The Bohol that I knew about

        Ever since my grandfather passed, my lola started to live alone in their house at Bohol. She’s already 79 last October and the toll of years passing is undeniable. The strong back that once held her profound body is now crooked to an unimaginable angle; the healthy frame that she once had, had been long replaced by an undernourished one—one that could barely walk a mile and the glowing eyes that I used to know are now clouded with tears.

I’ve been going to the pristine island of Bohol more or less every year since I was 2 years old. Friends from Luzon would always envy me when they hear that I’d be going there and they’d usually snob at my apathetic reaction towards it. Little do they know that the Bohol that I have been going to and the Bohol that I grew up knowing is a house surrounded with coconut trees and rice fields; it is a one hundred fifty meter walk away from the national highway and there’s cow poop everywhere.

Due to the wanderlust that I already had as a kid, I remember being really excited about going on a trip to my lola’s because we’d be riding airplanes and boats. But, I also remember the dread of arriving at their house because it would mean that there would only be three working channels on the telly, the Visayan news program would pre-empt the cartoons/telenovelas that I was faithfully following back home, they would not allow me to turn the radio on at night because it would wake my grandparents and there is no faucet—I had to use a hand pump for getting water.

Many things were a struggle at my lola’s place. Taking bath was an effort because I had to pump water, store them in pails and push them to the 1.5m x 1m bathing area beside the hand pump. Doing number 2 was a battle, because you cannot do it immediately when you feel like doing it already. You still have to pump water, carry the pail from the hand pump area towards the comfort room (10 meters away), and then you can finally do your thing. Cooking is hard labour, because you have to chop firewood to have fire and endure the smoke while cooking. Going to the market is hard because you have to cross rice fields and cow/chicken poop fields with tall grasses; and the smells there were kinda funky and different too.

Though staying there is more of an effort than going, I do look forward to some things that can only be found in their place. Number one would have to be the food; I’d always request Lola to cook fresh squid adobo or the mouth-watering humba. Though we could always cook the same food at home, Lola’s cooking would always be different. I do not know if it is the infused smell of smoke, the expertise that N-years of cooking brought her or the love that simply flowed out of her magic hands; but, she’s got to be one of the greatest cooks in my life. Number two is the animal experiences that one can only get in the province. A young cow ran after me when I tried to ride him on his back; their female dog almost bit me when I tried to milk her because I got so curious at watching the eager puppies drink her milk that I wanted to know what dog’s milk tasted like; a swarm of bees flew down on me when I accidentally knocked over their hive because I was trying to find a comfortable place to read a Nancy Drew in the middle of the rice fields; the poor chickens that Lola would kill because her apo likes chicken for lunch and the cow who likes to lick salt off of my hands.

I guess I was too young then to realize that the yearly vacations to Bohol had a deeper sense into them than satisfying my wanderlust or my curiosities. Every year, when I arrive at their place, it always felt like I was trapped in time because the place I left exactly a year ago would be the same place that I would go back to a year after. The road, the rice fields, and the house stayed the same; the trees grew taller a batch of new animals are there but everything is practically the same. The only obvious change that I see is the deterioration of my grandparents. They grew old too, much older than I did.

As I got older, the trips became frequent and more critical; it probably comes with age also that I became less critical of the things that were not there. Two years ago, I had to fly to Bohol in the middle of work season because my grandfather had it really bad. Though it wasn’t necessary, I just had to say goodbye one last time before he closed his eyes permanently. A few days after that, there was his funeral and the stories about the controversies of his passing being caused by losing the land he had worked for all his life to a wealthier businessman in their town. Then there was the year after his death; and just recently the motorcycle accident that almost killed my aunt.     

  My lola was there through all of it. More than the back breaking housework and farm activities, which she refuses to not do, she has endured all the pains, heartaches, joys and victories of the family. I had the privilege of surprising her and spending Christmas with her this year; it sounds fancy when I tell friends I’d be spending Christmas in Bohol. But, it is so far from being so. I do not have the usual photos and stories that my friends have from this place.

It was a surprise when I arrived on the 24^th of December; there were no parties, there was just biko (a sticky and sweet rice cake) for noche Buena, and there were just three of us (lola, me and a cousin) inside the big house. Spending Christmas and the dawn of the new year in her place was boring, it being boring is even an understatement. But, seeing the rare glow of lola’s eyes when I arrived, seeing her pretending to hug my younger cousins through Skype on Christmas eve, and seeing the years slowly being erased from her face when she laughs is priceless.

I have been in and out of Bohol for 22 years yet I still haven’t been to many of their tourist destinations; I hear it is beautiful, I know it is beautiful because Lola’s there and it is in Bohol that I learned what spending time with family all is about. I might be spending more years missing out on the well-known beauties of the place. But, if missing out on it would mean spending more time with my Lola, then I would grab it. God gave me only one like her; the place can wait, but her years will not.

APL-24

Is an Electrical Engineer in a place of naked servitude, shooting stars and flying carabaos.