It was a very warm afternoon. The sun was unabashed, it's rays hovering ever brighter as the hours sped before my eyes. I was wearing my usual house attire, had my hair pulled back in a bun, and yawning out of boredom, when I decided to take a break.
It would only take a mere two seconds for one to travel from where I was seated to the front porch. Living in a spatially limited home, traveling from one room to another doesn't take time or effort and it suits our family's temperament too. None of us are patient enough to want to live in a much larger home. They're very difficult to maintain, which would eventually lead to an argument of who gets to clean where. I spotted my dog sprawled between the porch columns, barking at everyone and everything that would catch her attention. I turned my head and I saw my grandmother 'cleaning rice' - so to speak. She would usually sit by the kitchen door, with her glasses on, carefully sifting through the generous amount of rice in front of her, removing the 'palay' (un-husked grain) meticulously. Today, she was positioned in the shade near her own porch, concentrating on her task at hand. I called out and she said 'Oi!', smiled, and continued on with her work.
Close to eighty, she doesn't look any older than other women in their mid-sixties. Come to think of it, none of my aunts - from my maternal side - look anywhere near their real age. My mum looks like she's in her early thirties instead of forty-nine or fifty. I on the other hand, am usually mistaken for a high school student instead of a professional. A very convenient trait passed down from mother to child.
For as long as I can remember, I have always loved watching my grandmother move while she carries on with her house work. Graceful and with a sense of purpose. I would usually compare her movements to that of my mum's - her daughter - and I would always think about how very much alike as well as very much different they are. Though they move with the same grace and pace, walk with the same speed, look much alike, something just seems quite different about one and the other that I can't seem to put my finger on. I wondered if my mother had ever thought of the same thing when she was my age, watching her own grandmother move about, or if my own grandmother had thought of that too. And I went on thinking about all of the women who came before me and their grandmothers and mothers, curious as to how I am alike or different from all of them.
I sat, thinking of all those women and the lives they had. What they went through, the people they met, their families, relatives, habits and quirks, the boys they fell in love with, their closest friends, their happiness and grief. To think that someone had a whole other life before me seem to set some things into perspective. There wasn't much to philosophize on, existentialist or otherwise, there was just raw curiosity.
People today tend to be much self absorbed with their daily goings-on and 'family' has suddenly fallen close second to work in terms of priorities. Today, it's all about money, bills to pay, the mortgage, credit card debts, and that rude boss at work. There I sat wondering if all of those women who came before me, ever worried about the things we worry about today. I wondered about the things that they did to ease their boredom, the stories that were passed on to them by their mothers, even their effort at trying to cool themselves in the kind of warm afternoon weather I was experiencing in that moment of deep thought.
While my grandmother and mother are asleep, I sit here, late at night, musing about the future. The time shall come that it would be my turn to be contemplated upon by my daughter's daughter, so on, and so forth...
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