Nanay - Part 1

“Nanay”
By Patricia Enrile Sibayan

“Of all the music that reached farthest into Heaven,
It is the beating of a loving heart.”
- Jose B. Sibayan

Pat, my lovely darling, sublimated her personal ambitions into the caring of her family. She sacrificed her life for the love of her children and her husband. “Nanay” is truly a saint!
- Jose B. Sibayan

This story of my life was written by Nanay – Patricia Enrile Sibayan by hand. I just typed what she wrote with no corrections, word for word. This book is being sent to Tatay, Jose B. Sibayan Sr. and to all my brothers and sisters with lots of love in memory of our loving and dearest Nanay.
- Jojo Sibayan Lontok, December 10, 1985

I have just given birth to my sixth child, a bouncing baby boy at the “Clinica Lopez” and the urge to write the story of my life is so strong that I had to begin doing just that. My husband and I have named the new baby “Roberto” which was suggested by our oldest son, Tony, and we have nicknamed him “Bobby.”

Six children: Antonio 10, Liberty 8, Arsenia 6, Josefina 4, Ernesto 2, and Bobby, the new arrival. Watching our children has been instrumental in inspiring whatever dormant writing ability has been left in me and forced me to look back through the years to see myself just a child again and as carefree as any other child in the neighborhood.

I was born in the small town of Bangued, province of Abra, in northern Luzon. About my birth, I could not say much except that I came into this world, the youngest, among three love-children. I never knew the loving care of a father because he left us just a little after I was born, to marry another woman. I was too young then but relatives tell me how heart-broken my mother was and how she almost died. What made it most painful for her was maybe because our father didn’t bother to go to another town but married a neighbor who was supposed to be rich, and stayed right there in Bangued where my mother could meet them often times. It must have been terrible for my mother, but she had a stout heart and after a year or so, she began to forget him. Our oldest, a boy, died before I was born, that left two girls for my mother to take care of. My sister was four years my senior.

After what I call my mother’s tragedy, she became sickly and, added to her poor health; she still had to earn money for our upkeep. She was a seamstress and catered to the more solidly founded families of the locality. During months when her sewing was not so lucrative, she went from one barrio another, selling all sorts of household necessities. When I was about a year old an aunt of mine, the oldest, took me in tow because she took pity on my mother who was over burdened by the heavy responsibility of earning a living and raising two daughters. Good for me, it proved to be because my aunt did not have children, although she had been married for quite a time then.

My childhood days were just like any other girl’s. The only difference was my lack of some things that other children had because, although my aunt and uncle gave me all they could, they could not seem to give me enough, because they too were poor. Even my uncle tried to give me a father’s loving care and for that I am forever thankful. The only shadow that blighted my childhood days in their care was the fact that theirs was not a happy marriage. Individually, they were very good to me, but lucky was a day that would pass without a quarrel between them. There were nights when I would lie whimpering in our bamboo “papag” where I slept while I listened to their quarrels. Sometimes they would become so violent in their language that I would wish to run away and hide myself somewhere. One such time, I really did run away, to sit under our big guava tree which was quite a distance from the house. It was raining cats and dogs that night and very windy too. I was just preparing to go to sleep when all of a sudden I sensed that my uncle and aunt were quarreling. They were in the porch of the house. As the rain grew stronger so their voices rose higher until they were so furious with one another. When I could bear it no longer, I silently crept out of the house and proceeded to the back of our spacious backyard and sat under the guava tree.

I must have fallen asleep because I was roughly awakened by someone shaking my shoulder. When I opened my eyes I saw my aunt with a lantern in her hand. I stiffly got up and didn’t say a word. Neither did she, but I saw that she had been crying. The next morning I was down with a very high fever which lasted for four days. Most of the time I didn’t know what was happening around me and I had all sorts of dreadful dreams. When I got better, I was very thankful that my uncle and aunt seemed to be at peace with each other and no one could imagine how much I prayed to God that their peace would last.

I was thirteen years old when I finished the seventh grade as “First Honorable Mention.” I had been a candidate for valedictorian but I got sick for more than a month before the final exams and that proved to my disadvantage. My rating was 89%; the valedictorian and salutatorian rated 91% and 90% respectively. At the opening of the next school year my aunt refused to let me enter high school. I was disappointed beyond words. I convinced her in my own childish ways, but she would not give in. My mother heard about it and she approached my aunt about it and even promised that she would pay all my expenses. My aunt did not consent either and they quarreled. The only reason my aunt didn’t want me to go to high school was because she didn’t want me to have a chance to be followed by boys. To her way of thinking, I was just at the age when things like love-affairs were most dangerous. And she opined that going to high school was a means of making boys and girls meet and fall in love. I was dumb-founded, then, by her opinion, at that time I didn’t even know yet that such a thing as love existed between strangers. But no amount of persuasion would budge her.

I had to give up school that year and the next. I was morose and sad, especially when my former classmates would drop in to say hello. My heart was broken, I wanted to go to high school so much that after the second year of my non-schooling, I again began to convince my aunt to let me go back to school. Like the previous years, she refused. Then I made my own plans. I consulted mother and she suggested that since they were not in good terms with my aunt, we better move to another province. She planned to sell our house and all belongings then move to Bayombong, N. Vizcaya where a younger sister and her family were residing. I wrote to that aunt of mine and did not spare any details. I told her that I wanted very much to go to school and that I intended to leave my older aunt because she didn’t want us to go to their place and live with them and they even assured me that they’ll help mother see me through high school. My morale rose to a new high but was marred only by the thought of leaving my aunt. She was short-minded and old-fashioned in a lot of things, but I loved her too, like a mother.

So it came to pass that on August 1936, after spending a restless and tearful day, I sneaked from my aunt’s house and hid in a relative’s house to wait for the morning so I could take the first bus out of Bangued. My mother and sister were supposed to be on the bus and we would then proceed to Bayombong. Our plans were carried out smoothly but I could not sleep that night and was always thinking of my aunt. Several people came to the house where I was hiding and told the owners how I disappeared and how furious my aunt was. She also asked the help of the municipal police to locate me, but a cousin of mine, who was a member of the police force, knew of my plans. Instead of helping them locate me, he led them off to another section of town. I am not going to elaborate on my escape from the place of my birth because I don’t want to open old wounds. Suffice it to say that my mother, sister and I made it with not so much trouble and as the truck rumbled through the dusty roads to Bayombong, I was thanking my lucky stars for giving me a chance once more to go back to school.

I spent two years (first and second years) in the Nueva Vizcaya High School. My cousin-in-law, Dr. Sotero Torralba, was the one who enrolled me and with no difficulty. Right from the start, I seemed to strike a neat friendship with both my teachers and class mates. In no time, I was already a student leader. I grew to like my English 1 teacher (Miss Remedious Vergara) so much and after a while we were good friends. Our intimacy was such that she trusted me so much that she even made me correct themes (formal and informal) of her Second year students and left the grading of same at my discretion. I participated in all kinds of extra-curricular activities and was president of our class and also class representative to the Student Council. I took the Home Economics course and I made our department popular in the campus by my obtaining the highest ratings in departmental tests. That year I was also voted the sponsor of Company C of the NVHS Cadet Corps.

Summer vacation of that year, my mother took my sister and me for a sojourn to Manila. My sister had finished high school the previous year and had an eye on entering the Philippine Normal School. She made good, too, in the entrance exams, but through some twist of fate, she was not able to enter said school. That summer she intended to take up a secretarial course. We stayed in the house of Prof. Procopio Borromeo and his mother, who was my mother’s cousin, but later on we moved to Nana Sayon’s on Zobel Street. She was also a cousin of my mother’s and her husbnd, Tata Dolfo, was then a 1st Lt. in the Army.

That summer vacation was sort of memorable to me because it was during that time that I danced for the first time. It happened this way. Not far from Zobel Street was a boarding house which was managed by a childhood friend of my mother’s. All her boarders were male students and it happened that a friend of ours from Bayombong, (Asterio Saquing) was one of them. We were surprised when one afternoon, he visited us and brought along (Manong) Siniong (I called him that then.) He was the son of my mother’s best friend and second cousin in Bangued and my mother was so overjoyed at seeing him. When he left Bangued I was still a small tot and when I came out, he didn’t recognize me. We asked them to come again, which they did quite often, and on Siniong’s birthday (May 8th) he invited my sister and me to join him to a pilgrimage to Antipolo. To make a foursome, he asked Asterio to come along. It was there in Antipolo that I danced for the first time – with Asterio as instructor.