Tagged with grandparents

Carrying the love and resilience of my grandparents

Since I’ve been back on Guam these past few years, I’ve been thinking a lot about my grandparents.

I lived with my Grandma Shannon in Santa Rita, where she has a lush garden full of tropical flowers. Whenever I walked around the garden, I was always drawn to the red and pink ginger flowers, for their interesting shape and vibrant hues.

My grandpa Jose Babauta painted the pink gingers into a collage of tropical leaves and flowers that wrap me up in childhood memories growing up surrounded by the jungle. When my cousin and I visited one of the earliest exhibitions at the new Guam Museum, we found another small sketch that looked similar to these flowers in the corner of his art on display.

When my Grandpa Larry (my mom’s dad) was sick in the hospital before he passed away earlier this year, my grandma gave me a bouquet with these gingers to bring to him. When he was at his weakest, these flowers brought him joy. I’ll never forget how these flowers and the thoughtful gesture gave him the biggest smile.

The red gingers remind me of the lipstick my Apong (Grandma Rolita) used to wear. Flowers remind me of her softness. One of my favorite memories of Apong when I was little: I bumped my head crawling around under a table, and she got down under there with me and rubbed my head softly where it hurt. But these gingers are also tough, like her.

These flowers aren’t indigenous to Guam, but they grow everywhere around the world (including here and the Philippines, where my maternal grandparents are from). Just like my four grandparents, these flowers thrived in new places, even if it wasn’t their original home. They give me hope that when I go to new places and take on new challenges, I can be just as resilient and grow like they did.

My two grandparents, Grandma Shannon and Grandpa Larry, took care of me and taught me so much while I was on Guam away from my parents. Every day, I text my grandma asking for her help with my job (reporting in the same newsroom where she used to work). I look at the photo of my grandpa I keep on my desk, whenever I’m stressed and need encouragement. When I drive by Pigo Cemetery, or a bingo hall, I think about my other grandparents, whom I wish I’d gotten to know better while they were still alive.

I keep them all close, near my left hand — with one leaf to represent each of them carrying and protecting me, wherever I go.

Grandpa

My grandpa is 92 years old, and he still has the sharpest memory of almost anyone I know.

He loves to tell stories, and one of his favorites is how he used to take care of my Auntie Nora when she was a baby. When he was only a pre-teen, he left his hometown of Gimba to live in Manila with his older brother Cirilo and wife Hosma. He took care of Nora at home while they worked: he changed her diapers, played with her, and carried her.

Some days he even took her to school with him. He tells me his teacher carried Baby Nora while he did his schoolwork sometimes. At such a young age, he was already selfless and taking care of others.

A few years later, when he was a teenager, he saw disaster strike his beloved homeland. He volunteered to fight in World War II, to defend the Philippines and his people. My grandfather was tortured by Japanese soldiers and today is almost deaf because he lost his hearing as a gunner in the Army. But still, he tells me he would enlist in the military and serve the Philippines and the U.S. all over again, if he could.

While he was already in his 70s, I remember my grandpa still took care of me. As a kid I loved mangoes. My grandpa would buy me mangoes all the time — those yellow-skinned Philippine mangoes with the juiciest, sweetest insides that would make my fingers all sticky as I ate them down to the seed. He bought me entire boxes full of them: like 20 mangoes just for one little girl. I remember watching him slice them for me and I’d eat them chilled — the most decadent, satisfying treat to enjoy while beads of sweat dripped from the nape of my neck, during an afternoon at his house in Liguan Terrace.

My uncle comes over to my grandpa’s house every day for lunch, and every day my grandpa makes him a sandwich. When I come visit for lunch, he offers to make me food too. Can you imagine? Almost a century old and he’s still cooking for us. Almost a century old and he is still one of the strongest people I know.

Tonight, he isn’t feeling his strongest. He has kidney disease, an aneurysm, internal bleeding, loss of appetite, and a slew of other problems yet to be diagnosed. Almost a century old and he was dragged to a CAT scan, x-ray, needles prodding through his tissue-thin skin, laid on a hospital bed on the side of a hallway with little dignity.

After being in the hospital and waiting for proper care for five hours, he opens his eyes from his restful state. He looks at me, with dew in the corners of his eyes.

“What time is it?” he asks.

“It’s seven o’clock, Grandpa.”

“Chloe,” he says.

I wait for him to finish his sentence, wondering if he wants a drink of water or one of the bananas we’ve snuck into the ER in my backpack. He hasn’t eaten in eight hours.

“Have you eaten yet?” he asks me.