The World is a Happier Place with Grandmas

This is my belated Grandparents' Day post

I’m the 3rd of 24 apos (grandchildren). As one of the first batch of grand children, I got to enjoy being with my mamang (grandma) longer and now looking back, my fondest memories of her center around food and the kitchen.

You see, she has 10 children and as a mother, the busiest part of the house is where the food is cooked. I remember that she’d always, always have food ready. As a matter of fact, the vendor selling bananas would eat sometimes at the house.

I remember with fondness gifts of plastic dangling earrings and clothes (terno) almost every time my lola would visit the market, the pasalubong of yummy halo—halo in empty Carnation evap tin cans, helping make bilo bilo for ginataan, and trying my small hands at grating coconut the old-fashioned way.

I remember our trips to Alabang for our summer vacation with mamang towing us apos in all, I remember the smell of freshly cooked pinipig, the smell wafting from mamang’s kitchen down to our room in the first floor. I remember going to the market with her and cleaning the fish we bought at the market afterwards. Yes, I am odd that way, actually enjoying cleaning the gut and entrails of the galunggong.

Now, with my own son, I’m just so thankful his mama/nona (grandma) is with him.

After 32 years of working, my mom has retired this year and is hopefully reaping the rewards of being a full-time grandmother to her first apo. =)


I wonder how I will be as a lola? I want to be like my mamang and my mama before me, but more beautiful and way cooler!

So, a world without grandmas, nonnas, lolas, mamas, mommys, mammitas or whatever endearing way you want to call them is a world definitely less happy.