A lola speaks

AFTER reading the column “Help! What role can retired grandparents play?” (Oct. 23, 2015), a reader, Elon Sison (Lola Elong) describes her fulfilling role as follows:

What role can grandparents play? Plenty.

There is very much that Lolos and Lolas can, and should, do. In line with Filipino family values and tradition, we are not cast aside and put in homes for the elderly to just sit in an armchair.

My husband and I took care of my mother and my husband’s father and mother until they got sick and died. We buried them side by side at Loyola Marikina. When they were still with us, they stayed at home to mind the house help and the yayas.

There was no conflict: my mother took charge of the kitchen and my mother-in-law supervised the yayas. It was good that my mother was very much older than my in-laws, who spoke Spanish to each other.

I was a career woman. I taught in public schools and later became a principal. I was out of the house the whole day. My husband was the legal corporate counsel of a family business, so he also was out until dinner time.

After I retired, I was still busy as president of the Quezon City Teachers Association and Secretary-Director of the Philippine Public School Teachers Association. But we were at home when the kids arrived from school.

I am now the super-grandma to my 12 children’s 33 kids and great-grandma to eight others in the generation after them.

I am turning our house into an ancestral home to future generations to shelter here any time.

I am also writing a book on “Looking Back” to be edited by my professor, the critic Isagani Cruz, to be launched on my 95th birthday on Jan. 27, 2016.

In this book, I describe our roots, tracing our family lineage way back to our Chinese, French and Spanish ancestors, and to our Filipino roots in the Ilocos.

Our duty as grandparents is to tell our next generation why they are as they are, and be happy with their heritage. We also need to remind them of our family values.

My reply

I’d like to thank Lola Elong for sharing her story. While Lola Elong is not involved in a family business, what she is doing now, after retirement, is as important as (or even more than) handing over the reins of any enterprise.

For what Lola Elong is passing on to the next generation is more important than money: she is the keeper of family tradition. She takes her duties seriously, as shown by two things: First, she is writing a book that traces their family lineage, an undertaking that many families (and family businesses) will do well to emulate. Second, Lola Elong is transforming their house into the ancestral home.

As the saying has it, “If we do not know where we came from, how would we know where to go?”

Contrary to what is commonly perceived, writing a family memoir is not primarily done to enhance bragging rights. After all, you do not need to sell your memoir to the world (unless you are a politician or even a philanthropist). When written with integrity and transparency, the memoir is for me practically a sacred document. A memoir is a testament of family experiences undergone and lessons learned, values kept and discarded, triumphs enjoyed and troubles endured.

The memoir is not a narrative of perfection. Failures are as important as successes, for only in times of trouble can family relationships be strengthened (if not, then there will be no memoir to write in the first place).

Succeeding generations need to understand the sacrifices made by the elders, their joys at the turning points of the business. Young ones need to realize that their elders also had their share of problems, but more importantly, that they were able to surmount these challenges.

Who are the readers? The family, of course, all generations. Family friends also, since they will probably be part of it.

An ancestral home may seem archaic these days, when families are fragmented. Many young people also prefer to make their own way in the world, venturing into what they believe are greener pastures abroad, and returning only for the Christmas holidays.

A patriarch once told me, fighting back tears, that he was selling their ancestral home, because no grandchild is left in the country. This was the pragmatic move, but it was no less sad for that.

I am happy that Lola Elong is visionary enough to provide sanctuary if needed for future generations, and optimistic enough to imagine that her multiple grandchildren and great-grandchildren will remain on these shores. God bless, Lola Elong!

Next week: Jesus and family businesses

Queena N. Lee-Chua is on the Board of Directors of Ateneo de Manila University’s Family Business Development Center. Get her book “Successful Family Businesses” at the University Press (email [email protected].) Email the author at [email protected].