Grandma Dearest

By Emmanuelle

The first day of this official campaign, she travels all the way from Manila during the wee hours of the morning. She sits her fragile bones on the hard seat of the lead vehicle of a convoy of Sarao jeepneys to be used for the mayoral campaign, not of her son this time, but of her son’s wife. Her daughter.

She is eighty-four.

Boxes and boxes of candies around her, for the children whom she knows, by years of experience, would outnumber the attendance of voting parents to the campaign sorties. Lots of foodstuffs for meals and snacks, for the candidates and their guardians. More importantly, precious ingredients for her special dishes. For special people. Her special people.

Although publicist for her son and his wife, I am more private than public. So, while the son and the son’s wife and their coterie would be out there in the barangays shaking hands and talking politics, Grandma and I would huddle our seats close and whisper to each others’ ears, giggling nonsence. For hours! As I leave, she would stuff candies in my pockets, pasalubong for my Mom who was her amiga when their kids were just starting to come in increasing trickles.

I like to see her best in her big chef mode, with her shiny pots and carajays, wielding her magic siansi, stirring sizzling mounds of garlic and onions, mushrooms, strange herbs and greens. Ang kasunod ay sigurado (in fact, more sigurado than winning or losing this campaign) – thick soup, or tongue-twisting pancit, or savory bowls of wiggly plump noodles.

That was last month. Only last night did I have the courage to enter her room, after two days of peeping-in and chickening-out. I felt with my fingers a covered leg and an exposed arm. She couldn’t have felt me in return.

I sigh in exasperation. God has inexplicable ways of showing He is boss. 

A few days ago, Grandma read a flyleaf being distributed in the market by the former Mayor and his in-laws. It was not even an intelligent piece of political material. It was blackest of black propaganda because it was so presumptuously, haughtily all-knowing. It was the type of s_ _t   I have advised people this side of the fence to ignore.

Grandma was a dear and harmless old lady. Who worships God. Who wraps her family around her like a warm shawl.  Exactly like any other Grandmas of this world. She reads phrases that use the words of the Lord in vain – to attack her family, to stress the opponent’s charges of a growing dynasty. Like “sa ngalan ng Ama, ng Anak, at ng asawa – tama na!” One page, front and back, of same cruel heresy.

Grandma suffers a stroke. It leaves one-half of her paralyzed.

Grandma is in her room all the time now. She sleeps most of the time. I am without a whispering conspirator. Only for a while, I am sure. Meantime, I contemplate on the motivation that can cause so much harm. So much hurt.

Was   it because in his State of the Municipality Address last March to end his three terms, the son who is the present Mayor, began with “despite the fact that I started on my first year with an empty town coffer” and ended with “I leave you with almost P50 million municipal savings, infrastructures and parks and roads and schools all loan-free, the public market the only loan which is paid halfway through and able to pay itself for the rest”?

Were the former Mayor and his family and in-laws offended by a statement of truth, which is, anyway, common knowledge to all and sundry? Surely, the former Mayor did not expect the present Mayor to lie for him and say “I started on my first year with a town coffer overflowing with municipal savings”?

I have a simple heart. And a simple soul. A pot is a pot. When it’s full of yummy smells, it’s yummy food. When it smells of urine, it is chamber pot.

Meanwhile, get well in a hurry, Grandma. It’s lonely whispering closely to the wall. This soup is thin, my noodles not plump nor do they wiggle. And my pockets are empty of candies.

(For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/feelings/)

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