appreciating my sister edna's loving presence in my journey

"out of sight, out of mind." this is my tendency in expressing my love for people. i don't like this side of my relational behavior. it's always my loss when i neglect to connect with my loved-ones... like ate edna.

lately, i've been dreaming about my dear ate (pronounced áh-teh, it means older sister). for some reasons of the heart and spirit-prompting, memories of ate edna surfaced from the hard disk of my being. i've been praying for her since then—mostly thanking god for giving me an ate like her and simply expressing all the positive desires in my heart for her total shalom.

i really love ate edna. i wish i am verbalizing this to her more frequently. this blog may be a start.

one of my earliest memories was actually with her. i was four years old then. we were living in a place in tondo, manila. our house just got burned down because of a neighborhood fire. after the fire, we were packed like canned sardines in an ugly but neat barong-barong—a small house made of scrap materials. i can still smell the half-burned junks in our backyard.

i remember that afternoon when my parents asked ate edna to take care of me. she and ate linda took turns in doing child-care tasks in our family. beulah, my younger sister, was our baby. most of my memories of secure-and-good-feelings as a young child are identified with my times—the kairos kind—with ate edna and ate linda.

ate edna took me in a lot next to our house, gave me chicharon—a popular filipino snack that looked like a giant potatoe chip, and left me in a wooden crib. the cemented lot was perfect for riding her troley. it's like a wooden skateboard with a steering handle. yes, you call it a scooter.

anyway, i remember her, an intermediate school girl, enjoying the troley ride. her graceful and confident agility, as she was circling around me, is still in my memory system—like a video in living color. i remember laughing every time she's in front of me. i remember turning my head looking for her, with great anticipation, when she was behind me. and i can still hear myself laughing aloud as soon as i see her again in front of me.

then i got bored. i cried to get her attention. i wanted to ride the troley with her. and sister edna, being a loving ate, took me out of the crib, helped me sit in front of her on the troley, and we enjoyed a few woopeee-shouting rounds!

and then i got scared. i felt i needed to jump out of the troley. we crashed. my forehead was wounded and she took me back in the house with a bleeding face. i can still hear inay bing's hysteria (inay bing is my mother.) i can still hear ate edna's cry when my father gave her spanking... all because of me!

when i was six years old, she taught me how to write. funny, i learned how to read as ate edna was teaching me how to write. and it was not just simple writing. she taught me basic calligraphy. that's how she ordinarily writes. i always honor her by telling others that my hand-writing is her influence on me. last week, i sent her a pen and a set of carefully-selected writing pads to appreciate her most treasured influence on me.

when i was about seven years old, she taught me to ride her bike. that was the beginning of my love affair with speed. from bicycle, i upgraded to motorcycle. when i moved to north america... well, i better not talk about my speeding tickets—they have nothing to do with ate edna.

one night, when i was eight years old, i climbed up the grapefruit tree of nana ika—an old lady in our neighborhood. i stole a grapefruit for ate edna. i wanted to please her. she didn't show her appreciation. instead, she rebuked me for what i did. i felt bad, realizing that stealing is always bad even if done with good intention. but then, the next day, i saw her eat the grapefruit with her friends. i was delighted.

today, ate edna lives with my nephew, calvin wesley, in shanghai, china. wes' wife, sharon, has two beautiful girls—karissa and sophia. ate edna takes care of them. i wonder what karissa and sophia would write in their blogs about their aunt edna? i share god's blessings with my grandnieces because of their aunt, and my ate, edna.