Every family is, in the end, a river formed by two smaller streams. Mine began with two: the Colinas of Mandaue City and the Ybiernas of Pardo, Cebu City. For generations, they flowed separately, carving their own paths before they finally converged.
What follows is my attempt to trace those currents to their source, to the roots of my mother, Asuncion Colina, and my father, Artemio Ybiernas Sr. Long before they became my parents, they were children of their own families, shaped by the homes, traditions, and names that would one day become part of me.
For many years, their stories unfolded along separate paths, each following its own course. Then, in 1962, those paths met, and from that union began the family I have always called my own.
My Maternal Roots
My mother, Asuncion Colina, was affectionately known as Asyon, the nickname by which she was known throughout her life. She was the daughter of Domingo Colina and Joaquina Clarus Colina, whom we simply called Lola Aqui.
Domingo did not live to see his children grow up. They'd lost him while my mother was still in high school, leaving Lola Aqui to raise the family alone through years of hardship and resilience. She outlived him by decades, passing away in June 1986, shortly after I graduated from high school.
There is something quietly poignant in that coincidence, her life ended just as mine was beginning a new chapter.
My mother was the sixth of seven children: Demetrio, Nilo, Eduardo, Nestor, Rose, Asuncion, and the youngest, Erlinda. Seven siblings whose lives, as often happens, eventually took them in different directions.
My Aunt Rose's journey led her to Manila and, years later, to a battle with breast cancer. Her passing left a quiet grief that lingered among her siblings and throughout the family, a sorrow that was rarely spoken of but never truly faded.
Before she became my mother, Asuncion was a young woman finding her place in Mabolo, Cebu City, under the care of her aunt and uncle, Anacleta "Lola Cleta" Colina and Anastacio Colina. They gave her a home, guidance, and the stability that shaped her early adult years.
Both have since passed away. Lola Cleta spent her final years in the United States, far from Mabolo. I was fortunate to spend one summer vacation with her while she was still around here, a memory that makes the distance between those two places feel a little smaller.
The Ybiernas of Pardo
My father, Artemio Reponte Ybiernas Sr. or Temyong to those who knew him, was the son of Ireneo Ybiernas and Rosa Reponte Ybiernas, both from Inayawan, then still part of Pardo, Cebu City. Inayawan lay only about fifteen kilometers from my mother's home in Mabolo, close enough that, in hindsight, it seems almost inevitable their paths would one day cross. At the time, however, no one could have known.
To trace the Ybiernas family, one must begin with my great-grandfather, Rufino Ybiernas, affectionately known as Tatay Pinoy. His name was spoken with quiet reverence, the kind reserved for a family patriarch. My father never mentioned him casually; there was always the unmistakable respect due to a man who had built a life from humble beginnings.
Family memory tells us that Tatay Pinoy came to Cebu from either Guimaras Island or Iloilo City, a story passed from one generation to the next. No documents have ever confirmed it: no birth record, baptismal entry, or other trace that could firmly establish his origins. He remains one of the family's enduring mysteries, a door we inherited without a key.
Yet the connection to Panay was never completely lost. From time to time, people carrying the Ybiernas surname would appear from Iloilo or other parts of Panay, introducing themselves as relatives. Their presence offered a quiet reminder that when Tatay Pinoy crossed the waters, he may have left a place behind, but not every bond.
Whether those connections can ever be proven on paper remains uncertain. But the stories endure, and within a family, a story that survives across generations carries its own kind of truth.
He married Matea Gaviola, also of Inayawan, and together they raised seven sons who became the main branches of the Ybiernas family: Cornelio, Ireneo (my grandfather), Tranquilino, Luis, Sergio, Jose, and Teofilo. Of the seven, I remember Teofilo best. We called him Papa Filo. He was warm, gentle, and quietly kind, the sort of relative who naturally becomes part of my early childhood memories.
One or two of my father's uncles eventually settled in the United States, though what became of them was never fully known. Like many old family trees, ours has branches that disappear into the fog of time, leaving later generations to piece together the past from memory, faded photographs, and the unfinished stories shared around the family table.
The Union
As best as family memory recalls, and memory is the only witness left, my parents were married sometime in 1962 at St. Joseph Parish Church in Mabolo, Cebu City.
At the time, my mother worked at one of Cebu City's well-known department stores, while my father served in the Philippine Constabulary. She was a salesclerk; he was a soldier. She came from the Colinas of Mabolo, he from the Ybiernas of Pardo. They belonged to different families and different worlds until, one day, they became one.
Their marriage united two family lines that had quietly moved toward each other across generations, unaware their paths would one day meet. From that union came the family into which I was born and through this act of remembrance, the family story I hope to pass on.
These are the roots beneath me. I never met most of the people in these pages, and those I did know, I knew only as a child knows adults through their kindness, a faded photograph, or a name spoken with affection at the family table. Yet they shaped the two people who raised me long before I arrived, asking questions that only memory could answer.
0 comments:
Post a Comment