Gray casts a lovely light

Not my kind of Sunday when the sun is absent, the world outside garbed in gray, the rains dampening one's plans and the two days of wash hanging like a semi-permanent installation on the clothesline.But rain has a way of not only driving me indoors but inwards, too.

I've been re-shooting photos and letters from my grandmother Telesfora C. Lolarga's albums and scrapbooks off and on this summer. Off and on, too, my grand-daughter Butones would come in to interrupt this self-imposed work that the rainy season has caught up with.

Upside down viewing

Yesterday, curious Kai, as we also describe Butones these days, got a hold of the scrapbook, looked at some images, but when she turned to the page where old letters and drawings done by cousins and siblings when they, or rather we, were learning to handle language and draw with crayons or color pencils, I had to pull her away and store the album for a revisit on a day like this. (I think of her as fifth-generation Lolarga who carries a bit of Lola in her.)

 On the last page of the blue album is an image of Lola and a quotation that she must have copied from elsewhere written in her own penmanship.

"Don't be ashamed of your gray hair, wear it proudly like a flag. You are fortunate in a world of so many vicissitudes to have lived long enough to earn it. One really ought not to be ashamed when one's hair turns gray."

Our lovely light who continues to speak to us through pictures and documents left behind

Lola wore her gray hair proudly as she did when the same hair was still black and lustrous in her prime. She wore that head of gray with dignity even in the months when she lived by herself or with companions in her old house in Baguio's Lower Brookside and was visited by the same weather I'm whimpering about.

Lola by her dining table

What's my point apart from underlining that well-earned gray hair is beautiful? Let me put it another way.

Last night I caught the TV news with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton giving an official statement about another hotspot in the world. I recognized the voice but what I didn't was the un-made up face. But she held the reporters' and my attention.The sight of her devoid of stylist's touch and makeup was refreshing counterpoint to the always urgent bad news couched in diplomatese.

I'm hoping Butones grows into that sort of woman our Lola was, devoid of vanity once she reached that very interesting stage when she realized what mattered more was what she had done with her life--for God's glory and the good of others-- than what she looked like, what she wore, what kind of face she presented to the world.