Grandpa
Saturday, May 12th, 2007
In his mountain home, Grandpa sits by the porch. He chews tobacco and spits outside the window. He always smiles and takes everything in stride. He never fidgets nor complain nor whine. Despite obvious lack of money, he always says, I have lots of money then laughs about it. He was never angry nor fight with anybody. He is as content as a man can be.
For a time, he lived with us in town to escape the nightly encounters between government soldiers and the reds in the mountains. In the house, he had a garden that’s filled with vegetables and the neighbors come to ask for his huge tomatoes or okra or eggplant. He is a compulsive worker, and if there was any complaining at all, it was with lack of work. He prides himself with his sinewy hands that work wonders all the time. He was a handsome fellow and people come to him for advice. He was as skilled a carpenter as he was a gourmet cook! He is always the chief cook in family gatherings, and fiestas and weddings. He speaks only when he has something to say, and when he does, everybody listens because he doesn’t speak much, so you have to take it all in for your own good.
One time, he ran for Barangay Captain and I was there listening to him for the first time. Up in the stage he spoke for about 3 minutes. That was his political speech. And nobody else spoke the entire time. That was when the proverbial, you can hear a pin drop phrase came into perspective. And if I never live to see somebody shown such undiluted respect, I want everybody to know that it was the time my Grandpa delivered that talk. It was a defining moment of my enduring respect for my old man.
He also built his own houses as well as the houses of my uncles. All of them fine houses as far as country huts go. Simple, provincial places of abode, made mostly of cut timber and bamboos and nipa roofs. And there is always that ubiquitous BANGA. A clay jar (by the see-though bamboo sink) used to store drinking water. in the mountains where Grandpa lives, there was no running water. Water was drawn from a well a few kilometers away from the cluster of houses. They store water in these jars to cool it, and it has a very distinct taste, maybe a taste of moss here or green algae there, growing at the bottom. It gives the water such character, and it was a taste like no other.
