She called on a Sunday on learning I was in town. “Come over and meet this young artist. He’s going to interview me. I don’t know what for. But please come.”
So while the rest of the city stewed under the heat, Joey Cobcobo, his wife and I enjoyed the cool shade under the canopy of greens in what was once Atty. Marcelo Fernando’s garden (now taken over by daughter-in-law Lilli-ann) while La Gilda Cordero Fernando (a.k.a Lola Mad, short for mader, to her nine grandkids and her help) sat for her portrait.
She wasn’t dressed for a conventional portrait. She wore jeans, socks, slippers, her Darna bracelet and a black and white sleeveless crocheted top. She put on a thin scarf for the occasion, earrings and a dash of lipstick, but like her, Joey wasn’t following rules, either. Very respectful, he asked her if she didn’t mind being portrayed as an aswang, her distorted face on a piece of piña-saba sheet of paper handmade from Sagada. She was thrilled at the idea, needless to say.
Joey has started on an ambitious Lola project. He will do 100 portraits of 100 living grandmothers on the paper earlier mentioned. The paper has the quality of cloth, and he plans to engage in a collaboration with his mother to embroider the work like a handkerchief of olden times.
To get his subject to relax, he would video them first. I was amazed that Gilda agreed to a video. She always turned down invitations to TV talk shows for fear of freezing in front of the camera. But she didn’t mind this time because “I’m just one of a hundred lolas. Who’d be able to tell it was me when these videos are shown simultaneously?”
Joey and I got her to talk about how different she is from other grandmas. She said, “I’m more liberal. I lead my apos through meditation and body movement exercises. It’s so much easier to get a child as young as three to meditate deeply than an adult. When they were about two years old, we’d take a bath together in my sunken shower. This practice stopped when one day, one said, ‘Lola, bakit may buhok?’”
She’s proud of the fact that her grandchildren consider her their friend more than a person they should defer to. “But now I feel that they can teach me more than I can teach them.” Especially in matters of technology, Gilda being known among our writer friends as incapable of typing or encoding her draft. Her apo or help turn on the computer for her, encode her essays (she’s working on a long one on the topic of the señora) or search the Web for esoteric visuals to guide her in her new painting subjects on the fight of good versus evil.
She began painting in earnest at age 70, but has always been supportive of visual artists. Her home is a living museum of the best and the brightest: Leandro Locsin, Onib Olmedo, Julie Lluch, Karen Ocampo Flores, Danny Dalena, Roberto Feleo, Mark Justiniani, Elmer Borlongan, Gabriel Barredo, Impy Pilapil, etc. And she spots them way before they become critical and commercial successes.
She told of how a pert apo went up to Emong Borlongan while he was working on a mural in Gilda’s house. The kid told him, “Hindi ganyan mag-paint!”
Lola Mad was mortified but didn’t shush him. Freedom of speech is allowed in her compound. Her husband has been known to be her severest critic. During the GCF Books years, when she and her collaborators were almost done with a book project, she would present this to him for his opinion. When he gives the thumbs down, she knows the book will sell well. If he likes it, she knows it needs retooling.
She uses the same criteria when buying him pasalubong after a day well spent out of her airy Panay Ave. home. In a bakeshop or patisserie, she’d choose the pastry or ice cream flavor that she won’t touch with a long pole and bring that home. He is so grateful that he’d exclaim, “Mommy, you really know what I want! You must really love me.”
Once, he told a grandson to choose another color because the boy showed a preference for pink. He said, “Boys should like black, blue, brown or gray.” When he was out of hearing range, Lola Mad told her grandson, “It’s okay to like pink. It doesn’t make you less a boy.” She ensured that this next generation of Fernandos wouldn’t have gender biases. And so the boy kept on drawing pink volcanoes, pink fishes, etc.
These days, Gilda described herself as being in a “cocoon stage,” resting after overworking herself preparing for two major exhibitions last year. She painted 42 watercolors for a Le Souffle show and another 32 for SLAB.
Joey, a multi-awarded painter with several grand slams from major prize-giving bodies, was astonished at Gilda’s accomplishments and activities. While we sat down for some cool buko pandan salad, he wondered aloud why she’s extraordinary.
She waved aside the compliment, saying, “There are some women who just grow old but are still immature and stupid until the day they die.” As she enters her 80s, she makes sure she is aging not only gracefully and with so much wisdom to share but with enough of her innate wackiness/naughtiness retained.
Photo shows three weirdos enjoying an atypical Monday afternoon.
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