In the beginning was Lola

Back from a two-week break in Baguio, this blogger found a longer version of an essay, what I call my rewrite, in my files while corresponding with a cousin. This is actually what I call the uncut, full-length piece on my grandmother and what she continues to mean to us, her grandchildren who have survived her and some of whom have become grandparents themselves.
While in Baguio, I had a chance to go over the scrapbooks lola put together in her retirement house in Lower Brookside. The photos are as precious as the woman who handled them. So this is for you, once again, lola dear. With thanks to the Technological Institute of the Philippines for putting out a shorter version of this piece in the anthology Teacher Teacher edited by Abe Florendo.

Had she lived to see the commonness of e-mail and a world bound by an efficient Internet, my grandmother would be in the midst of chat rooms, trawling cyberspace to see how her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are faring. And it is so apt for one whose family-owned school, National Radio School Institute of Technology (NRSIT), was in the forefront of communications technology.

Lola on Session Road

As to what sort of notebooks to jot her thoughts and reminders in, I think she’d have contentedly settled for any complimentary insurance company or bank diary—none of those expensive Moleskines or journals covered with exquisite fabrics even if these were presented to her as gifts with loving thoughts and all.

Among the qualities Telesfora Aricheta Cariño Lolarga was eulogized for when she died in 1988 at the age of 83 was her being “a collector of quotable quotes,” in the words of her second son Ernesto, our Uncle Esting. 

In a 1958 diary in my keeping, she wrote this poem, copied from another source, with a reminder to share it with her children Febe, Pacita, Enrique Jr., Ernesto and Celso:

This is an antidote against all evils that destroy human happiness. 

The Way to Happiness

Keep your heart free from hate,

Your mind from worry.

Live simply; expect little, give much; fill your life with love;

Scatter sunshine. Forget self.

Think of others, and do as you would be done by.

Try it for a week—you’ll be surprised.

--H.C. Mattern

By Mama—that my children may know

The Cariño-Lolarga family at the old Dimasalang house in Sampaloc, Manila, in the 1930s. Lola is seated in the middle. Her husband stands at extreme left. Her daughters Febe and Pacita are seated on either end of the coach. Her sons Ernesto (second from left), Celso (third from left) and Enrique Jr. (right) are on the front row.

          Her retirement home in Lower Brookside, Baguio City, was chock-full of framed quotations that she hand-stitched and embroidered herself (“You are as welcome as the flowers of May” is now in the Maui, Hawaii, abode of second grandchild Luz Romero Ramil). And the vases always had fresh flowers from her garden.

Sitting on the toilet, one read assorted clippings on the hazards of smoking, her way of reproving family members who had acquired the nicotine habit (“Agsagsagarilyo!” cousin Mel Valdellon remembers her exclaiming in exasperation).  But this was the Sixties and Seventies when a stick of cigarette hanging from one’s lips looked like the coolest thing. My relatives learned better than to light up when she was in the vicinity.

Lola called her first batch of apos and nieces her "kittens." From left are Rose and Toots Romero, Lily Ramirez, Mercy Cariño and Beng Valdellon.

              Even before her house was ready for occupancy in the early Sixties, Lola came to be associated with all the good things Baguio stood for. Rosemarie Romero, the eldest of the grandkids and now living in Ontario, Canada, recalls, “Lola Purang contacted the Boy Scouts of the Philippines to allow us to stay at the Baden Powell Inn on Gov. Pack Road. Our Lolo was an active officer of BSP Manila so Lola availed of some benefits offered to families of officers. We stayed there for a whole month.”

               At a young age, Rose learned to take on responsibilities from Lola who woke her up each morning with these instructions: “Maret (her pet name for Rose then), go to the bakery on Session Road. Buy two pesos worth of pan de sal and one peso Anchor Butter.”

Rose brought along younger sister Toots (Luz) and cousin Beng (Evangeline Valdellon) during that morning walk down Session to buy the stuff. Back at the inn, Lola prepared hot chocolate for them. After breakfast, she brought them to Burnham Park to skate or just walk around.

Here's Lola with an increasing number of young grandchildren and nieces. Among those I can identify are Sonny Romero, Lily Ramirez, Beng Valdellon, Toots Romero, Telly Valdellon, Enri Romero, Rose Romero and Allyn Valdellon.

 Because she was already around when Lola was at the prime of her life, Rose could describe the older woman’s physical features: “She was a mild-mannered, gentle woman who had a patrician beauty, an aquiline nose and fair complexion. Her looks she inherited from her father, Felipe Cariño, whom we called Apo Lakay. It was Uncle Esting who inherited Lola’s nose and smile.”

It was quite an operation to bring her grandchildren to Baguio in the days when there were no air-conditioned buses. As Rose retells it, there was one summer when the Baden Powell was fully booked, but Lola was determined they would have another unforgettable summer so she contacted the Young Men’s Christian Association office in Manila to let them occupy a room at the “Y” in Baguio.

Rose says, “My brothers, sisters and cousins spent summer with her. We took the train at the Tutuban station on Azcarraga (now C. M. Recto Avenue), then got off in La Union for the bus going up to Baguio. She always kept a watchful eye on us during the trip. Eventually, Dangwa buses became available for Baguio trekkers.”

              When the three-storey Brookside house was ready for her expanding family, Lola permanently moved from the family home on Pepin Street, Dimasalang, Sampaloc. Her departure left a void in me because I had grown accustomed to her loving presence. She’d make me lie on her bed and measured how tall I had grown by spreading wide one hand beginning from my foot all the way to my head, hand climbing slowly until I couldn’t hold back my giggles.

On the days when she was off to work as president of the family-owned National Radio School and Institute of Technology (NRSIT), I sometimes climbed into her loose Chinese silk bathrobe that carried a trace of her gentle perfume and played pretend queen.

It was Toots who told me where Lola’s new house was. She motioned with her hands, an imaginary bus going round and round a mountain until it reached the top. To impressionable me, who lived all of her young life in the flatlands, that was the first hint of adventure.

Lola (second from right) after unveiling a portrait of her husband at the old NRSIT site in Manila. With her are her children Ernesto, Pacita and Febe.

 By this time, Lola had retired from her NRSIT duties, leaving the running of the school to her children in the '60s. She had taken over the reins of the school when her husband Enrique Acosta Lolarga died in 1955.

              He was the man who dreamed of putting up NRSIT after joining the US Army at Fort Stotsenburg in Pampanga. His interest in radio qualified him for a scholarship at the Fort McKinley signal school where he graduated with top honors and earned him a position as radio instructor at the same school.

              By this time he was married to Lola whom he met in Umingan, Pangasinan, where she was a schoolteacher. When Lolo resigned from teaching, he embarked on a civic career, a move not lost on his wife who became active too with the Eastern Star, the women of Masons. He joined Young Men's Christian Association as the Boys' Work Secretary and became a pioneer of the Philippine Boy Scouting movement. In 1931, he founded NRSIT which pioneered in training men and women in the field of radio. It had its first location on R. Hidalgo street before moving to C. M. Recto avenue, then grew to open a branch in Dagupan, Pangasinan, in 1950 to serve students from the north. Since then, NRSIT built a name as a school in electronics and communications.

Undated photo of our grandparents with their fairly used Cadillac.

              As for the school's influence, I recall that when I was a child, I would witness my mom call in repairmen when the refrigerator or TV was acting wonky. A hundred percent of the time, the repairmen got their training from NRS. When they responded to my mother's call, their first question was: "How are you related to the Lolargas of NRS?"

              When Lolo died of a heart attack , Lola went on an extensive study and spiritually restorative trip to the US and Europe, and was enamored of Switzerland which partly explains her choice of Baguio as next destination for the second part of her life. Her weak lungs needed strengthening. I learned of these things much later. 

Brother Dennis, then a tot, stands in front of our great grandmother, Apo Baket (Basilia Aricheta Cariño), and our Lola Purang.

              It was in Baguio where Lola taught by example how to transform a house into a home. When I caught the reading bug, I never ran out of stuff to read in Brookside: back issues of Readers’ Digest, mystery novels, the ever-present Bible (as a devout Methodist, she ensured we attended Daily Vacation Bible School and were each given by an American pastor a pocketbook edition of The New Testament). There were so many old magazines to riffle through until one time, as I was entering sophomore high school, I read a longish article on existentialism and got hooked.

Because we lived most of the year in an apartment in Santa Ana, Manila, where there was not much of garden to speak of, we loved the roses, poinsettias, pansies, dahlias that grew on Lola’s lot. She would sometimes bring a bundle of them to the Quonset hut that was the original United Methodist Church on Marcos Highway for the offertory.

Cousin Erline (“Allyn”) Valdellon Mendoza, now a resident of McLean, Virginia, recalls, “I try to keep fresh flowers at home when I can and remember Lola’s house in Baguio. I cut gardenias in her garden in the backyard and got bitten by a bee. I put those gardenias by my bedside in that room by the living room in Brookside. I keep two gardenia plants at home and am watching the buds grow for spring blossoms in our lanai here in McLean.

               “I took up crocheting, needlepoint and embroidery after I moved to America. My Mommy and Auntie Pacing crocheted, but most of all, their Mamang, our Lola dear, influenced that. I still have doilies around the house. Even our apo Jacob, who is four and a half years old, notices them. Do you remember those doilies in Lola’s house?”

              Allyn continues, “My framed needlepoint and embroidery pieces are on our walls. I remember going with Lola to a hardware store on Session Road where she had her cross-stitch pieces framed. My dresser is full of lotions, perfume and make-up. Lola used Avon lotions and reminded us to keep our skin soft.”

Lola watches over our Valdellon cousins Beng, Allyn, Telly and Melito on the trike.

           Beng echoes Allyn’s remembrance of Lola: “She always told us to take care of our skin, not to stay too long under the sun.  From her I learned to apply lotion and moisturizer. She used to say, ‘Sige, pahid nang pahid’ (Go ahead, keep on applying). But these days, I like the beach so much I just use a lot of sunscreen.”

My cousins and I also got a kick out of re-reading our letters to Lola and looking at the drawings we made in middle childhood. She kept them all in her scrapbooks and photo albums. When we asked her why, her answer was an amused, “Because you can’t repeat them!”

And she never failed to write us back, acknowledging our letters, praising and thanking us for anything we sent her. In a letter dated Sept. 4, 1968, she wrote to me: “During my confinement in bed, I was able to finish the framed saying about stamps and most likely, you will have it when someone visits me here. You write very good English, Babeth, and I wish you success in your studies.”

Some cousins chose to stay beyond the summer break like Toots, who taught music and served as librarian at the Holy Family Academy, and Telesfora (“Telly”) who finished high school at the same academy. My younger sister Pinky (the sixth among eight children) and Elvira Dula, an orphaned cousin on my mother’s side, benefitted from Lola’s largesse. She told my mother that since Mommy had her hands full with us and a new baby, she would raise Pinky and Elvira, who were past their toddler years, and send them to school.

Her updates on the two girls’ growth showed how she trained them in practical skills: “They can take care of themselves, coming home in a jeep…Believe it or not, Elvira and Pinky can cook rice and fry an egg. It’s something every young girl should know. Even Toots and Telly launder their own clothes and iron them. They enjoy it.”

Telly remembers how Lola opened the windows on weekend mornings and sang a song with the lyrics “let the merry sunshine in.” This optimism was a source of strength for us when we were faltering and doubtful of our abilities.

Telly says, “On my third year in high school, I was crying, telling her that I was failing in Filipino. I couldn’t accept that I would fail, but she didn’t get angry. Lola was very understanding. She told me not to worry because I could take a remedial class in summer. In the end, I didn’t have to take summer class because I studied harder and passed the finals.” 

Lola taught Pinky early how to earn money through work. "This was when I helped her and Apo Loly (Lola’s younger sister) carry some stones in her garden. For every stone I carried, I earned five centavos.”

Pinky appreciates Lola for having her take piano lessons. “To this day when I look at my daughter Bianca enjoying her piano lessons, I am thankful that Lola instilled in me a love for music."

Rose, the eldest of the cousins, plays the piano at the old Brookside home. In the back, Lola entertains a visiting American pastor while Toots listens intently.

 The piano occupied a significant space in Lola’s living room as it does in mine where it is now housed. It was part musical instrument, part family altar. Ramon Romero, Rose’s father, played it with such energy during those summers while we clapped around Lola’s dining table. He replaced the lyrics of old Iluko ditties like “Manang Biday” and sang it as “Manang Tinay,” a bawdy tribute to Florentina Padron, the loyal all-round helper in Lola’s employ who shooed us off with a ladle when we got too noisy.

Lola tacked our pictures on that piano through the years—instant conversation pieces for the streams of visitors that she entertained even on her last birthday when she was in pain from cancer.

When my cousins and I reminisce about Lola, it is of a woman who gives without counting the cost, a woman with eyes shut so tight you can feel the intensity of a prayer flowing through her, a woman with veins so pronounced on both hands, proof that she took pride in this belief: “If you rest, you rust.”

Both Rose and Beng had accompanied Lola on different occasions to the Baguio public market. They carried bags of used clothes that she said she was going to give to her friend. They walked all the way to what’s locally known as Hilltop. Beng says, “There was an old Igorot woman squatting behind the vegetables she was selling. Lola gave her the clothes, and the woman in turn gave her potatoes and carrots.”

Rose says, “Whenever Lola approached a vegetable vendor, she brought out a striking red sweater from the bayong. The Igorot vendor would hand her a kilo of cabbage and half kilo of green beans. It was some sort of barter. At the meat section, she took out two pairs of rubber shoes, slightly used, and got a kilo of pork. Lola also donated clothes to indigents in Baguio and to charity bazaars sponsored by the church.”

               When there were scores of hungry mouths to feed in Brookside, Lola used street smarts to enable us, the vacationing grandkids, to live another day. I didn’t know of these gestures of her until today. Of course, her frugal ways were legend. At night, who could forget her “Diay silaw yo!”, a reminder to turn off the light when not in use.

              Although thrifty for one who has experienced war, Lola was generous with her love, another cousin, Eileen Lolarga, attests. She says of our motherly Lola, "She showed me in simple ways: my very own Ilokano blanket with my name sewn on it; she made sure we had Birch tree milk before we went to bed at night as kids on summer vacation with her.  She showed me her garden and was proud of her dancing slippers, gladioli, and her Spanish tomato tree. She even showed me how to eat fruits properly."

More vacationing cousins in Brookside from left: Eileen and Louie Lolarga (the latter peeking out of her ate's arm), Telly Valdellon, Tess Romero and Minnie Lolarga. Young Tongpet Lolarga is gripped protectively by the older ones.

              Eileen was to receive a windfall from Lola: "The biggest thing Lola did for me was to give me money to repair my front teeth (two porcelain caps). It was the most expensive thing to me then at P3,000 but she freely gave this to me.   I realized that she lived so frugally so she could give so much when we needed it the most."

              She was so good at hand or machine sewing that on one Christmas, the girl cousins and I each received a rag doll and a crazy quilt to cover our beds with. Nothing that could still have possible future use was ever thrown away.

Allyn says, “How I admired that she could sew—she made me some skirts one summer while in high school from her other outfits. I wore those proudly, the long biased skirt and the granny skirt from pieces of cloths sewed together. I still have them among my treasures.” In her late 50s, she has taken to wearing her hair long like our Lola. When friends ask Allyn why, “I tell them how I want to be like Lola in her senior years –able to put my hair up in a bun or braid them.”

One summer we took the plane to Baguio. Lola captured our arrival with her trusty Brownie camera. That's Telly holding her youngest sister Nini, me with a shoulder bag and all the possible prints on my clothes, Melito holding a Chad and Jeremy long-playing record and Allyn. Lola's penmanship appears atop the picture.

The improvisations did not just cover matters of style. They were in her expressions of faith. I always felt protected when, after a visit in Baguio, she’d pray aloud and ask the Lord to watch over me while I traveled and to see to it that I got home safe. Her prayers were not formulaic but her own compositions, something she encouraged us to do.

Another cousin from a younger batch, Jocelyn “Jing” Lolarga Deco, recalls at age nine joining Lola in her garden while she turned the soil over. Jing saw her do this almost every day. When she asked why, Lola said it was to allow the roots to dig deeper and therefore, let the plants grow more. She likened it to family ties and other relationships that you have to cultivate in order to let people you care about flourish. Jing, still curious, asked what she gained from such toiling. Lola simply answered, “Joy!”

Lola and her Baguio garden

Postcript: The NRSIT was dissolved in March 2005 because of capitalization and financial concerns. More importantly, there were no other Lolarga family members who could give it full-time support, and the longtime teachers and employees did not want to take over. More advanced competitors contributed to its decline.