by: Gilda Cordero-Fernando
Grandma Day is what I call that day I devote solely to the Grandchildren. We may spend it in the house or I may take them out to a special puppet show, a stage play, a kiddie Concert or museum with a children's exhibit. Or we could have a picnic lunch. I try my best to avoid taking them to a movie or to buy toys, which I think is a cop-out. It is the day everything I believe in must be put into practice, so I plan very well.
Grandma Day is supposed to be a healthy day, and so the kids cannot ask for Coke or bottled drink or any junkees. Instead, we have fresh-squeezed juice, whole-wheat sandwiches, hopia, maybe sushi, lots of popcorn, peanuts, fruits.
I used to take the grandchildren and the picnic basket and the thermos to a nook in Luneta that is an artists' sculpture garden. It was a secluded place with a fountain and shady trees around a circular stone bench where they played with their toys or did art (I encouraged origami). The toddlers napped. I have not seen it recently, but it used to be a quiet spot where people go to draw or paint or read, and once I saw a housewife cutting a dress pattern.
If we spend Grandma Day at home there is a moratorium on TV, video games and canned shows. It is the time the cousins truly discover one another. They throw all my sofa cushions into the sunken sala and dive into them. One child is always the "director" They have a great many battles between good guys and "creatures," walking up and down the ledges and over my snow-white pillows. I am always the monster. They like to include me because I can spit and claw and hiss and am an expert at all kinds of dying.
One day we were finally able to put together some ethnic instruments - a bamboo xylophone, a drum, a rain stick (long bamboo containing mongo beans that sound like rain when upended), several bamboo clappers, maracas, tambourines and prayer bells. The grandchildren are aged eight down to one-and-a-half and so they can only do percussion. My son-in-law directs this passionate band in interesting beats like singkil and ati-atihan. The holy days are observed with some kind of ritual, such as a tableau. On Christmas it consists of the kids costuming themselves (with the help of their mamas) with swags of cloth from my old baul. They become Mary, Joseph, the Three Kings, the shepherds and also the animals around the manger. There is no dialogue because no one is a particularly good actor. The whole idea is just to be able to freeze the tableau and snap their Christmas photo quick, before the Baby Jesus (the youngest grandchild) lying on straw in a soapbox begins to fret.
As the kids grow the Christmas show gets more sophisticated. Last December we had vari-colored satin cloths for backdrop and "clouds." Every child wore wings-the small one’s paper wings, the bigger ones chicken- feather wings. There was a narration and singing. Some years back the adults started getting into the act as "the animals that visited the manger."
They crawled on all fours and became very funny. Once my hefty son decided to be a donkey and carried on his back his wife (who was then Mary), with their baby, and the Flight to Egypt somehow got into the Nativity Scene.
The problem of Christmas is, of course, how to set a spiritual tone before the pandemonium of the gifts takes over. In my experience candles always create a reverend mood. One time we stuck one long candle each into a fruit of the earth -an orange, an apple, a star apple, a chico, an avocado.
Each child walked carrying this candle-fruit from a darkened room to a lighted one and around the belen. As we walked, an adult narrated the Christmas story. The candles were laid at the feet of the Christ Child with everyone singing carols.
The gifts of all the families are placed around the belen or under the tree. The names on the gifts are read by the oldest family member, Dad, into the karaoke and each recipient comes forward. Everyone in the household gets a gift, including all the former yayas and drivers and plumbers and strays who make a Christmas visit.
Our married children have their own, beautiful, traditional Christmas trees so I never bother to have one. The only "tree" I ever put up was composed of all the "animals" in the house-an elephant pedestal, a lacquered giraffe, a carousel horse, a papier mache carabao, a brass turtle carrying a betelnut box, a carved San Roque's dog. Above them hung, not a star, but a giant papier mache piñata of Philippine fruits.
I find it important to stress the significance of the holy days. When the kids are a little bigger and can take this over, I would like them to involve the neighborhood in a panunuluyan (Mary and Joseph looking for shelter). Imagine if they can have a real horse to walk them from house to house! Like it or not, the Western Easter egg hunt has overtaken us so we, too, decorate eggs and hide them on Easter Sunday. But I make a point of explaining to the kids first why the egg is used as the symbol of the Resurrection. The egg represents the world and a new beginning that was possible for us because of Christ's death and resurrection. If there are some chocolate or plastic eggs their parents have gotten from the hotels, it becomes possible to point out that a fake egg can never hatch life, never produce a live chick, only dead chocolates.
I was never happy with having just a Western ritual-so one Easter we had a salubong as well. Our big antique virgin, head covered with a black veil, was hoisted on a platform and carried by the kids from the garden to the lanai to meet the statue of Christ carried by the other kids from the kitchen. They stopped face to face under the kalachuchi tree. A simple plastic string mechanism lifted the Virgin's veil for the meeting. And the Virgin Mother beheld her risen Son. Everyone sang and threw kalachuchi. Another activity of Grandma Day is connecting the grandchildren to the family tree. On their departed great grandmother's birthday, I was moved to bring out the magnificent English china that she had left me. My children and their father planned and executed the traditional dinner that we served on this huge set of antique dishes.
The big serving plate held the chicken pochero with fat sausages, the graceful covered soup tureen, its broth. The apahap lay in its red sauce in the oval server and the pasta curled in a deep oval dish. The roast basked on the biggest bandehado, the gravy dish beside it. The fruit salad was in the same cut-glass bowl my mother served it in all her life. The fruit tray overflowed with donated grapes and mandarins. On the cake tray sat a warm apple pie.
Of course, we were using the finely embroidered tablecloth of my old home, thin from laundering and unobtrusively patched here and there. Mama's fine etched wine glasses were out, too, as my sons had good wines to pour into them. I resolve to bring out my mother's china periodically, even if I have to wash everything personally. It is the only way my grandchildren will appreciate good things - not merely look at them through the glass cabinet. Grandpa's dinner itself gives them an idea of what a good home-cooked meal in great grandma's time was like.
During the meal my husband and I try to recall anecdotes about our parents. It gives the grandchildren a sense of family history. Our children continue it when they come up with funny incidents in their own modern lives. We know they will tell and retell our stories and theirs-to their children and grandchildren, hopefully over dinner on great grandmother's plates.
