mortality, immortality and Mamia

I chatted with an old student of mine, recently. Old because she was my student maybe nine-ten years ago? Otherwise, she's very young, seventeen I think and she just got into a college, not her first choice but I was very amused that she was happy to get one. I know how she must feel, I was that age, once too.

I think, though, that I was not as mature as she is when I was seventeen. I was rebelling against my father about ballet, I was letting my grades slide and wondering why this should affect my college applications, I was in the process of trying to discern what it meant to be really in love and to find all my previous infatuations wanting. Now that I'm thirty, I'm a lot wiser, but I don't think I'm all that wise, when I think about it. There are lots I still have to figure out.

My ultimate goal in life is to be like Mamia, in her seventies, doing whatever she wants, coming and going as she pleases. Mamia never sweats the small stuff, beautifies everything around her and always looks good. I always thought she was the best example of someone who knew what she wanted out of life, got it and is still enjoying it, whatever it is. She's immortal.

During Christmas dinner at my Mamia's, I noticed something I never quite noticed before. Mamia seemed old to me. Old, as in she wasn't her usual perky self harassing everyone to eat, and then to eat more. She was always sitting down somewhere, just smiling and not joining in the conversation. When she got up to move around, she was limping. She fell while shopping recently and hurt her hip. She hadn't quite bounced back yet, I suppose. I'm thinking it's more than her hip, it's watching all the people she knows from her generation passing on before her. She's one of the youngest, so it's unavoidable, but it's got to be hard.

When I gave her a hug after distributing all the gifts from the tree (I was the distributor, not her), she said, "You have to come back here this week because I can't find yung regalo ko sa iyo (my gift to you)." I told her, "I'm too old to get gifts." And she hissed and clucked at me and seemed to be her old self again.

Tonight (well, last night, technically) is her and my Lolo's 52nd wedding anniversary. My Lolo isn't here, but he hardly is anyway, and we had dinner in Mamia's house like we always do (except on the 50th, when they threw this huge party for the two of them in Intramuros). She found my gift, it was a set of three panties. She's always giving me underwear, I wonder if she's worried that I lose them.

She seemed in better spirits tonight than over Christmas and New Year, but that feeling of wanting to hug her all the time didn't go away. You can tell what I'm worried about, and I don't verbalize it, but in a conversation earlier, she verbalized it for me: she related how she and Tita Nena (my mom's tita, but I can't call her Lola if I don't call my grandmother Lola either, now can I) were talking about how they keep worrying about dying, these days. Tita Nena's husband died recently (Did someone close to you die in 2004? Not close to me, but someone close to my Mamia did, and it was sad.) and so I guess they're both thinking about their mortality a lot. Mamia even thought she was having a stroke the other day, but it turned out to be just a muscle pain because she keeps her money in her bra and perhaps the billfold was too large?

Mamia had often said, she's still alive because mala hierba nunca muere (bad grass never dies). That sureness of invincibility has somehow become less sure, though, and it worries me. Not to a great degree, but it does.

Mommy told Mamia tonight about how I said I looked like her in a photograph taken of me recently (y'all know the story). Mamia was amusedly chuckling at the retelling and I piped up with, "Daddy said, 'Ang kapal mo, sino naman ang nagsabi sa yo na maganda ka?' And I said, 'Ako, bakit?'" And Mamia said, "Aba, ako rin." And Mommy said, "Buhay pa ang lola mo, hindi ka kailangan magbuhat ng bangko."

Buhay pa ang lola ko. May this be so for a long, long time.