One woman’s epic journey

A banyan tree in the backyard of her Sta. Ana home overlooking the Pasig River stands as a symbol — a metaphor, if you will — of the long, productive and compassionate life of Jessie Lichauco.

Now 106 years young, “Nana” Jessie, as her grandchildren and great-grandchildren call her, is a little less mobile and has begun to show lapses of memory, notes granddaughter Sunshine Lichauco de Leon. But she remains the same candid, funny, feisty and caring woman we get to know in “Curiosity, Adventure and Love.” This is a documentary cowritten, coproduced and codirected (with Suzanne Richiardone) by Sunshine that took four years to make, and has since won a slew of recognitions since it premiered in 2016.

Most recently, it enjoyed a brief commercial run at Glorietta 4, the screening followed by a “Q&A” with Sunshine.

The banyan tree was badly damaged during Typhoon “Milenyo” in 2006, relates Sunshine, “and it deeply affected Nana.” But, like the tree which still stands although in its diminished state, “Nana” continues with her preoccupations, keeping up with the news and keeping tabs on her many involvements, including civic organizations working mainly for the welfare of Filipino children.

This is the trifecta of Jessie Lichauco’s life: the river, the tree and herself, the life she managed to carve out through her marriage, her seven children and the generations that followed, her many friends, some of whom she virtually “adopted” off the streets, and the memories she keeps fresh and vital despite the passage of time.

I visited the Lichauco home once, when her daughter Loreta invited me to view the small Amorsolo vignette in her room. At the time, I was a college student and had just written an article about the small gallery and performance space that Loreta had put up in the Araneta Center in Cubao. Many years later, I would hear about how Loreta, who had married a military man, was widowed when her husband was captured and tortured by elements of the New People’s Army.

Another Lichauco daughter, JJ, was a classmate at Maryknoll through high school. In fact, I remember Jessie visiting our campus, and, even then, I was struck by her presence, especially her shock of white hair.

Sadly, I have yet to enjoy a closer encounter with “Tita” Jessie. Although, hearing her not just remember her remarkable life but also reflect on the many life lessons she has learned and has since imparted to everyone she meets, it feels like, through the magic of the cinema, I have sat at her feet, listening to her stories. I was nearly moved to tears not by the accounts of her wartime experiences and of her husband Marcial’s death, but by her unwavering spirit, her faith in her adopted Filipino family.

Another reason to catch the film are the archival footage, grainy black-and-white scenes that show us a Manila lovely in its gentility and, later, horrific with the atrocities committed by the Japanese invaders, with bloated corpses scattered on the streets and an entire city leveled to rubble.

Too early have we forgotten the devastation that even now we are still trying to recover from. And, as many of the interviewees point out, the war and its outcome did not just destroy buildings and public works, it also marked the end of our innocence as a people, wrecking our sense of civil order and damaging the DNA of our sense of country.

It is useful, then, to note the time that passed between Jessie Lichauco’s arrival in Manila in the 1930s and today, at least at the time of the documentary’s filming. The story is told in photos of Jessie’s face and bearing: an 18-year-old who traveled to the Philippines on her first trip outside the United States, radiating confidence and surety in her Marcial’s love and loyalty. Those same features and that same radiance are still visible in Jessie’s countenance, because, she declares, while she has been sad many times in her life, she has never been unhappy.

It has been a privilege, glimpsing episodes in the long and rich life of Jessie Lichauco, listening to her stories, and soaking in the spirit of compassion that radiates like sunshine through her skin.

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