My Ate Nene, with Flowers in Her Hair
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My Ate by the beach. When she was younger, our relatives called her Nene, meaning little girl (Abes-Cabatuando Family Archives).
Kuyang Pepe (Jose Jr.), Kuyang Dante and Kuyang Narcing, soon followed. Three brothers before she was born on March 15, many years ago.
From the start, growing up a few years younger, I envied her. I watched in awe as she performed the Igorot dance with nimble feet and swaying hands, not only at her primary school, but also upon invitation(!) in the nearby school and the Methodist church behind our house in our small town of San Lorenzo, Gapan, in Nueva Ecija.
Primary school days: My Ate (third from the left, second row), garbed in her Igorot costume (Photo by Gapan Art Studio)
When we moved to La Loma -- a name she upgraded to “Sta. Mesa Heights” -- our patch of green in Quezon City, she played with my siblings for a while, but soon she had her groups in high school and I got absorbed in my elementary school classes.
While I was busy running for cover under the banaba trees in the school grounds during our Cold-War drills, she was obsessed and perplexed with her algebra and trigonometry assignments.
Because my routine was school, free time and homework, and acting as my mother’s marketing assistant (that is, when she went to buy fish—mostly, and a little pork—and veggies at Blumentritt Market), I had plenty of time on my hands.
Four sisters at home in Sta. Mesa Heights: Author, Cindy, Ate, and Mel (Abes-Cabatuando Family Archives)
When I was not busy weeping tragic tears to Kuya Eddie (Ilarde) or Tia Dely (Magpayo) on the radio, or to the heartbreaking stories of our kasambahay (house help), I took time to investigate the contents of my Ate’s unlocked cabinet in our girls’ room.
It did not take long for me to satiate my curiosity and to unravel my Ate’s hidden life -- she had a collection of cards from suitors. She probably did not suspect that my prying eyes would be interested in her cabinet of curiosities. But there they were, cards as huge as the 9”x13” that our neighbor’s daughter just threw with their garbage before they moved to another city: Valentine’s cards, birthday cards, Christmas cards, and letters folded four times over and tucked into tiny envelopes, sometimes with names, sometimes with just an X or a heart drawn in.
She was the good-looking one, I had to easily admit early. She was my aunts’ and mother’s favorite because she charmed them with her thoroughgoing goodness of heart, a trait I cannot claim for myself, with my litany of venial and mortal sins. She proved to be the epitome of her given name: Azucena. A flower so beautiful and sweet. She could draw, sew, embroider, and cook, as well as excel in her studies.
Four sisters at home in Sta. Mesa Heights: Author, Cindy, Ate, and Mel (Abes-Cabatuando Family Archives)
She would be invited to be a corps sponsor for the PMT ball. I would be a wall-flower-in-waiting during my high school days. The cadet officer who was supposed to escort me to the ball ditched me at the last minute for a more comely and younger sophomore (ah, the tragedies of my teenhood!).
At the University of the Philippines where my Ate would enroll in Home Economics with a major in Family Life and Child Development, she would learn all that she needed to become a topnotch H.E. teacher. She would teach at our common alma mater, E. Rodriguez Jr. High School, and then at Lagro High School when she and her husband and fellow teacher, Kuyang Rudy Bautista, and their two children, Mabel and Meinrad, moved to their new house in Novaliches, Quezon City.
In 2007, she flew to the United States on the invitation of Ate Sonia, my brother Dr. Dante’s widow, and so we had a three-sister reunion from two continents: Ate, me, and our youngest sister, Cindy, a nurse in Texas. It was a reunion full of family, laughter, and tears. We missed our brothers Kuyang Pepe and Roy, both lawyers who were back home, and sister Mel, who was busy with her medical practice in Australia. Still that mini reunion made up for all the lost years when each of us settled with our own families.
My Ate was in tears as we talked about the years past, and catching my arm, told me as if telling it to the world, across the hills of Ohio: “I am glad I came. I do not think we will ever have this same time again.”
Her words were quite prophetic. Time, indeed, does not flow backwards. Two years later, she would pass on, with a flower in her hair. My Ate, our very own Azucena.
Our reunion in Ohio, with my sister Cindy Schmidt, and nieces Daphne Rasefske and Desa Bodjo, and Kelcy Schmidt, and grandnieces Megan Rasefske and Milla Bodjo. (Photo by Patty Rivera)
Patty Rivera is a writer from Toronto, Ontario, in Canada. A book she co-edited, Magdaragat: An Anthology of Filipino-Canadian Writing, was launched by Cormorant Books on the first day of spring, March 20, 2024.
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