My Lolo Cesar

My maternal grandfather Cesar is a huge man. Not tall, but huge. Everytime he walks in a room, he has this certain commanding presence you would think he’s the tallest man who ever lived or one who holds the most number of inventions in the world or the only person awarded the Nobel ten times. The truth is, he’s just about 5’6, no famous discoveries to his credit, while the closest he got to Nobel was a Gintong Ama award he received from His Eminence Jaime Cardinal Sin in the late 1980’s as one of the country’s top ten fathers that year.

That award meant a lot for him. It should be. For somebody who endured all imaginable difficulty raising eleven children to be all professionals today, the recognition he got was a mere speck of the honor and praises he should really be showered.

His story began in 1929 in an island called Itbayat, the northernmost inhabited island in the Philippines. As the eldest child in the family, he took on the burden of looking after the family from a young age courtesy of a father who drank too much, gambled too much, and absent too much. At the tender age of 14, he assumed the duties of a family provider. He agreed to have ropes tied around his waist as harness when he joined road construction along the island coast. They blasted rocks and pushed them several hundred feet on the shoreline below. One false footwork and death eagerly lies ahead. For a few more pesos, he also enlisted as one of the many manual laborers who paved a vast grassland in the outskirts of town to make way for the main airport in the island.


Located four kilometers from the main town, this spot was where my grandpa manually labored pushing off blasted rocks off to the sea for a few centavos a day.


Next time you visit Batanes, stop by this spot called Paderes Cliff and remember Lolo Cesar.

God is good, my greatgrandma would unashamedly declare whenever he remembers his son, my grandpa Cesar. She never said it in so many words, but he was her only comfort in those countless years when she endured a marriage that overflowed with all but love and devotion. Nobody actually knows how my grandfather felt in those many turbulent years worsened even by the Second World War. Even up to this time, he keeps most things to himself, not even his late wife, my very photographable grandma Tina, probably had any knowledge of.

That’s why I felt very privileged when Lolo Cesar asked me recently to go over the manuscript of his autobiography. From over 30-plus grandchildren, he picked me to do a once over on his draft. I felt honored, really flattered. Apparently, he has been spending time writing his thoughts and stories in the past several years. I can only surmise he knows he lived a very colorful life that remains unrivaled to this day, one that needed to be told in my generation to keep us from being swayed over hurtful or sometimes ruthless ways.

Now in his late 80’s, he’s enjoying the fruits of his labor in far USA. He probably stands shorter than 5’6 today, still with no celebrated invention, but a life well lived.