I'm a Lola

One thing I both dread and love during the holidays is the family gathering. I dread all the preparations - from buying to wrapping gifts, to finalizing menus, preparing the house, etc. and I love the warmth, love and laughter that ensues when everyone is together despite all the cleaning up and settling down that eventually follows.

Because this is the one time of year when almost everybody shows up, I am always surprised by the changes. How much one has grown, or expanded or slimmed down, turned ravishing and cleared up acne. I am almost always reminded of how old I am when a kid once knee-high turns up at the doorway tall and slim. Or how a once smiling but silent teenager has become quite chatty and my golly gee - engaged and definitely still smiling.



I welcome the young ones, now getting younger as the once-upon-a-time kids now have kids of their own. But even I do not get it when Kelly, a niece by marriage, tells her months-old daughter to kiss "Lola". 

It takes me a while to realize that Chloe,
shown here with her mother Kelly, is my apo.

I look around for either Lola Tuding, my mother-in-law, or for Tiya Cita, who is married to my uncle Tiyo Nonoy. When it dawns on me that she means me, I correct her. You mean, "Tita". When she says that's what she calls me, I still don't get it. When she insists on "Lola", trying to point out the connection, that's the only time it dawns on me. I AM a Lola.

Maybe if it had been my daughter (Heaven forbid, she is only 9) or either of my sisters' sons (now, it's their turn to say Heaven forbid) presenting me with their offspring, it wouldn't have hit me as unexpectedly as it did.

It's funny. The picture I had of me as a first-time Lola was of me holding my child's offspring and looking at my apo. Not me, holding out a steadying hand to a toddler I've seen only twice, and being referred to as "Lola" by her dear mother, who IS family, but who I see just about as many times in a year.

I am a Lola. A distant one to Tyler and Chloe, yes, but a Lola definitely. That is how they call me, and I prefer that than anything else we could think up in lieu of the truth.

But I think I now understand those who ask their apos to call them Mama or Papa or some other name. I remember how Bong Revilla, the senator and actor, reacted to the birth of his son's love child. "Pambihira ka Jolo, "ginawa mo akong Lolo!" he exclaimed.

Still good-looking and well-built, it must have been a jolt to him as it was to me who, though far from fit and artistahin, still has her hair and teeth intact and who still enjoys 20-20 vision (although not for long).

It IS a jolt. Not an unpleasant one, but a jolt nonetheless.