You were my first memory.

In the earliest days of my awareness, I do not remember a picture. There was only perfect black: a canvas, a void. And in that darkness, light came in the form of a hum. A voice. Your voice. The harp-like melody in the ways you conjured your breath to form music as your arms bathed me in a gentle warmness.

I remember it, clear as the sunshine running down the concrete floor of our porch. You were telling tales at dusk, a mug within your calloused fingers you proclaimed to be numb for the most part. There were often whispers from you, about how you hated the ways you no longer had the strength you used to have. But still, all that you ever made was art and love intertwined together so perfectly.

I recall the feeling of listening to you as your narrow, glassy eyes grow distant as if elsewhere in time. The wind pressed cold against my back and the branches from two towering caimito trees harmonized in the soft rustle of their sprawling canopies. You spoke, weaving each word carefully. There was both solemnity and pride in your voice. You told me of names, of places. And with them, you have attached distinctions. Your uncle’s thunderous laughter, your father’s heroism set in a world burning in war. There were terrors, indeed. But you mentioned them with little regard. You were a strong woman. Mountain of a spirit. Unwavering.

You continued by tracing your bloodline. You began with the earliest names you could remember, even if you would say you knew not of their faces. There is an intricacy among Filipino families. It extends further than most, often webbing further and further till our memory ceases to hold them.

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You often say your memory is failing, but the love you had for family was defiant. You were there, at your best attempts to name each of your relatives like you were counting numbers. And there was little fault to your remembering.

I was seeing silhouettes when you told me of the soldiers that marched into your town. I could hear the twist in their words, the foreignness of it. You described to me the shape of their weapons: a rifle with a bladed end, spear and bow all at once. Fright slipped into the monotony of your tone as you explained how such a weapon could kill at any distance, how there was little escape. Your father, my great-great grandfather, would often lose them, you said. He would hide in haystacks, in rice fields, among the foliage. He endured even at the presence of their most ferocious.

“Resilience is in our blood.” You would say. “It is in yours and mine, never less potent.”

Those words lingered into me. A child then, I knew not of resilience. It was but a word defined by a series of other words brambling together in tight knots. It held no meaning for me.

Not till the day you passed away.