For most of us, if babies can recall, the earliest voice we remember is a mother humming a lullaby. The softest touch is from a mother’s hands, and the warmest embrace is made up of her arms cuddling us close to her breast while we drink the milk of life from her.
Long after, as grownups, when we discover an impersonal, colder world, thoughts of mother and home reassure us that somewhere, someone loves us. And the memory of that love continues to warm us even when she is gone.
This image of mother and home was poignantly sung by soldiers during World War II:
“I can see the lights of home shining brightly o’er the foam Beckon to me while I roam away from lights of home, I can see somebody there, loving eyes and silver hair, I can see her kneel in pray’r beneath the lights of home.”
I learned this song from my mother. She used to sing it to me, interspersed with news we hear about the fighting men overseas during the war. I would listen to stories of courageous men who stood up for home and country. I realize now that the stories were meant to hush our fears. Dostoevsky-like: “Don’t be afraid of life! How good life is when one does something good and just.”
Sometimes, I would hear planes flying above us in the still nights of Ganassi, to where we evacuated during the war. Lying beside her in bed, I would be lulled to sleep by Mama with songs she learned from Daddy, who was an officer in the military. I was only six months old when he died in an ambush by rebels in Mindanao. I did not get to know him, but I knew that he was brave and loving, and that he looked down on us from heaven.
My mother was 26 years old when she was widowed. She never married again. Being both mother and father to me, my two brothers and a sister, Mama made our world safe. Instead of fears because of the war, I only have happy memories of a gentle world.
Let me tell you about the Ganassi I grew up in.
Ganassi is a small valley located in the Lake Lanao area. Houses were made of bamboo that grew thickly in the hills. A river ran through it and emptied itself into Lake Lanao.
Muslims made up a majority of the population, so there was no Catholic church. Instead, there was a mosque by a spring which was so clear that when you bathed, you could see your feet gleaming whitely on the bottom.
My brother and I chased huge dragon flies by the river. Their wings glistened in gauzy colors of blues, greens and dusky reds. Sometimes we chased them with twigs dipped in the sticky sap of the nangka fruit. I’m glad now that our clumsy arms, along with our stumbling feet, hardly caught any. I like the image of dragonflies flying free in the sunlight.
Ganassi was home, and like the tinkling music of the kulintang, it is half-remembered from a distant childhood. Time lends romance to that memory.
I have never gone back to that Ganassi of my childhood since we left when the Japanese soldiers landed in Malabang and took over that part of Mindanao. I have taken the roads more travelled, including 20 years living in the United States. I realize that Ganassi must be different now. Is the lake still blue? I saw from pictures that dams have tamed that lake for electric power. Gone are the clear waters leaping over rocks. Gone, too, are the barefoot children chasing after dragonflies.
But after getting a life of my own, getting married and raising kids, travelling to many parts of the world, when I think of home I think of Mama telling me and my brother bedtime stories while the war was going on. Ah, memories. Treasure them. Dostoevsky said it all in “The Brothers Karamazov”:
“You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk a good deal about your education, but some good sacred memory preserved from childhood is perhaps the best education. … And if one has only one good memory left in one’s heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us. … That one memory may keep him (man) from great evil and he will reflect and say, ‘Yes, I was good and brave and honest then.’”
I know that anywhere in the world I would be, when things be difficult, sad, lonely, or happy, I will be content. Always, I have Mama and a Ganassi in the youth of my mind.
Dette Pascual, 82, is a retired balikbayan. She says she spends her days by the sea, occasionally bird-watching, gardening, writing, and sharing books with the children in her community.