journal 4

wanted to share.

Every birthday I’ve ever lived was spent with my grandpa by my side—I was like a birthday wish to him, his first grandchild, we share a birthday. All these years and I only saw him as our aging patriarch, blowing out the candles and always worrying and yelling. He sits on his couch and smokes tobacco from his pipe and fighting with my grandma, but I never knew of his struggle, his life before he became “Pang Kalay” to his grandchildren.
His father, Grandpa Candido, had come here to the United States in 1932, the year my grandpa was born. My grandpa was the youngest of eleven kids, 10 boys and 1 girl. Like in “America Is In the Heart,” Grandpa Candido worked on farms here, faced racism, but he sent whatever he could back to his family in the Philippines. As a result my grandpa did not grow up with his father around.
When the war came to the Philippines, my grandpa was still a young boy. To avoid the Japanese, my grandpa and his family fled to the mountains for safety. During this time, he lost most of his family to sickness and to brutality by the Japanese. His mother died as well to disease. My grandpa and his three other brothers were raised by their only sister Mary, who was also the eldest.
From the money that Grandpa Candido sent to the Philippines, my grandpa and his brothers became accountants, engineers, and doctors. My grandpa himself was an engineer. Grandpa Candido visited the Philippines once since my grandpa had lived there, and my grandpa by that time was already married with kids.
Grandpa Candido died here in 1990, after living here for over 50 years. If it’s not a dream, I think I remember the day. My mom was pregnant with my sister still, and she, my dad, and I went to visit him in the hospital. He was not in good shape because my dad was talking to him in a way one would talk to a child. We came with flowers, and I stuck near my mother for fear of that helpless old man, it was a childish fear. My father ran out of the room calling for a nurse as Grandpa Candido started to have a seizure. The memory runs out from there. We visited his grave last year in Stockton, the town he loved for some reason, and we noticed his grave said he had lived to be 105.
Grandma Mary, I met at my 18th birthday party then again at the funeral of my grandma’s sister. I never knew, though, that she had raised my Pang Kalay. She died last year.
In the smile of that old man, my Pang Kalay, I would never suspect of all he went through. How he grew up without his parents, how he lost his family, and yet he brought up good men and a good woman. I look at him and I think that I love sharing my birthday with that man because all I want is to make him proud, so that in us, his grandchildren, maybe he can find reason for all the struggle in his life.
Reading “When the Elephants Dance,” I sat down with my parents and begged them to tell me stories. I left the table feeling proud and sad. The book is so haunting. One day I was in the car with my cousin and my aunt and I had lifted my head from the book and I heard her talk to him in Tagalog. It hit me. Embedded in those words, in that language is a whole history, is a whole timeline of lives, of mouths that had spoken those words in that language. They cried in Tagalog as their voices drowned against our oppressors. They screamed in Tagalog as they fought for freedom. I then realized of all that was went through to bring us here. Today. Here.
You know...people say you have know where you've been to know where you're going. PUSH FORWARD. There's a reason for you standing here right now. There was blood shed to make those feet, and your beating heart. There were tears and sacrifice. Make the most of life and do your best. Because look at what the Lord has given you. Look at what your ancestors have given you.