Memories to Fantasies My grandmother is a strong-willed woman. Having married a boxer-academician-dreamer kind of a man, perhaps she canno Having raised five children all by herself — by a stroke of bad Second World War, her wrinkled and heavily veined hands re watch her as she sleeps. It is hard to settle in the mind that her crooked 95 year old miles to teach classrooms jammed with children — and all this that is meant to pay debts incurred to eat the most meager of weeks before. But with all the sorrows and pains of living, | saw her cry but o day the last of her siblings was laid into the open arms of eart only memories of the time she frolicked with her brothers and streets of colonial Manila. Memories are snippets of time that enjoins us to savor each b only to relive moments that made us smile, or pethaps to co sorrows and know that somehow we have grown a little wiser But what is to become of who we were when we begin to forge this and that piece of clothing that lay folded in our closets for becomes of who we were when the music that we spun to ono clothes begins to sink into the eternal silence of forgetfulness. It draws tears from my eyes to hear my grandmother try to ex, duster that | remember to have clung to in my childhood, was: placed by a dwende in her closet. Clothes that she cannot re immediately consider as gifts from some mischievous spirit that things if it was a part of some greater diabolical plan. Such “gi vehemently refuse to wear. Her explanations were painful to hear because she thoroughly | Like when she explained that the association of dwendes were ears so that we cannot hear her call out to us. Dumbfounded, in the world would a bunch of vertically challenged individuals accomplish by doing such a strange thing. She clarified the m: that that was their retaliation against her for ignoring them. Her explanations were always beautifully logical when taken © was the work of a contemplative mind battling against the real up by failing senses. During a moment of luci to do when what she sees were invisible to us; what was she to do sees the stars scattered across the horizon over her bed, and see was the bare whiteness of the ceiling. ‘She knew reality was s away from her, like her hearing and her ability to stand on her ownIt was during nights when | find myself looking over her as have come to think that when our memories begin to fall soon be explained and defined by myths. Perhaps it is jus holes that riddle the fabric of who we are. Must | be thankful for this, that who we are would soon be folded nicely to fit seamlessly into the greatest of myths — tt every existence? It is because of frustration that | refuse to acknowledge he! when it meant that by refusing to agree with her, would re she was and who she were had been migrating to another p leaving behind a most colorful shadow. But | would always in colonial Manila with her brothers and sisters, rather than field of wild grass and flowers, while her emaciated legs k blanket. q | cannot even begin to imagine what it is like for her to kno When we are confronted with sickness, we know we will good health. Up to a certain point in time, we always belie from good to bad, and back. | still don’t know how to cope fact that there is only one way to go.