Remembering Sanoy
I remember my Lolo. His name: Feliciano — Sanoy as the barrio folks here would address him. He who would be my surrogate father, my yaya, my playmate. Everyday, when the sun was still as sleepy as i was, he would wake me up for a good breakfast, fetch me to school and get back to fetch me again when the bell rang. Then it was time to go to the canteen and buy whatever my tastebuds craved for — ice cream from Mang Bert, the sorbetero; Nips, Serge chocolate, Tutti Frutti, those chewy sugar-smattered candy orange slices whose brand escapes my memory and those powdered milk in small plastic jars that you sip (or suck) using a small straw. One hot day, i told him i wanted to eat Nagaraya. He bought me a whole wholesale pack from the market which had me having Nagaraya in my diet for almost a week.
When the cacao fruits in our backyard were ripe and full, we picked them with our hands and opened them up to reveal the pods in which clung the sweet flesh of the fruit. I would eat them with much gusto, my six-year old lips puckering up to the sweet-sour taste of the flesh, and spit the seeds out on our bilao. Then we’d clamber up our roof through a small window in the kitchen and dry the pods under the scorching sun. That was my first lesson in chocolate-making. We’d end up having jarfuls of tablea in our fridge, after going through the whole experience of roasting, grinding and molding the "tsokolate" with him. During New Year, these same chocolate tablets were the ones that my lola would mix in her copper jar using a wooden batidor to make hot, thick tsokolate eh, a chocolate concoction that our family shared over stories, and dishes as morcon, lengua estofada and pansit.
Sometimes, when we were just too lazy to do anything, I listened to his stories while he sat on his tumba-tumba (rocking chair). He talked about the war — the Americans, his life as a guerilla, peacetime. Peacetime. He’d always talk about peacetime. Come to think of it, i think it was one of the first words I’d learned as a child. Garrote too. He had those really long, sharp fingernails that he took pride in — "panggarote sa iyo kapag matigas ang ulo mo." How could this bald-headed, gentle man pierce my skin with those claw-like fingers? It was a scary prospect that made me cower in fear. I knew then i had to behave and be a really good kid.
As i child i already saw the connection between our lives through history. He went to the same public school that i attended and in those old walls, floors and windows, I’d imagined my lolo as a young student like me. He told me about the old names of our buildings ("Iyang Mabini, dating Jefferson building yan. Iyang Bonifacio, dating Roosevelt" - or something to that effect). Unlike our generation that had the comfort of public transportation, lolo had to travel by foot to school, crossing the Mag-ampon river in our barrio and wetting his clothes along the way.
Unfortunately, as most of the men and women of his time, Lolo didn’t get to finish school because of the war. Even then, Lolo brimmed with much wisdom. He grew up to be a man — fast; they all needed to for survival.
As a young man, he continued the legacy of his father: he supported his family by being a magkakawit ng niyog. Even in the latter years, when his skin was already dry and sagging and his knees wobbly, he would still find time to visit the ilaya, the woods in our community, with his pangkawit, bamboo ladder, his over-large sombrero and soiled black boots. I remember taking a fancy of those black boots which made my feet so lilliputian compared to the space left in its dark interiors everytime i’d wear them. During weekends, Lolo liked tagging me along to the ilaya, my small hands clinging on to his, then studded with green veins that i had the habit of pinching.
I can ramble on and on about my lolo. But for now, i just want to capture an image of him in a flash, as a sort of vignette,a memory captured in miniscule, in a poem.
I really miss my Lolo 
For Lolo
Clearly,
between the mist of dream
and wakefulness
you appear –
your furrowed brows
brown as the earth
your father used to till,
your fingernails tapering
in hawk-sharp claws
ready to strike at naughty rascals
like me
dousing me with fear.
Your white patch of hair
prickly as new mown grass
in summer.
How I wish
I could touch your hands
just the way I used to
trace out each tributary –
green and winding,
carrying the blood that leads
to the veins of my hands
and fingers
still short and stubby.
