I remember her by grease, you see
every time I see her she’s in the kitchen,
we would come I think for Christmas,
and she would be cooking mechado,
or kare-kare, she was kinda strict looking,
like a math professor in UP, with
the way she looks at you, yes, that’s
it, she looks like an eagle, with her
beaked nose, her eyes that pierce,
like you have done something wrong
and she knows about it, and one time,
she put me on a batya, and kneaded
me with her powerful hands, rubbing
the daylights out of me, including the
first layer of my epidermis, perhaps she
thought she could make my skin lighter,
but my skin stayed dark, and she stayed
like an eagle, but she wasn’t strict after
all, bringing me and her other apos
to watch Bridge Over the River Kwai,
walking the length of Carriedo and Avenida
Rizal, she had a stout heart, always presented
to the world her asthmatic kind of laugh
which was a cross between a cough and
a guffaw, and when I was in UP, she read
my history book by Teodoro Agoncillo,
she loved the twists of Philippine history,
couldn’t put the book down, she reveled
in it, I saw a different Lola Concha that night,
she hardly slept, I think she read it cover
to cover, didn’t know she loved the country
so, and in her final days she was the kindly
woman she really was, disciplinarian she
was when we were young, but she had a
soft side, a nationalist side, a ready smile
for this apo of hers when he makes mano,
my Tatay looked like her, and today, when
I am more or less her age when she pored
through Agoncillo’s book: I took after her,
in nationalism, in occasional mirth, in love
for family, fierce love actually, oh, she
didn’t experience traffic, or climate change,
floods and thieving politicians, but I’m sure
if she were still around, she’ll put them on
a batya and try to rub the dirt off them,
they’ll stay dark, I suppose, for they do not
make Filipinos like her anymore, ultra nationalist,
ultra family, rubbing and rubbing the dirt
off from those who needs rubbing.

Happy birthday, Lola Concha!