The Philippines is sometimes described as patriarchal but matricentric, meaning mothers can also be quite powerful in the face of male domination.
But “matricentric” is not necessarily limited to mothers. In the Philippines, aunts band together to become even more powerful. “Tita,” “tiya” and “auntie” are terms that are extended broadly, to include sisters, cousins, sometimes even comadres (cogodmothers) and even classmates, all helping one another with homes, careers and businesses, raising children, taming husbands. Many a Filipino, too, has been practically adopted by an unmarried aunt becoming nanay.
Let’s face it: A patriarchy can also mean men not taking up certain responsibilities because they find the work “menial.” That means women take up these responsibilities, producing very independent aunts. I had many of them in my life.
Auntie Juliet was an Ilokana, independent and strong-willed. She was one of the few women who could drive in the 1960s, and so she managed our car pool, driving broods of nephews and nieces to school.
Battalions, brigades
When my mother came down with cancer, with a very poor prognosis, there was a battalion of aunts mobilized to visit my sister and me, making sure we were properly fed, clothed, tutored, and comforted when ill. Only recently did I learn that Auntie Juliet had asked her children if they were ready to take in my sister and me, if we were orphaned. The aunts, together with my maternal grandmother, a very powerful matriarch in every sense of the word, decided early on that we were not to be raised by a stepmother.
That was 48 years ago and my mother is still around, a true cancer survivor.
“It wasn’t my time yet,” my mother would declare, and over the years I realized that indeed her time wasn’t up yet, not just as a mother but also as an aunt. Because she was a teacher, she had her share as well of taking care of nephews and nieces, usually by tutoring.
During the summer the Tita Brigade went into high gear, organizing all kinds of activities to keep the children busy. There were summers up in Baguio, which came close to being expeditions that required transportation and renting a vacation house and, once there, getting us busy with activity-packed days.
The summers in Manila were hectic, too, and each year had its special focus. There was the summer where all the cousins were packed off for swimming lessons, sparked by a near-drowning incident that would have wiped out a whole cohort of cousins. Another summer I will never forget was the one where all the boys were rounded up, second and third cousins included, to get circumcised. The aunts hovered around us at the clinic, ushered us home, and took turns reminding us not to expose ourselves to any female, threatening us with stories of balls turning into tomatoes if that happened.
There were three summers used to tackle chickenpox, mumps and measles (I’m not sure any more about the sequence). This was before vaccinations for the three diseases came about, so that if one cousin fell ill, the aunts would herd all the others to the house of the afflicted one and get everyone exposed. Thus did we all ride out the disease in one house, with different aunts mobilized for this rather strange, but efficient, way of dealing with childhood ailments.
I am certain the aunts were in constant contact with one another to deal with all kinds of child care issues. The turbulent years of our adolescence were probably made easier by the aunts. There was something about aunts intervening, sometimes quite sternly, to chide an errant nephew or niece: “Do you know what you’re doing to your mother?”
One week in 1971, I wondered why my mother was constantly out of the house or talking, almost in whispers, on the phone. I learned later that a cousin had died and a council of aunts, including my mother, had decided to postpone breaking the news to me. That cousin, only seven months older, and I had practically grown up together.
Business, BP
My mother was very close to three Limchayseng sisters who considered her practically a sibling; by extension, all the children from this “gang of four” became cousins. Many years ago I joined them on two trips to China and realized what a sorority they had developed, with the way they managed whirlwind itineraries, knowing what they wanted to visit and eat, and where to shop. Each day they came down to the hotel lobby looking fresh, not a hair out of place, their clothes pressed and color-coordinated. In between directing porters, drivers and tour guides, I’d catch them occasionally pointing out to each other, most discreetly, any minor lapse, from smudged lipstick to a missing button (major disaster there).
The trips brought me closer to the aunts, so that after we got back, whenever they’d phone looking for my mother we’d end up talking as well, sometimes about a column—and that could mean brutally frank opinions that of course always ended with, “But I love your other columns.”
I’d turn the phone over to my mother and continue doing my stuff, but would catch snippets of their conversation, much of it similar to their conversations when they were younger, around family life. That included plotting to find matches for the unmarried stragglers in the clan, myself included, and I’d pass by and raise my arms in mock exasperation.
Even in their 70s and 80s the aunts would still talk business. On their own, they had discovered the stock market and would talk about blue chips and IPOs (initial public offerings), exchanging tips from their stockbrokers.
There is also more talk about their health; they’d exchange blood pressure readings and cholesterol levels and medications. The last few years have been tough on them, with hospital confinements becoming more frequent. There was even a time when two were admitted into the same hospital and the “young” ones (myself and others) agreed we would not let each know about the other’s confinement.
But the visits dwindled, as did the phone calls. A few months after my mother had a serious stroke, I took a phone call one afternoon and could barely hear the caller. I knew it had to be one of the aunts but could not believe it was Auntie Lucy, who, because of Parkinson’s, very rarely spoke. She knew my mother could not come to the phone but she insisted on calling anyway. “Let her know I called,” she said.
The year has been tough. Auntie Hilda, one of my mother’s best friends from high school and who I’ve written about in the past (“Hindi Kita Malilimutan” was composed for her by a suitor), passed away last Saturday. Earlier this year, Auntie Paquing and Auntie Lucy died a month apart.
Life will be different without these great women. At their funerals I followed the practice of leaving the church before their coffins would be wheeled out and not looking back. As cultural practices go, I am sure there was good reason for this, not so much to avoid bad luck as to prepare us to move on. No goodbye, no looking back, only memories of our lives together.
In appreciation: Francisca Limchayseng Ong (1921-2013), Leoncia Limchayseng Huang (1928-2013), Hilda Sian Presbiterio (1922-2013).
(E-mail: mtan@inquirer.com.ph)