for everyone |
Resting In Peace Hi, RISA - So you asked me to tell you a little more about Koya Resting.
His name was RESTITUTO L. DAVID. He was the eldest son of TATANG JEK (REYES DAVID, SR.). TATANG JEK was the brother of my mother, LOURDES DAVID (IMANG ODING). They had at least 2 more sisters, IMANG OPING (Sr. Josephine) and IMANG MIDING (Remedios).
Since they were on the DAVID side, I had always thought all along that we the LANSANGs were related to your family from our father's side. It turns out these DAVIDs were your father's 1st cousins - which makes us second cousins, not on our father's side but from our mother's side. As you may know, they (our parents) were 1st cousins not on the LANSANG side but from their mother's side [LAMCO(?)].
First, let me tell you a little about our and YOUR uncle, TATANG JEK. He was a good man, very responsible, stern, hardworking, honest, very religious. He was a public school teacher. By the time he retired he was either the principal or school supervisor, commuting daily on his bicycle from Sta. Rita to San Fdo., Pamp. As young children we fondly remember him as a great cook who took charge of the kitchen during the fiestas. He would cook on a large scale, using huge kettles or "kawa/s" enough to feed half of the town. His "Oomba" and "Tidtad" were legend. My brother JOHN, himself a food fancier, made sure that the recipe was kept in the family. Actually, you have 2 other cousins who can cook almost as well, RESI and JUNA - more about them sometime.
As a young boy visiting from Baguio, I was awed by Tatang's dexterity at making exquisitely delicate "barquillos" by hand, now a completely lost art. He it was who was responsible for introducing us to the traditional pampango cooking and love for all pampango delicacies. To us who lived in Baguio, TATANG JEK and STA. RITA were almost synonymous. TATANG JEK it seems spared no expense when it came to fiesta food, and for his nephews, nieces and grandchildren.
TATANG JEK married IMANG FELING JINGCO LANSANG. They had 3 children, namely, KOYA RESTING, ANGELES or ATCHING BABY (BAY ), and LEONOR or ATCHING ANONG (UNONG). In what must have been a great cholera epidemic in the early 1930s, Imang Feling fell (pardon the pun); leaving behind these 3 young orphans, all surnamed LANSANG-DAVID.
In the meantime, my mother, LOURDES DAVID, TATANG JEK's younger sister, married one ANGEL JINGCO LANSANG, a maverick balikbayan from the USA when the term had not yet been invented. He happened to be one of IMANG FELING's 2 brothers, and therefore Tatang Jek's brother-in-law.
It was right about then that WWII came upon us. It is hard to imagine much less to describe the havoc that the war years, Japanese occupation and post-war years wreaked on every family in those days and the years that followed. It is no exaggeration to claim that one could sum it all up by saying it was the Filipino holocaust.
Anyway, ANGEL (whom our Mommy and everybody else, us included, thereafter called "ABAY," roughly equivalent to "Pare") and Mommy had eleven (11) children, all of course surnamed DAVID-LANSANG, one of whom was yours truly, ALEXANDER JAMES DAVID LANSANG. Their first five children were all born in Sta. Rita, the other 5 in Baguio where we lived right after the war. Our brother Mark, the sixth sibling, was born in Manila during the Japanese Occupation.
A relatively young widower at the time, TATANG JEK re-married soon after, a goodlooking lass from the next town, IMA SOL (SOLEDAD ALVIZ) with whom he had 5 children, JUNA, BOYTI, GRACE, and the identical twin girls, NANAN and DODOS.
Young TATANG JEK must have had his hands full, caring for a second wife, 3 young kids from a first marriage and 5 from a second and in a country in ruins. Eventually, after high school, the 3 orphans one by one went to live with us in Baguio. They became our elder siblings for all intents and purposes. Indeed, KOYA RESTING was more known in Baguio as a "LANSANG" than a DAVID.
Incidentally, I came across a study of the Capangpangan alphabet done by a Spanish Friar who observed that the Capangpangans, like their Visayan and Pangasinan cousins, have an uncanny habit of casually interchanging their vowel sounds, e.g., o for u, e for i (ee); and vice versa. Which explains why we tend to say coya, not kuya; odeng for uding; unong for anong.
TATANG JEK would call RESTING as "ESTENG." Our Carmelite aunt (Sr. Josephine) we would invariably call Imang OPENG or UPING. Our aunt REMEDIOS LANSANG DAVID-GUANLAO, fondly referred to as "DEDE" was known as IMANG MIDING or MIDENG.
Being the good man, husband, father that he was, TATANG JEK raised a good brood. Everybody turned as the good persons that they became, to a large extent because of TATANG JEK. "Kung ano ang puno, siya rin ang bunga."
Come to think of it, I now recall that TATANG JEK and your Dad, TATANG JOE, being first cousins, also looked alike, had almost the same build, and sounded alike. They had similar balding hairstyles, must both have been diabetic and prone to heart problems.
So, is it any wonder then that KOYA RESTING turned out to be the kind of person we knew him to be, kindhearted, big-brother type. There was not a mean bone in his body. He treated us all like your typical "kuya" always looking after our welfare and interest. He taught me how to drive, drink, and not to care too much about making too much money. He showed us how to care for each other. Most of all, being the eldest of the brood, he was the coya of the second set of children of Tatang Jek, his half-brothers and sisters. When KOYA RESTING came back (from the USA) to live out his days in Sta. Rita, it was his half-brothers and sisters who dutifully and gladly took care of him up to his last breath. In the end though, he died as he had lived, a faithful apostle of San Miguel. Though not noticeably religious, he had a mighty angel for an ally.
His tombstone reads: “Resting in Peace.” It's true. Go check it out at the Sta. Rita cemetery. Napaka-corny talaga ng mga pinsan mo. JAMES L.
No comments:
Post a Comment