Enrique Aboitiz Mendieta
10 04 2020

The vacation policy of Aboitiz & Company in 1963 was something like every four years you took six months off to travel to Europe and/or the USA. I imagine it came from a time when one took a month through the Suez Canal to journey from Manila to Barcelona by ship. Then you needed time to travel around by train visiting relatives and sights and a month to return. My parents took that holiday that year while Montxu and I were interned at Sacred Heart School with the Jesuits to enjoy the mass every morning and the rosary at night. We were young, naive, and ignorant and believed the myths of the smartest organization in history, the soldiers of St. Iñigo de Loyola.

The weekends were a treat. We either spent them with our grandparents, Vidal and Ana, or with Tio Isidro and Tia Antonia, preferring the latter for some reason as we had cousins there. I remember that wonderful house and the uling irons of Tia Antonia. Her household help would iron clothes in a room on top of the garage, I think, using heavy steel irons heated by charcoal as electric irons consumed costly electricity. They watched the pennies in those days. I am not sure if it was to save money or because some priest somewhere told them so. Tia Antonia held the nuns of Immaculada de la Concepcion dear to her, and we would munch on the leftover sheets of punched hosts. The nuns would make sheets of think laminated flatbread. They would punch out round hosts for Holy Communion and the leftover was a swiss cheese-looking sheet with holes to munch on, contained in a Fita can of sorts. Tia Antonia indeed paid for the entire sheet before the hosts were created to be sold to some priest somewhere. Tia Antonia did not mind, I do not think, paying for some white sheets and air.

We were at home and made to feel welcome as if it was home and it was. Tia Martina was always there.

You see, I grew up with eight mothers, eight fathers, a few grandmothers, and a few grandfathers. That was in Cebu alone. I had another set in Manila, Barcelona, Madrid, and Euzkadi.

Tias Antonia, Paqui, Maria Luisa, Evelyn, Annie, Hazel, Rosarito, Tona, to name a few. Tias Lolita, Paquita, Maria, Martina et al. from the generation above them. You can guess the names of my many fathers and grandfathers. Maybe I had more than eight mothers in Cebu.

We would hop from house to house as we played with cousin to cousin. The smaller houses were large and the larger ones with plenty of room to run around. The food was as abundant as the rules. Then came Liloan every Sunday when we would wander from the Vidal/Tia Maria house through the Tio Ramon house and end up at the Moraza complex.

That was a treat after the torture of Sunday mass at 8:30 AM at the Asilo. Tio Ramon would bless me as I approached him every Sunday to greet. He had the mistaken opinion that I was naughty. I never understood why.

It was a fantastic atmosphere to grow up. One was welcome and loved everywhere.

Tia Antonia was in the midst of all. Her presence, her warmth, and her love were felt by all of us, all of the time. I do not remember her scolding us. Maybe she scolded Montxu. He was the naughty one.

One by one, that generation joins our Diplomatic Core trading our sins, if any exist, for their prayers as they find out that their children and nephews were not the little saints they thought we were. They love us regardless as they prepare the road of white roses for those to come to the Liloan of their world.

Tia Antonia had help from the cadre of Immaculada nuns who have been praying for her for a century. She and Tio Isidro had a very rough time losing Jaime. I remember vividly meeting them in New York when they were there to see doctors. As a young teenager, those images were powerful.

Celebremos la vida de una de nuestras gran madres y mujeres Señora Doña Antonia Roig Moraza acordandonos de esa sonrisa tan unica que expresaba su amor.

Todos te queremos mucho.

Endika y Valeria
Danel y Mariana
Vidal Augusto