You will notice that the Filipino is a strange and wondrous mix. Gilda Cordero-Fernando and M.G. Chaves write: “Open the Filipino’s head and you will find: a Quarter Pounder hamburger, a beauty contest, a Hallmark card, an apple pie, a ticket to Disneyland, a surgically lifted nose, an English-speaking yaya.” (“Lundagin mo Baby!” Pinoy Pop Culture, 2002) Then, add a good singing voice (inclined to make birit), slather on some whitening cream, put on a Team Pacquiao shirt and you’re more or less ready to go.
Enter a Filipino home and you will find soy sauce and vinegar in the kitchen and a pail and tabo in the bathroom. If there is a family car, it will have a rosary hanging from the rear view mirror and a driver who will make the sign of the cross before turning on the ignition. If you are ever so fortunate to have Sunday tipok-tipok or are invited to one, sit back and enjoy the parade of lovable characters. There is bound to be a Tito Boy, a Tita Baby and various permutations of doorbell names (Kring-kring, Bongbong, Tingting, Langlang). The Filipino family gets together at the drop of a hat, be it a birthday, a graduation, a baptism or the arriving ceremonies of an overseas uncle/ aunt from Manila or Singapore or Dubai or Vancouver or California. The patriarch, either the grandfather or the eldest son, sits at the cabezera. The matriarch holds court at the other end, where she has a good view of everyone’s’ appetite and to oversee which viands need refilling. You, as guest, will be seated at the right, across the uncles and the aunts. The little imps will be running around with their assigned adults asking them to “Eat na, eat na.” And oh, if you were ever so blessed to have been invited to a Pinoy wedding – you are in for the grand dame of all celebrations – where everything is heightened to the next level. Everyone and everything is scrubbed and polished to a high sheen – alangan no – two families are now joined. The mirth shows in the newest family photo where everyone positions at the altar with the bride and groom. All who are present gleefully scrunches up their face, stick out their tongue and contort their bodies for the now requisite final family photograph – the wacky shot.
Enter a Filipino office and you will still find extensions of family and community living. You don’t even have to leave the office. Here you have everything – chicharon, siomai, 14k gold, genuine/ fake/ first–class imitation bags, insurance policies, heck, even memorial plots. The patriarch or matriarch will still be called Tatay or Nanay and various members of the organization are called Kuya, Ate, Manoy or Manang.
But things are a-changing. Di ba, once something seems to be set in stone, they change the rules. The family now has American and European in-laws and grandchildren speaking in three languages. The Sunday lunch now includes the overseas phone call from Mama who nurtures other people’s children, while her own brood has little recourse but to take care of one another. The grandmothers seem to be getting younger and younger, for the teens seem to be having their own children. The younger ones are no longer running all over the place, but are seated, immobile and zombie- like with either a DS Play station attached to their hands or earphones sprouting from their ears. They are seated near the food, but they will not eat, afraid that their nine-year-old bodies will grow fat and awkward.
The world does seem to be shifting and changing at a dizzying pace. Where should families turn to? Now more than ever, there is a need for the family to gather strength and grace from what is true and unchanging. Today is the Feast of the Holy Eucharist, and it is at the Lord’s Table where we receive a common holy communion. The Corpus Christi nourishes, strengthens and solidifies each one who will partake of it with an open heart. This promise awaits your family and mine.