The very last time I visited my Lola’s house in the Philippines, the caretaker wouldn’t let me in. He didn’t know who I was.
“But this is practically my house!”, I squawked like a crazy lady. “I lived around the corner for 23 years and visited my grandma here whenever I wanted!”
He shouldn’t have let me in, but he did.
Stepping through the iron gates and walking through the front doors, I wasn't prepared for the decrepitude that I saw. Having lain empty for a decade, the house looked cavernous and desolate, covered in a grey film.
Ala Paredes' grandparents' house. Source: Supplied
The mahogany floorboards had become termite food. Bedroom doors hung from only one hinge, too tired to carry on.
In Lola’s art studio, the wooden ceiling panels curled sorrowfully towards the floor.
Thorny shrubs had invaded the garden, and years of rainfall had filled the bodega with water.
The caretaker followed close behind as I wandered through each room, searching for traces of the lives that intertwined there but finding only memories.
“This is where the dining table used to be. We’d have lunch here every Sunday,” I told him, trying not to let the stories pour out of me all at once.
I wondered if he knew that the crumbling old house was once the finest on the block with its mid-century elegance: high ceilings, adobe sandstone walls that withstood earthquakes and typhoons, and jalousie windows that looked out into a lush tropical garden.
Ala Paredes' grandparents' house. Source: Supplied
When my grandparents erected the sprawling build in the 1960s, they built it not only for their 10 growing children but for the 20 grandchildren that would one day come.
I always thought of Lola’s house as an extension of my own home, a sentiment shared by all my cousins, even the ones that would visit from America.
Ala Paredes' mum with her siblings. Source: Supplied
Every Sunday, rain or shine, at least three generations gathered at the twenty-seater table for a lunch banquet that stretched well into the afternoon.
Afterwards, my cousins and I would raid the not-so-secret cabinet where Lola kept an unlimited supply of chocolate just for us.
During the summers, Lola would let us sleep over, leaving hot, buttery pan de sal and chocolate chip cookies for us on her linoleum kitchen counter.
Ala Paredes with one of her cousins. Source: Supplied
Afterwards, we would roam the large property unsupervised, climbing the rock fountain and throwing pebbles, picking bougainvillea by the handful, and playing hide and seek in the spooky old bodega.
As a child, I spent hours rummaging through every drawer, cupboard and closet in the house, discovering hidden treasures: Lola’s old hair pieces, shoes and dresses, faded photographs, and unused pairs of eyeglasses. One of our greatest archaeological finds was in the bodega where we unearthed tinned food rations from World War II, still intact!
But the house’s lifeblood were its people: Lola in her art studio painting with Chinese brush and ink, while she let me make my own painting on the floor; Lolo falling asleep at the lunch table; my Titos and Titas who regularly watered their nephews and nieces with kind loving attention.
Together, we gathered in the house to celebrate baptisms, birthdays, weddings, Easters and Christmases.
Until one day, in my late teens, the house’s twin hearts ceased to beat: both my grandparents passed away, just a few years apart, in the home that they built.
With Lolo and Lola gone, the house began to die, too. It was soon boarded up and my family moved to Australia.
Ala Paredes with her grandpa. Source: Supplied
I babbled these stories to the caretaker, attempting to make the house come alive for him, but he showed only mild interest. I gave him my thanks and left.
A year after that visit, the house was donated to a religious institution who tore it down and built a convent in its place.
I saw the new structure once, but it didn’t seem real. Deep in my psyche, Lola’s house, my ancestral home, still waits for me just around the corner, as real as brick and mortar.
And thus, I realised that a home doesn’t have to exist to be real. Though its walls no longer stand, I carry it within me, the place where I was welcome, safe and loved.
In my ancestral home, the past and the present existed magically at once, giving me a sense that I belong to a story that began long before I was born. Even as I’ve made my way out into the world, I know where my roots lie.
My Australian children will never know my ancestral home. But year after year, I will drag them back to the Philippines to stay in my parents’ house where I grew up.
Ala Paredes' family. Source: Supplied
A meaningful connection to their past is one of the greatest gifts I can give them as they go forward and define the next generation of Australians.
