Day 316 Roots and Fruits

The casket stands in the background, Tuttie kneeling at its side, rosary permanently wrapped around one hand, the hem of her white blazer dipping below her knees. One head leans in from the left, blocking my view. 
"Did she have any grandchildren?"
A permed head leans in, further obscuring Tita T and Tuttie, replying, 
"No. None."


There were several moments that stuck out to me during Tita T's wake. I covered most of the bases, but this one snippet comes out as crystal clear as the woman they were speaking of. 


Tita T had three children, all of them older than me, none of them married or parents. And the idea that she died without ever seeing or getting to know her grandchildren... breaks my heart. 


By the time I was born, my parents had each lost a parent. Over the few interactions I had with my living grandparents, I'd find it frustrating to communicate with my grandmother who occasionally stuttered in broken English and short Tagalog words I could understand, and impossible to do so with my paternal grandfather, whose Alzheimer's had pretty much taken hold of his mind by the time we'd meet in person. As for the ones who passed on, it was a lot like coming across a hole someone left in the ground. 

Is this the right fit?

You don't know what they used to make it, you don't know if this is how big they wanted it, you don't know what they would've put in it (Lilies? Sunflowers? An oak tree???); you don't know anything about the impact, the imprint, they would've wanted to leave behind. 


"I want to have in-vitro babies." I've said this largely as a joke to shrug off nosy Titas, but this is my coworker, Lani, and she's more curious than culturally offended as most Filipino women are. 

"Really?" She's skeptical as she looks me up and down. "But... you're so young." She laughs. "You have a while before you have to think about that."


"Not really," I grimace a bit, explaining that my period came a day after my tenth birthday and my boobs existed before I even left elementary school. "I don't want to wait for so long to the point where having a child puts them at risk for developing something in utero."


"But still," She insists reassuringly, speaking softly. "You don't have to worry about any big problems until you start giving birth in your thirties. Give yourself time."


Lani was 23 (my age) when she had her first child (of three), and 24 when she brought him home.


"Time isn't an issue." I reply as we're walking down the flight of stairs after work. "I just...don't want to be so old that I can't keep up with them. I mean, you got to grow up with your children." I explain that my parents waited five years to have me and my sister, entering their 30s as they did so. 


"Yeah, but the challenges are different when you have kids at certain ages." Lani says. 


"True," I conceded before admitting, "But the kids of my generation in my community are at that point where we worry that the things that happened to our grandparents might happen to our actual parents.


"I want my kids to know my parents." I confess after a moment, letting the words tumble aloud for the first time I can recall. "And... with the way things are with them, I don't know how much of that time I have."


Lani's mother was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer and the doctors gave her 3-5 months to live, so she understands, through watching her mother interacting with her children when they knew every day could be her last, the difference in being present in a life versus having a presence in their hearts... even after she survived the next 5 years. 


I think of my grandparents and the moments, stories, and experiences that I was robbed of. I think of the people who raised my crazy parents, and it breaks my heart again to think that those small pieces of me are completely lost. I have no idea of the people they were aside from miniscule stories my own parents pass on to me. Like a bad game of Telephone, at some point, I have to wonder if this message is how it was supposed to be spoken... or if it's been distorted and disassembled beyond the point of recognition from the original source.

"I don't want them to just hear the story," I tell Lani of my hopes for my future (likely-in-vitro children), "I want the stories to speak for themselves."


My parents love little children, and enjoy spending time with the grand/children of distant relatives. But having one of their own, someone directly descended from them, I think it would mean the world to them. And to me too.


I want my children to know their history, to know the path taken before they carve their own, to understand poverty, to understand losing baby siblings due to hunger and unavoidable illness, to detest rice fields when they're the only work you can find, to be the the lucky ones out of families of 9 and 7 to make it to the other side of the planet. 


I want them to love my parents, like I do: in spite of their craziness and heavy-accents and high-handed beliefs. I want them to love all of that, and it scares me that my parents won't get that opportunity with their own grandchildren. 

Lani sympathizes, but she repeats, "You're still really young. Don't go into it in a rush. There were a lot of things I couldn't do because of the kids," She points out without a hint of regret. "Just wait."


It's not quite like I'm going to inject myself with baby juice through a turkey baster any time today. But the idea persists. I really don't know how much time I have left with my parents, and I really don't have any interest in finding a partner any time soon... Maybe. We'll see. 

I just... don't want my kids to look at blurry photos and wonder, "What kind of person were they?" like I do when I look at the frame on my shelf of me and my maternal grandfather,

I know his father was one of 13, I know he was a butcher for some part of his life, that he and his wife, my gray-eyed grandmother had 11 children. I know he outlived four of those children. I know he walked with a cane in his last years and that my sister adored him and vice versa during that one short year we spent in his home. I know that this photo was taken after the barrio's float parade, but I don't know if we ever exchanged words in any language. I know he passed away shortly after we moved to the states, and that my mother was devastated that she couldn't even go home to attend his funeral. I remember being young and believing he died of a broken heart of having my mother and sister move so far away from him. I know his body lays entombed at the center of the family morgue my mother had constructed years after his death, beside my funniest uncle's body. 

And I still know nothing about him...