Pearls of Wisdom from my Lola
On Google search:
Lola is a female given name in German, Spanish and other language groups. It is a short form of the Spanish name Dolores, meaning “sorrows”, taken from one of the titles of the Virgin Mary: Nuestra Señora de los Dolores, or Our Lady of Sorrows. Lola is also a short form of the unrelated German name Aloisia.
Meaning: “sorrows”
Lola in Tagalog means grandmother.
It is s Thursday morning and I was closing in on my yoga session when I remembered Mama. She died 2 years ago on my birthday so that’s a pretty strange anniversary that my family and I celebrate.
With no idea what triggered it, i just thought of two instances where she stopped me at my “all-powerful” adolescent tracks and really kindly asked me to sit down next to her to tell me something.
The first was at my mom’s birthday party. I was up on stage with my cousins, being silly, asking the photographer to take a hundred photos of us and after that shoot, she says, “I’m happy that you took the opportunity to spend a little time with them. Usually in gatherings, you would rather go with your friends and I do understand that. But of course I also know that they would want you to be with them during these special occasions too. Proud of you for doing that.”
I’m paraphrasing because Mama speaks in Filipino/Tagalog (research why I used “/”). But the message is there: I am someone who always wants to get away from family the second I get the chance, but at the time, without even thinking of it, I did what I felt like and that made her happy.
Blood is thicker than water, people. We only realize this as we grow older.
Second and last pearl. I used to fight fearlessly with my younger sister. No shame, I would say the meanest things in public until she would cry. And Mama had enough of it under her roof.
She asked me why I resort to taunting my sister and I think I just said something like “Isn’t that normal? The sibling on TV do that”
That’s like the best answer now that I think about it because it was actually completely true. I just copied whatever I saw on TV and what a mistake that was.
Mama, with her beautiful head of white hair goes on and imparts on me that I already know what is right and wrong. Her pulling me aside is just to remind me of that. And she hopes I don’t get annoyed that she does it from time to time because she only does it because she cares about me.
I must have been 10 years old or less at that particular time and I respected her so much more for having a serious conversation with me as opposed to what adults resort to: power tripping and making you feel so bad. Parents think that because of the scolding they give you, you won’t repeat the offense, but you don’t even make them understand what they did wrong, which you can only do through a mature discussion. So, thank you Mama for giving me that.
I only have those two very vivid memories of you as of the moment. And this story on Medium suddenly became an open letter. But I guess I didn’t properly mourn your death because I wanted to thinking it was simply a normal occurrence that I should be moving on pretty quickly.
Thanks for your constant presence and showing us all the love you had while you were here.
