The Time Capsule

Chapter 1

"I find that being nice is not always easy. With some people, it's a task that I end up weary. But with him, it is spontaneous."

- From Corazon's Diary

Three months ago...

She passed away and I felt nothing. I should have, I know, but I didn't know her. She was just a name I often heard when my mother was still alive and a name forgotten when she failed to show up at her daughter's wake and funeral in Makati.

My father never spoke of her again and I never questioned as part of a family tradition, 'Never question thy father'.

My grandmother, or Mama as what my mother dearly called her, passed away alone in her home.

Alone. Like how she had been since she cut ties with my mother.

Alone.

My father shared the news while we were having breakfast, of all moments. As respect for the lady, I didn't make any comment on how I felt nothing or how much we had to send for the funeral.

Instead, I asked the more acceptable and courteous question. "What's the plan?" Surely, there had to be one.

My father shrugged his shoulders. "They've had the wake for almost a week now. We'll go for the funeral."

Crossing your fingers was a myth, after all. "We?"

He looked at me, the slit eyes he got from his Chinese heritage free of emotion. I knew he wasn't fond of my grandmother. If he were, I would have known her.

Growing up, the walls in our home were never thick enough. Stories would float to my ears if I pressed them just right and closed my eyes.

My grandparents were the reason why my father had to take his wife to Manila and build a life of his own from scratch. I didn't know about my grandfather whom I had not heard a lot about and had long passed away, but it was easy to conclude that it was my grandmother who never wanted my father for her daughter for a reason. She was the evil queen, the name being whispered by the helpers when they thought I was too young to understand.

When I got older, it was easily determined that we were cut off from my grandparents' life. That's how the story was being told between the helpers who filled the quiet corners of our home with whispered controversies and unwanted opinions. They particularly liked to romanticize the story of how my rich mother fought for my father, a normal orphaned boy; how he in turn built himself up for their dreams so she could regain the same life she sacrificed for him. The same stories were then passed on around the exclusive neighborhood and eventually made a full circle to me through the mouths of my school bus friends, the same ones who were enamored with stories like the classic Romeo and Juliet or one of the many Filipino television dramas of the same theme that their own nannies, the same people who started the stories, would watch every evening during supper.

My father never found out about it, and if he did, he never told anyone, but I once heard my then own nanny, Yaya Sana, berating the others for invading our family's privacy.

I never cared, for why should I? I never met my grandparents. For most of the people in our neighborhood, children and their nannies alike, they were the evil king and queen of my parents' romance. I had the same belief as them, and because of that, I dreamed of the same love like my parents, one that crossed vast oceans and mountains. One that was endless although short-lived. That was until I grew up and realized that kind of love was easily hoped for than stumbled upon.

"We're the only family she had left," my father said, drawing me away back to the present. "It's our responsibility."

Sad to know he was doing it out of responsibility, right? But what else could he say? My father was a man of truth. He would never lie to temporarily ease your pain.