra twenty minutes after dinner, twenty minutes I could spend doing something far more productive, just to listen to an inaccurate repeat of the TV news?
But then again, maybe truth is overrated. Maybe the truth gets in the way.
In telling the story of my father's life, it's impossible to separate fact from fiction, the man from the myth. The best I can do is to tell it the way he told me. It doesn't always make sense and most of it never happened... but that's what kind of story this is.
Most men, they'll tell you a story straight through. It won't be complicated, but it won't be interesting either.
And I suppose if I had to choose between the true version and an elaborate one involving a fish and a wedding ring, I might choose the fancy version. But that's just me.
A man tells his stories so many times that he becomes the stories. They live on after him, and in that way he becomes immortal.
The truth is, there would be a lot less to life without the crazy, implausible, unreliable stories.