Non-Engagements with my Grandmother and with Art

by Eric Abalajon

TICKETS FOR RECONSTRUCTION

Brightly colored tickets for benefit dances, in almost all municipalities, are encased in a large frame found in the museum of the oldest printing press in the region, makinaugalingon, meaning “our very own.” It was easy to spot among the tickets for reconstruction—the one held in Oton was pink.

The tour guide said that in the 1940s, numerous dances were organized to raise funds for rebuilding schools, roads, and markets destroyed in the war. These dances were the only time my grandmother ever talked about her youth and her idea of leisure—where she met my grandfather.

She would talk about certain siblings who were excellent singers and would pack the plaza more than usual whenever their band visited the town during fiestas. She didn’t mention any of the songs or dances that were popular back then. She claimed my grandfather once picked up a ring from the floor on one of those nights, a story my aunt, her firstborn, would later disprove. She said she was the one who bought it, after she had started working abroad.

The charm of those nights when my grandmother went out dancing is amplified by the blurring of details and memories, of music and of ruins. They were much more fascinating than the archives of the printing press, which document the visits to the island by colonial officials and, later, the country’s presidents.

GOLDEN AGE

The first golden age of Philippine cinema began when my grandmother was eleven years old, as the war ended. Of course, this idea is a periodization made belatedly. Several movie houses thrived in Iloilo City, emerging from a once-vibrant theater scene and fueled by the region’s sugar boom.

I never heard stories about trips to the city to watch films or even watching VHS tapes at a friend’s house. But I do have an aunt who was said to be named after Nida Blanca. The golden age was a near replica of Hollywood at the time, along with its values: individual happiness, true love, and anticommunism.

Blanca starred in over 150 movies. In one of her most well-known films, she played a feisty tomboy stowaway from Leyte who found love and polished her femininity in Manila through song and dance. I managed to see a deteriorating copy of it, scanned and posted online.

I never knew which film, or which actress, my grandmother loved enough to name someone after. By the time the family had their own TV—after my aunts had saved up to build a concrete house—Blanca was already being cast in minor roles, often as a mother or grandmother.

Despite black-and-white films from the 1950s being absent from major local networks, there was a discernible grief in our household when the news of Blanca’s murder arrived. Her life and work were quietly archived, to varying degrees, in each family member’s upbringing.

ECONOMICAL LYRICS

Christmas mornings were spent cooking before dressing up a bit for lunch, with uncles already drunk before anyone had started eating. Their faces were red as they joined parlor games. We would have a potluck lunch with neighbors, nearly all of whom were relatives.

Once, during one of these parties, my aunt handed my grandmother the mic for an icebreaker. She was asked to say a few words or sing a song. No one thought much of it until she sang Maalaala Mo Kaya a cappella—the namesake of the popular TV show.

For many at that party, the song and its recent covers had become deeply associated with melodrama. But as my grandmother sang about enduring promises and hidden pictures, we were reminded that it was first and foremost a love song. An early version, I later learned, was even something you could dance to. It wasn’t exactly festive, but everyone held their breath before bursting into applause.

I was walking home from school when my uncles casually told me to visit my grandfather in his room. I was in fourth grade when he passed away, not waking up from his afternoon nap. That was my earliest experience of death—quiet, almost unannounced.

My grandmother stayed composed throughout the wake, only breaking down after the final prayer. The mortuario was crowded; I couldn’t see past the backs of people. She was wailing—the first time I ever heard her cry—and in between sobs she asked, “Why did you leave me?”

I don’t remember if that party was in the same year. Most likely it was a bit after. That moment made me believe those kinds of lines really do get said.

LET EACH MEAL SETTLE

When I started school, classes began late in the morning, and recess was at noon. Some kids had full lunches—rice and a viand—while others had snacks, so they wouldn’t lose their appetite by the time they got home in the afternoon.

My school was a ten-minute walk from our house. I remember my grandmother getting upset when I stopped eating after just a few bites. She made tinola, and once the soup touched the rice, it was wasted. She argued with my mother about it. After that day, I ate lunch with my classmates.

When I was in high school, she asked me to go with her to the fiesta in Lambuyao. I was surprised when she told me to eat slowly. We spent the whole afternoon visiting four or five houses on foot, walking dirt roads between rice paddies, letting each meal settle.

It was the barangay where she grew up. She chatted with relatives I met for the first time. Though she raised her family just ten minutes away by tricycle, the difference felt huge.

When she was hospitalized and I took a shift watching over her, I would help her eat so she didn’t have to sit up. I cut meat and fruit into smaller pieces while she watched TV. She would always say thank you after, something I never remember saying when I was younger.

My mother worked full time and was often blamed for raising kids who preferred processed meats—tocino, chorizo, hotdog. One time, when I was a teenager, my grandmother cooked ginat-an nga kalabasa. To her surprise, I said I liked it. I think that was the first time I complimented her cooking. She made the dish again—maybe three or four more times. Cooking squash in coconut milk is tedious.

I still tell that story—her amused smile—to explain why my eyesight hasn’t gone bad yet.

IN LITERAL TERMS

Look through our family albums and you’ll see how my grandmother hated having her photo taken—not even poker-faced, but deliberately looking away. People often repeat the story of old folks or rural people avoiding cameras because they thought the machine stole their soul.

We should take that in literal terms, not as superstition. In colonial photography, people are often absent. And when they appear, they’re framed as savages or labor. The other side of that narrative is empire’s supposed achievements.

Photos of Oton often highlight the Greek-cross-shaped church—an old trace of Byzantine architecture in the Pacific. One angle reveals the Batiano River only steps away, a reminder of the flood risk that persists. In the center, a grand altar where priests once held simultaneous masses in each wing.

European travelers wrote about it as though it were the only structure outside Iloilo City. The more I examine these photos, the more I realize my grandmother was the only one in our family who ever saw it in person.

My grade school history teacher, then close to retirement, said the news of Pearl Harbor spread by radio the day before the fiesta. It turned out to be the eeriest celebration. I wonder if my grandmother went out with friends that day. She once told me about a gruesome interrogation inside the church by Japanese soldiers, trying to extract information about guerrillas in the mountains.

The old Oton church survived the Philippine Revolution, the Filipino-American War, and World War II—only to be destroyed by an earthquake in 1948. My grandmother began her family a few years after, likely while the ruins were still being cleared.

WAYS OF MAKING DO

Gabriel García Márquez said his grandmother made him a writer—an apprenticeship in the magical, expressed naturally. Mine was a different story.

My grandmother, who helped raise me and my siblings, had her own ways of making do—juggling an extended family and a renewed role in caregiving. I was in kindergarten when I told her I could button my shirt on my own. I panicked when I found an extra hole and no remaining buttons. She turned me from the mirror and explained calmly: always start at the bottom and work your way up.

While I was in college, she was folding laundry and came across the kitschy costume I wore in a cheering competition. “Whose is this?” she asked. I said we used it for a thing. She was dumbfounded by the length of the shorts. “How did you look like?” she asked. I replied, daw mga tarso—the only time I remember making her laugh.

When the commute became too much, she asked me to buy her maintenance medicine in Iloilo City. I started to track which branches had the best stocks—usually near hospitals. I had a lot of free time, so I would visit a secondhand bookstore in the mall afterward and hide the books I

liked. When I handed her the medicine at home, she would give me a tip from the change—just enough for a book or two, if they were still there the next day.

These were luxuries I couldn’t afford otherwise. When her last rites were administered, she could no longer speak. I still think of our few exchanges, how they shaped my sense of the city—and how they allowed me to imagine what else it could be.

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