My grandfather painstakinly digs into the soil, careful not to hurt the bulbs of the San Jose plant while my mother and his younger brother attentively watch. Finally, Tatay (as we all call him affectionately), lifts the bunch and divides the bulbs into the terracota pots. The wonders of lily bulbs! One single plant now gave five separately full-grown plants. The front porch will soon be filled with potted San Jose and the tattered house would look better because of their pure white flowers during the entire summer. The only surviving icture of grandfather. Our Tatay, when he was in his early thirties.
Well, I’m 33 years old now and the scene that opened my story was almost 50 years ago (if my math is correct), as I have imagined how it happened based on my mother’s account. Tatay died when my mother, Irma, was 6 years old, leaving my
grandmother who was then only 33 and their other three children – Rene (5), Marissa (4), and Nilo (1). Perhaps, because my mother was so young when they lost their father, that potting plants was the only happy memory that she remembers doing with him. According to her, Tatay used to be a kuchero, one who drives a horse-drawn carriage, and works part-time as a helper in a tire-trading business. It was a difficult life, working from dusk to dawn, seven days a week just to feed a family of six. Every night, Tatay would drop a few coins into an empty margarine canister that he used as a coin bank, while enthusiastically telling my grandmother, that when it would become filled, they would buy a new and bigger house. Those were very hard times but indeed, full of love,
hope, and happiness. But as if the heavens conspired to bestow all the bad luck in the world to the family, suddenly, the twist of fate turned a happy home into a house of despair. My grandfather saved the trading businessman from a falling airplane tire during one of their trading trips. Tatay may have saved his boss but lost his own life and took with him, all the hopes of the family. His vertebral column was broken and eventually My mother when she was just two years old. his spinal cord was damaged. All the contents of the coin
bank were spent on his hospital bills. My grandmother was forced to leave her four young children to neighbors and relatives during the day so that she can work and feed them. After almost six months as totally paralyzed, Tatay died.
When I was still a child, my mother would always tell stories of her hardships as a young girl. How she would wake up very early just to sell the morning bread before going to school. At mid-day and early afternoon, she would sell snacks to offices and at night, she and her younger siblings would re-package candies and cookies that her mother would sell in the market the next morning. There were weekend nights when they would just eat the left-over biscuits with a bottle of Coke or Pepsi because their mother needs to go to the night market to deliver candies. She would tell me those stories when I was lazy or when I was nagging her to buy something for me. Instead of explaining that we don’t have enough money she would make a litany of how she missed enjoying her childhood because they were so poor. I was so annoyed with her for I could not understand why she wanted me to experience what she had been through. Back then,
her stories made me mad, but now that I am already working and making ends meet for myself, her childhood stories always bring tears to my eyes. I am complaining how hard life is, but I am already in my thirtys. How could a six year old kid endure such impoverished childhood?
Soon my grandmother, our Nanay, was able to put all her children to high school by selling candies, sweepstakes tickets, breads, and other things. My mother married my father, had me and my two younger siblings and lived with my grandmother in the old tattered house. The old terracota pots of San Jose became tripled in number because Nanay, never failed to cultivate and re-pot them every now and then. I can still remember that Nanay, would use a small pitcher to water them. She would make 3-4 trips in the sink to fill the pitcher and spend idle hours just watering the plants and Nanay, my grandmother just before she got married. She was was twenty five years old. wiping their broad leaves with a cloth. How those afternoons made her so happy while I watch with impatience. I would ask her, “why don’t you use a bigger
pitcher?” She would just answer back with a smile.
Aunt Marissa went to Italy, then migrated to Canada and soon petitioned Nanay. Uncle Rene, who used to be a seaman, also settled in Canada. Whenever that Nanay would make an overseas call, she never failed to ask about the San Jose plants, and if they still flower every summer. She would also remind my mother to re-pot them regularly so that they won’t be too crowded in the pots. During almost seven years that Nanay lived in Canada, our family and Uncle Nilo, remained in the Philippines, and
transfered successively to two different houses. Everytime that we would transfer, my mother would always tell Uncle Nilo to bring two pots of the San Jose and give away the rest to the neighbors. Then, when we get to the new house, they would re-pot the plants and come summer, we would always have pure white flowers for the altar and our dining table. I have witnessed my mother give the same caring and patience that I have seen from my grandmother in tending the San Jose. Perhaps, it was the same caring and patience that my grandfather had demonstrated when he was still alive. After almost seven years in Canada, Nanay, succumed to cancer. Uncle Nilo soon migrated to Canada two years after and my mother also followed after less than a year.
Now, I am living in a new house with my younger brother and the remaining two pots of San Jose. As Nanay would always remind my mother, it was my turn to do the gardening ritual that has been handed down by Tatay. My mother has been in the Unites States now for almost thirteen years, and every now and then, she would call us up and ask about the San Jose plants. In the beginning, it would annoy me that instead of asking first how I have been in my work, she would say,”Do you water the plants everyday? It was my father’s so please take care of them. Do they still flower? Why don’t you put fertilizer? Take some photographs and send them to me.”
How do I explain the impact of such a family legacy? I have realized that the name San Jose might just be an invention of my grandfather. He called them San Jose because its flower resembled the flower that comes with the Saint Joseph statue. I figured it out when I became a high school biology teacher. It is actually a member of the lily family and it is a hardy plant because its bulb stores water enabling it to survive the dry season. When I was a child, my relatives would say that I have a green thumb
because everything that I plant, grows. I want to believe it because even if I occassionally forget watering our San Jose plants, they are still alive and never fail to bloom on summers. Well, being a hardy plant, I think it is the best legacy that my grandfather has ever given my family. The plants not only beautify the houses that we lived in. They symbolize the resilience of character, flexibility, and industriousness that my grandmother has handed down to their four children. Perhaps, by tasking me to tend to the plants, my mother would also want me to become hardworking and be able to endure whatever hardships that come my way. Just like the San Jose plants, who have endured more than fifty years, she wanted me to face all the challenges and continue reaching for my dreams.
As I look back on my childhood memories, I can infer that whenever that my grandmother would take a trip to the sink to fill-up the water pitcher, she was whisphering sweet words of love to my grandfather. She might have spent idle hours wiping the leaves while reminiscing their happy times together. Nanay, never married again, nor did I hear any words of despair of how fate played with her. She never told me any other stories about Tatay other than that the San Joses were planted by her husband right after their wedding.
Nanay has died almost eleven years ago, my mother is in the US and her three younger siblings are now in Canada. More than fifty years, after Tatay potted the few San Jose bulbs, only two crowded pots remained in my care. With almost all of his descendants now scattered in the North-western hemisphere, I guess I am the only one left to continue the re-potting and reminiscing his memories, to remind my younger siblings that the San Jose plants are not just for my gardening hobbies. They were
symbols of love, hope and happiness. For every bunch that sprout from a single bulb symbolizes the legacy of dreaming,
working hard to reach for such dreams, continue living and waiting excitedly for
summer when pure white flowers would
bloom. The San Jose is the unspoken love that binds our family together.
The remaining two pots of “San Jose” plants in my care.
As my homage to Tatay, I want to express my sincerest gratitude for the legacy that he has left. I may not have known him but I am proud to say that I inherited the passion for gardening from him. I look forward to that day, when God willing, I would have grandchildren of my own. I would tell stories of how the San Jose plants were handed down as a legacy from him. Everytime that I re-pot the plants, I am filled with love and happiness, I feel such unspoken love of a grandfather and his undemonstrated affection that time and space had prevented me from experiencing. Tatay did not take away our family’s hope but his passing only fueled it. God made him an instrument to make my grandmother strong and his death taught their children to work hard for their dreams. Saint Joseph made so many sacrifices so that he can protect Mary and Jesus. Tatay, is the Saint Joseph of our family. He is the hero I would have met but his pure heart made him save that businessman and in doing so missed the opportunity of meeting me. But everytime I look at his plants, I know that he is guiding me and that he would always be in my heart and in my hands.
P.S. I just want him to know that I am a co-animator of our school’s ecology club called “The Green Thumb.” I know he is proud of me.
The author, Maria Theresa H. Alvarez, is a high school Biology and Research teacher and the Academic Coordinator of a Catholic Salesian school in Canlubang, Calamba City, Philippines.