Before my Lolo (grandfather) fought in World War II in the Philippines, he built a house for his new young family. This is a very old photograph of his house still under construction circa 1939. On the balcony is his wife, my Lola (grandmother) holding their firstborn baby girl, my mom.
What impresses Steve the most about this build is how modern it is for 1939. A typical home of that era would have a sloped roof, no balcony, much like the homes in the background of the photograph. Lolo's house has a sleek layout with multiple balconies, floating cantilevers, a flat roof, and an open corner. It has some design similarities we're aiming for in our house.
"See? No neighbors yet." said my mom. The house appears to be the first home built in a new neighborhood. Note the bamboo single scaffolding being used by the workers. Unlike our world of insta-snap-tweet-book, this shot appears to be a proper photograph with everyone deliberately posed facing the photographer, which was likely my Lolo.
This house is very dear to me for several reasons. These are three:
1. Lolo is my hero.
2. Not only did he build this house for his new young family, but fast forward two and a half decades, he also built a house for his daughter (that little infant child on the balcony) as a wedding gift for her new young family, right across the street. That's the house that my older sister and I lived in, 38 Luskot Street.
3. He also built a house for his son, my uncle, at 40 Luskot Street.
What a happy family man he must have been to have built his own home and one for both of his grown children's new young family on the very same street.
I'm sure that my dream to build a house of my own originated from back then. I remember playing on a big tilted drafting table and tall stool drawing up house plans, just like Lolo used to.
In fact, here is my earliest interior design plan. It's an original pen drawing by a little 5-year-old me. I drew this on Lolo's drafting table, on the tall stool I had to climb up to get to. Lola mailed it to my mom and mom kept it. I actually remember, from my own early memory, the details of this house.
I asked my mother, now 82, what she remembers from that old photograph (above). She immediately launched into stories of when she was a child growing up in that house during wartime (It wasn't called WW2 yet.) She remembers air raids, the horse stable Lolo converted into a bomb shelter. She recalled a time when she got a big cut on the bottom of her foot.
"I was catching tadpoles behind our house barefoot (she gestures toward the open area in the photograph) when I stepped on an empty tin can, slicing my foot open. I was maybe age 6. During wartime, bombs were dropped everywhere, by the Japanese. Americans too. The bombs left big holes in the ground. After the rain, the holes filled up with water, then tadpoles would grow in them. I would play and catch tadpoles. My mom, your Lola, she was so angry with me, yelling for me to come back inside the house. The cut in my foot was so big and deep across underneath my toes, I was too scared to tell my mom, so I did not listen to her. She shouted even louder for me to come in. I yelled back, 'I'm looking for my toes!' Boy, did I get in trouble!"
This section of this post probably doesn't belong here, but where else will these stories live if they don't get shared? Sadly, they'd just get lost. Gone, like it never even happened. I imagine that our house, bahay namin, will one day in the future render stories of the people who built and created a wonderful life there.
Thank you for reading this far. Please, ask a parent (or someone older) about anything they can remember from their childhood. Engage in some story-telling conversations, because it is good for everyone if you do.
Salamat po.
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