| There is a point in my life when I had decided | | | | were often stretched thin in my grandmother's |
| that I should learn as much as I can about my | | | | determination to get them all good educations. |
| family. Perhaps it is because I had always believed | | | | While not all of them were quite as successful |
| that taking a certain amount of pride in one's | | | | professionally as any parent would hope, they all |
| heritage is very important in the way a person | | | | still somehow managed to develop strong senses |
| would handle his or her relationships. Or perhaps, | | | | of selves and a determination to live life with as |
| distant or not, relatives will always, always have | | | | much happiness as they can hold. |
| some sort of effect on the person an individual | | | | My mother was the third of four children, the first |
| would become. To prove a point, I would like to | | | | female child in their brood. Being the first daughter |
| share parts of my family history from my | | | | and having won a bet for her father, she and her |
| mother's side, if only to explain the person I am | | | | father had shared a rather close and attached |
| today. | | | | bond before he left with another woman. She did |
| I am no expert in genealogy, but I have enough | | | | have to suffer ever so slightly having to listen to |
| passing interest in it to sit through some of the | | | | gossip about her mother being left by her father, |
| best stories my mother could tell. To make things | | | | but being the little girl that my grandmother |
| easier, I think I should tell this story chronologically. | | | | raised, she quickly learned to dismiss the whispers |
| My great grandmother was born with a silver | | | | and instead focused on being someone other than |
| spoon in her mouth, in a province that is notorious | | | | "that man's daughter". She excelled in her |
| for having seriously hard times and misers to the | | | | schoolwork as well as her extracurriculars and |
| bone. She was a lady through and through - | | | | eventually graduated high school with top honors. |
| beautiful, and determined to look and be her best | | | | She then got a scholarship into a prestigious |
| no matter what the circumstance. Falling in love | | | | private university where she took up mass |
| with a farmer, she married and had four beautiful | | | | communication and met the man who would be |
| and intelligent children - all of whom she and her | | | | her husband. |
| husband raised to be the best people they can | | | | It would not be long before she would become |
| be, professional or otherwise. Her vibrant, beautiful | | | | fairly well-known in the world of advertising as |
| personality, however, was snuffed out when her | | | | someone who is intelligent, hard-working and (not |
| children were still in school; her husband also died | | | | too long after graduation) married to one of the |
| young, leaving their children orphaned. My | | | | most promising creative writers in the business. |
| grandmother was one of those children. | | | | With her husband, she had three children - all born |
| The second of four children who lost their parents | | | | within the first three years of her marriage. But |
| to illness and being an older sibling to a younger | | | | as they progressed with their lives and expressed |
| sister with only one lung (due to tuberculosis), my | | | | their own individual priorities, it became very clear |
| grandmother worked hard to become a capable | | | | that the marriage will not survive "'til death do us |
| nurse. Because of her duties, she married quite | | | | part". Before their inevitable separation, my |
| late into her life before moving to a quarantined | | | | mother had completely taken over paying for |
| village that is dedicated to the treatment and | | | | everything domestic as my father chose to |
| research of leprosy with her husband and her | | | | move to a completely different, less paying line of |
| sister. It is in this community that she had given | | | | business. By the time they were living in different |
| birth to her four children, and where she raised | | | | households, their children (myself being the eldest) |
| four of them alone after her husband had gotten | | | | were in college and my mother has the working |
| another woman pregnant and moved to another | | | | title of VP in a national branch of an international |
| place, in a completely different island. The way | | | | advertising company. |
| my mother tells it, my grandmother was the one | | | | I have come from a direct line of incredibly strong |
| who had asked her husband to go, claiming that | | | | women; it is something that I take pride in, and |
| she is fully capable of caring for their four children, | | | | something that pushes me to be the best person |
| plus her sister, on her own - the other woman, | | | | I can be. The women before me may not have |
| much younger, barely has anything to support | | | | been all successful in their careers, but they are |
| herself, much less the child. At the time, my aunt, | | | | successful as women of strength. I aspire, with all |
| their youngest, was only a few months old. | | | | my heart to be like them; and right now, as a |
| But my grandmother made good with her vow. | | | | writer, and as my own person, I feel blessed to |
| All four of her children grew up feeling loved, and | | | | have been under their influence, to share their |
| not once did they feel poor although their funds | | | | blood. |