Tito Nick

I have just learned from Nikki that Monday was Ancestor Appreciation Day. And now, I've found every reason to do so.

(previously written Monday, 12:09am)
I've just gone through the first three chapters of The Woman Who Had Two Navels.It’s strange, how a few newsprint pages glued and cover-bound together can make you reassess your life chapter by chapter.

It’s 12:09 pm, and I’m still up. There’s ten-page papers and scale models and reactions and exams to pass by the end of the week, and I should be getting myself some sleep to keep me sane enough to live through my relatives and finish this damned semester, but I’m still up, staring into the cold-sharp night sky hanging like a curtain ready to drop by the end of the first act, thinking about Connie.

That’s what this novel does to me. Nick Joaquin’s The Woman Who Had Two Navels. The uncle and the woman I never got to know.

It’s strange how this book never fails to keep hitting the right bones in me. I remember priding myself with keeping a ratty, floppy, passed-around copy of the orange-covered book in my grade-seven bag. I even prided myself whenever I brought the book out into the open to read while waiting for recess or lunch to finish or the bus to arrive and drop me off home, knowing well enough it wasn’t included in our requirements. You could tell I had this bigheaded thing going on.

Seventh grade turned into senior high, and now senior high’s turned into fourth year college graduating. And the book keeps coming back, again and again, having me read through its pages almost like looking long and hard into a mirror. It never fails. Reassess and rethink my life, chapter by livid, vivid, wicked chapter.

When I was a little girl, I prided myself on knowing I had a famous writer in the same family tree as me. I learned about the open gossip about him from my grandmother, his niece – he could never stay at a party without a constant supply of San Miguel Beer, and he could never write without its persuasion. He had a male lover, but trivia like that paled in the light of Tito Nick’s writership, in my elevenish head.

Tito Nick. I’ve been saving up that name for a long time, just so I could call him the moment we were introduced. My Mama S would want me to use Uncle Nick, (she always wanted me to address her relatives in proper English names) but never mind.

It still feels good in my mouth when I say it. It still sounds good to me when I say it. Maybe that’s why I’m still saving it up, just so I can maybe use it someday. Tito Nick.

It’s just sad I never got to meet him, though. Of course, my grandma’s relatives would simply say it was a shame I didn’t. Isn’t it silly, me feeling sorry over someone I haven’t met? Yeah, it could come off as unearned sorrow, unearned grief.

When Mama S told me Tito Nick was gone, she told me Tito Nick didn’t have much for his partner to sell, since he was so generous when he was still alive. So generous, he would give away his manuscripts to people who needed them, and even a bust of himself that was given him. It must have been difficult for Tito Nick, having to live with what scraps his bigheartedness left of him.

I prided myself with knowing Tito Nick was part of the same family as I was, and I still secretly do. Though now, I’ve grown up, of course, and pulling out my ratty, tatty copy of the book like a rabbit out of a silk hat for all the world to see right now won’t exactly work. Now, I’m writing too, just like he did. And knowing, and saying even just for now, that he’s family, he’s my family, gives my craft and who I know I am a whole new meaning.

It’s just a pity I never met him. I could have learned so much from him.

I miss you, Tito Nick. Wherever you are.