2022-2023 Winter Break Writing Challenge Featured Author: Jaelahna S. Allen, "Lola"

"Lola", by Jaelahna S. Allen

 ...

If you hold your breath and sink deep off the coast, at the exact right time of year, you can hear songs of whales traveling through the water, bouncing off the corals.
The sounds come from all directions, but the massive creatures are nowhere in sight.
Some say that the songs are transcendent and angelic.

But as the sound ripples through the oceans, they grow scary, confusing.
It’s a tune not made for us. In the void ocean with blue in every direction the realization that no one is calling to you reverberates with every whale call.
It’s lonely to realize that your voice may always be a little too quiet.

... 

The other day I bought a Tagalog phrase book. By no means do I expect that this tiny book will be my ticket to the enriched life of bilingualism. But simply put, I had never seen a Tagalog phrase book, so naturally I had to have it.

I learned a little, not much. The guttural island tones simply can’t be taught in text.
And pneumonic conventions are not easy to learn.

Isa, delawa, tatlo.
I was transformed into a tiny baby learning to count. Conversational is a drastic overstatement.

...

I called my Lola the other day. I told her about all the Filipino dishes I had made recently. Her voice beamed with pride. She told me about her recent winnings in mahjong and how the older Filipino men love dancing with her at the cultural center.
My Lola is married to an American man through and through. Can’t catch him without a Budweiser arguing about how the New York Giants are the best football team regardless of stats. “It’s just facts”

My Lola loves America, but she finds solace in the tiny reminders of home. The local Filipino shops that always give her a little extra for being a kapatid pilipina, the cultural center, and absolutely any apparel that was made in the Philippines, says the word Philippines, or has a Filipino sun.

My Lola grew up in a village outside of Manila, Philippines. She is the oldest of 12 children and that is the extent of history we have. Occasionally, a little tidbit about her brother who died in prison, or the sister that got kidnapped. But whether we want to call it cultural convention or mere emotional avoidance she doesn’t tell, and we don’t ask.

Outside of words, she will share in all the ways she knows how. Stuffing me full of lumpia, adobo, and pancit. Sitting with our ube ice cream and yucca root while watching her teleserye. “Subtitles are all wrong” she says as she painstakingly translates the main points as we go.

My Lola doesn’t call. We visit less and less as I grow up. But once I’m with her she is all in.

My Lola doesn’t hug me, she feeds me.

She doesn’t kiss my forehead; she shakes me awake to get the best deals at our mall (the thrift store).

My Lola doesn’t say she loves me, she shows me.

...

At the end of our call, I sat with my phrase book open in my lap.

“Lola, Mahal kita”

She was silent

“aye patatas, mahal na mahal kita, mahal din kita....”

She did not stop then, she continued with much more than my 150-page phrase book could help

with. As she rambled in a language that I still did not know, her joy reminded me of holding my

breath and sinking deep off the coast, hearing the whale songs.

Sounds coming from all directions but no one in sight. Blue in all directions.

Mahal kita, Lola.

My Lola had been wading off the coast listening to conversation all around. Thinking the tune

was not made for her. In the open water, no one was calling to her.

She grew to listen, learn, had built a life on a learned language, her husband, children,

grandchildren all growing more fluent than she ever will.

In the vast blue. I called back. My voice may be quiet in the sea of voices, but it was finally in

the right language. It was in a tune made just for her.