Behind every child who dreams of a larger life, there is a quiet space where strength is gathered. This chapter is about learning to endure—finding sustenance along the tide, harvesting the steep slopes of the coconut mountains with my father, and discovering a private faith that became a silent companion.
My grandmother, Lola Adang, chose to remain in our home instead of moving in with her other daughter, who had invited Lola Adang to move. There were moments when my grandmother would suddenly weep, and I would cry beside her. We shared the bed my grandmother had once shared with Lolo Imo. Early in the morning, Lola Adang and I would walk to the beach to catch crabs. My grandmother was highly skilled at finding crab holes in the sand and retrieving them without being pinched by their claws. My task was to hold the container and catch any crabs that slipped from my grandmother's hands as they rushed toward the water. We also collected edible shells during low tide when the rocks were exposed. With these crabs and shells, we managed to secure enough food for a meal most days. Listening to radio dramas and playing bingo with our neighbors were Lola Adang's favorite pastimes.
Without Lolo Imo's income, my grandmother depended on the coconut farms for her personal expenses, while waiting for the veteran's widow pension that Lola Adang was supposed to receive. Immediately after Lolo Imo's death, a family associate had been entrusted with the required documents to submit to the office in Manila. However, confident that the pension money would arrive, my grandmother agreed to divide the land she had inherited from Lolo Imo among their three children. Before I realized it, the kalesa and the horse were gone too—along with the other animals.Did the veteran's pension ever arrive?The fate of those documents—and the money—will surface in later chapters.
To help feed the family, I would often wait on the beach in the morning, carrying one of my younger siblings. I waited for the fishermen to return with their catch. When a boat arrived, I joined the other villagers in pulling the boat up onto the dry sand. My small height and strength could not contribute much to the heavy work, but the fishermen would always give me a fish as a reward. I would stay on the beach until the very last boat returned, even after all the other helpers had left. I understood that the fishermen needed help to pull their boats quickly to prevent the hulls from scratching against the stones.
My grandmother also learned to catch wild alligators in the mountains to prepare food. One evening, we enjoyed a delicious dish for dinner. My grandmother asked her grandchildren what we thought we were eating, and we all answered that it was chicken. Lola Adang laughed and explained that it was actually alligator meat. Over the years, I saw my grandmother carry alligators and prepare them for our meals multiple times.
With Lolo Imo gone, my father, Cesar, had to manage the heavy responsibility of supporting the household. My father was only twenty-five years old—young, strong, and silent. In the past, my father had only farmed the family's land, but now my father had to manage coconut farms for other landowners to support our growing family. As the eldest child, I began helping my father with the harvest when there was no school, aiming to increase our family's share of the earnings. My father worked quietly and did not complain. He would pick coconuts by using a long pole made of several bamboo lengths joined together, with a curved blade on the tip. My job was to carry the spare bamboo poles and follow my father through the groves. Carrying the poles was difficult when the trees were short because I had to handle spare bamboos that were much taller than I was. The work was even more difficult when the mountain slopes were wet and slippery. I learned to walk barefoot and use my toes to grip the soil, avoiding falls.
Slippers were only helpful when we worked in the thick underbrush, which protected our feet from thorns—and from the waste left by neighbors who had no indoor toilets. You could not choose where to step all the time, and you did not know when you were in for an unwelcome, stinky surprise. The bush was where the residents of the area who had no toilets relieved themselves. Some would leave the waste open, and others would cover it with leaves or soil, but either way, you could not tell where it was.
My father would scold me for my own mistakes and for what he did not like about how others worked. I became the shock absorber of his disappointments—the one always near him by choice and by necessity. When I was not in the field, I made sure the water containers in the kitchen and the bathroom were full, the house was clean, the pigs were fed, and all the dirty clothes were washed by hand in the river. If I did not do these things, my father would do them himself after a full day's work. It would break your heart to watch him. I would hear passersby comment, "Why do you have to do that?" or "Have some rest! Even animals do."
Our water pump had dried out along with Lolo Imo's money, so fetching water had become a real burden. It took several trips, carrying pails or gallons, to and from a distant neighbor's pump to fill our big jars in the kitchen. The toilet was an additional chore. Unlike most houses with simple pit latrines, ours required water to flush. My mother mainly used it, and my father was in charge of maintaining it.
We also kept some pigs for extra income. I had no idea if it was worth the effort, because taking care of them was tough and time-consuming. They were fed at least twice a day with ground coconut and rice bran bought from the market or rice growers. The work was manageable when coconuts were readily available and already husked. Otherwise, I had to go searching for any that had fallen nearby.
My father would not trust me with washing his work clothes—he would rather do those himself, because they were extremely soiled from days of use. He would take all the family's dirty laundry with him to the river, but he would choose a spot away from the housewives who usually did their washing together.
My grandmother was a wonderful cook and the undisputed master of the kitchen. She could make something delicious out of whatever ingredients were available. I would bring my father his lunch in the field when possible. But some farms were too far to reach on foot, because my father had begun to manage coconut land beyond my grandfather's property. Landowners would ask my father to care for their trees and harvest whenever my father saw fit. They would just collect their share when the work was done. There were also requests from other villages and towns, because my father had earned a reputation for being quick, skilled, and efficient. To an outsider, the reason he accepted all those jobs was obvious. To a young eyewitness like me, it was something beyond comprehension.
My father was the eldest child of Solomon and Maxima—nicknamed Omon and Sima. They lived in a village in Boac, about ten kilometers from where my maternal grandparents lived. Their house stood at the foot of a mountain, near an unpaved road that ended just past their property. No public transportation ran there. Reading the Bible was a regular part of their routine, and saying the Rosary in the evening was a must, as was making the sign of the cross before every meal. The prayer was always led by my grandmother, Lola Sima. She was deeply devout as a Catholic, but at least equally devoted as a housewife and mother. She would rise at dawn to prepare breakfast and was the last to go to bed after securing the mosquito nets. Since there was no electricity, gas lamps were used, and food was cooked over firewood. Water was fetched from wells and stored in big jars. Clothes were washed in the river, where the villagers also bathed and washed their animals.
Lola Sima washed her family's clothes at home, soaking them in starch water and ironing them with a triangular metal iron heated by hot coals inside. Every part of their house was clean and orderly. The kitchen utensils and wooden floors gleamed. Clean curtains hung neatly on the doors and windows. The ironed clothes and bedding were folded precisely in their places. The furniture was never dusty, and the hardened ground of their yard was swept so thoroughly that even the dust seemed removed. The house was surrounded by fruit trees and plants, but you could scarcely find a fallen leaf—thanks to the absence of an autumn season, the couple's habits, and the help of their children. They had five sons and a daughter. Lolo Omon, the village leader, was a well-respected, smiling man who was always moving—picking up anything along his path that belonged in the trash. He was like a walking broom.
Lolo Omon worked for the provincial government as a street sweeper in Boac town, about four kilometers from home. He walked to and from work, removing garbage and fallen branches along the way. With that kind of example, it was no surprise that my father developed the same habit. My father was like a walking vacuum cleaner. My father also lived with Lolo Omon's younger brother, Lolo Facio, in Manila before Lolo Facio and his family migrated to Canada. Lolo Facio was extremely strict about order. Whenever my father was unsatisfied with my housework, my father would say, "That kind of work would not pass the standards of Uncle Facio!" My father was particularly strict about cleaning hidden areas, stating that it was more important to clean the unseen spaces because that was where the real dirt gathered.
While my father had grown into a responsible man with a strong sense of order, my mother, Siloh, was the youngest in a comfortable family and was not accustomed to domestic chores. Siloh would rarely cook, help set the table, or wash the dishes. She would not clean the house or wash our dirty clothes. The clean and dirty laundry would often mix when the pile of dirty clothes grew too high. I remember lying on the stack of dirty clothes while reading, trying to memorize my school lessons because someone had told me it was easier. The smell was too distracting, and I realized it was ineffective. When my father was busy with copra harvesting, the laundry would begin to smell. My mother would wash a few of her own clothes, but she left the heavy work to my father. Yet, my father was deeply in love with my mother. Siloh's wishes were my father's commands. Every cent my father earned from the coconut harvest was given directly to my mother. Siloh would sometimes show my father uncommon affection, allowing him to kiss her cheek, which always made my father smile.
My mother was also a professional gambler. Siloh had been gambling before she married my father, a habit tolerated by her parents and now by my father. After Lolo Imo died, my mother went to church less frequently and spent more time at the gambling tables playing mahjong and cards. As the eldest, I had to care for my younger siblings. I would carry a baby to my mother so she could breastfeed while playing mahjong. I would sit beside her at the table, putting a child to sleep on my lap, or stay in the gambling house at night because the baby was sick. Sometimes, my mother would not return home for weeks, playing in other villages. I would beg my mother to drop coins for food through the bamboo slats of the floor where she was playing cards. My siblings and I cried from hunger when there was no food in the house, knowing our mother was spending my father's earnings at the tables. Yet, we respected my mother and never spoke back to her. My father would only confront her when he was heavily drunk.
Despite my mother's gambling habits, it was my mother who first gave me the concept of an invisible God. I came home from playing one afternoon and saw cassava peelings on the kitchen table. My mother told me that if I threw the peelings outside, God would see my good deed and reward me. I carried the peelings to the back of the house near the mountain foot and threw them away, wondering what the reward would be. When I returned, a plate of fresh cassava cake was sitting on the table. In my innocent mind, I believed God had sent it. This simple event shaped my early faith. I accepted as fact that there was a Father God who watched everything we did. I began to pray directly to God, looking up at the sky or at the cross, feeling pity for the suffering of Jesus. This private conversation with an unseen Father became my constant source of strength through the difficult childhood years.
Faith is not always born in grand sanctuaries; sometimes it begins with the simple promise of a cassava cake and a plate left on a kitchen table. In the hard labor of the coconut groves, serving as her father's silent shock absorber, she discovered that survival required an internal refuge. By turning her gaze upward to the sky in private conversation with an unseen Father, she built a sanctuary of the mind that no hardship, family breakdown, or hunger could ever take away.