Sunday, November 19, 2017

When Your Parents Are The Elders

This is (slightly late) Essay #46 of The 52 Essay Challenge, a series in which I write a new (unpolished & messy) essay each week during 2017.

Who’s on the guest list?

I am planning my annual holiday party and putting together my guest list. It’s a little later than when I usually send out invitations, but it’s been that kind of year. And every time, as November approaches, I sit on the fence. Do I want to host the party again? Do I want to invest that kind of time and energy that goes into planning and cleaning and preparing? I go back and forth. I think about what it might be like to not host a holiday party. Would I be okay with that? Would I be okay with just trying to make plans to meet up with friends at a restaurant or bar instead?

And then I think about how restaurants aren’t as much fun as home. How we’d have to jostle with other patrons. Sure, someone else will cook the food and serve the drinks. But then we’d be stuck in place, sitting in our seats (or cramped at the bar), limited to conversation with whomever was next to us. We’d probably be yelling, too, as everyone will be out getting together with friends, too. And this is if we can even find a date that all of us would be able to meet. Which is virtually impossible.

But also, it’s more warm and inviting being in someone’s home –namely my own home—sharing in the holiday spirit, moving freely throughout the house, mingling with whomever you choose.

Okay, okay— I convinced myself: I’m going to host the holiday party again this year.

Now the matter of the guest list.

*

Growing up, my parents would take us to people’s houses for parties all the time. And “party” seems like a misnomer, though I don’t know what else I’d call it. “Get together” maybe? It was always a house full of people my parents knew from back home –kababayan, countrymen—or, more often than not, specifically folks from my mother’s hometown of Lucban in the Quezon province: Lucbanin. It seemed like there was some special occasion or another practically every weekend. This one’s baptism. That one’s First Communion. This one’s post-piano recital reception. Or just a picnic to celebrate summer.

The kitchens of these homes would be jam-packed with trays of food on every available surface –counterops, tables, unfolded tv trays— kept warm over sternos. The requisite lumpiang shanghai and pancit (at least two kinds, if not three – canton, palabok, bihon, sotanghon). Diniguan, pinakbet, sinigang, If it was a really special occasion, then lechon: a full roasted pig, complete with apple in mouth.

The dining rooms hosted desserts: ube, maha blanca, cassava cake, brazo de Mercedes, espasol, sans rival, bibingka. And a sheet cake to mark whatever occasion we were celebrating. And there was plenty of soda. Plenty. And Johnny Walker Black and Chivas Regal.

The titas would chitter about, gliding through the two rooms, ensuring the food was always replenished. Where the extra food came from I never knew. I wondered if the oven was some magic portal to the local Filipino turo-turo where these titas just pulled out dish after dish. As they moved, they’d share tsismis about this daughter or that cousin. And did you notice how Baby is getting fat? What’s the latest on Totoy’s girlfriends? The titos would talk about back home: the political unrest. Everyone sitting wherever they could –folding chairs, stools, the arms of couches—balancing paper plates snuggled inside bamboo plate holders on their laps.

The kids? We really didn’t eat (except for maybe the desserts). We kids would scatter everywhere, depending on how old we were at any given point in time. The backyard for tag. If we were lucky, there’d be a swing set, too. The driveway for basketball. The upstairs for video games. The basement for movies and combat practice (think: Street Fighter) – that is, if it wasn’t set up for card games.

When I got to the tween years, the basement would be set up with a DJ – a crew of boys I kinda knew from these get-togethers, messing around with vinyl and beats and sound. That was some good shit in those days.

But if you were quiet like me (if you believe there was such a time!), you’d hang with the elders, your face in a book. Maybe you’d sit in a corner of the family room, watching tv with them. Or watch them play mahjong, kicking each other’s asses, raking in the dimes. Laughter above the clack of tiles as they reset each game, the sound somehow soothing. But be mindful not to bring too much attention to yourself lest the questioning begin: how is school? How are your grades? Are you studying hard? From the lolas: do you have a boyfriend? To which you lower your head even further in embarrassment. And then: go help your mother.

If we were lucky, they’d force one of us kids to play the piano. Sige na, play us the “Cats”. You are so good at it. It didn’t matter if we were actually good at it or not. As long as we could play the melody to “Memory” from the musical “Cats”, we would be yanked to the piano bench and made to play. The excuse of “I don’t have the music” doesn’t fly. Everyone has a copy of the sheet music in their piano benches. Everyone. And if we were really lucky, one of the titos would stand up next to the piano, which was in the living room saturated with plastic-covered couches, mirrored walls and capiz shell chandeliers, and sing along with our stuttering play – start, stop, start again, fumble over the keys, stumble through the notes. He would belt out the notes as if he himself were on a Broadway stage.

Ah, those were the days.



*

My grandparents have been gone for thirteen years. A lot has happened in thirteen years. Including the fact that my own parents –and their friends (my titas and titos)— are now the elders. How weird is that?! And I can’t remember the last time I was at a Filpino get-together. The only ones who now host such things are my parents and their local friends. Only every once in a while. Gone are the days of getting together with Lucbanin every other weekend. Now, it’s just once a year, if that. And I don’t usually attend. I have my own family and our own very busy schedule of commitments and our own friends with whom we (occasionally) get together.

And so, in putting my guest list together for this holiday party, I am thinking about these things. Thinking about how life is shorter than we think it is. Thinking about how, while I hated bring dragged to these get-togethers with my siblings, I actually miss it. How I’m a little sad that my own kids won’t get to experience these gatherings. That yes, they will have their own version of childhood get-togethers and being dragged to places they don’t want to go –I just hope they look fondly back on them as I am doing now. But I am sad about what is lost. This is part of living in the diaspora, no? What is lost and what remains.

I am going to do what I can to keep what little remains and try to pass it on to my kids. I will invite the elders to this holiday party. I will order trays of Filipino food. I will bust out the Magic Mic (because, after all, what Filipino party is complete without a little singing, a little karaoke?). Maybe one of my kids will play the piano. Or maybe they all will. And maybe we will laugh and gossip. Maybe they’ll talk about the good old days. Maybe they’ll talk about back home. (They most certainly won’t talk about getting old.)  Maybe they’ll ask my kids about their studies. Or offer strategies for winning mahjong. The sound of Tagalog filling my house full of love. Maybe, after all, not all is lost.

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