Maligayang Bati, Mama Helen! HBD
Maligayang Bati, Mama Helen! HBD
A birthday letter to my mother-in-law, Elenita "Mama Helen" Baluyut Garcia — and a 2007 photograph from Vallejo I still smile at every time I find it.
Maligayang Bati po, Mama Helen! Happy birthday. Somewhere in Valencia, Bukidnon today, I'm guessing the table is full — most of your apo are there, and I know my three musketeers, Nica, Chesca, and Jian, wouldn't have missed it for anything. I wish I could've made the trip too. Since I couldn't, I wanted to give you this instead: a page, and a photograph that's been sitting in my archive for almost twenty years.
This one is from November 2007, when you and Rowena flew in from the Philippines and stayed with us through Thanksgiving and into early December — mostly to spend time with Bebot, Rowena's eldest, who was living with us that season. The photo was taken after Mass at St. Basil in Vallejo, the church where Tess and I were married for the third time, back in April 2000. Left to right: you, Tess carrying Chesca, Bebot and Rowena. Standing in front, grinning like they'd just gotten away with something, are Jian and Nica.
A three-times-married-couple story like Tess' and mine — Philippines, Reno, then a full church wedding at St. Basil the following year — is more common in Fil-Am families than people assume. Paperwork, visas, and a proper Mass rarely land on the same date, so the family collects the ceremonies instead of choosing just one.
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Bati — BAH-tee
A greeting or well-wish. "Maligayang Bati" is the phrase Filipinos reach for on a birthday — not just "happy birthday," but something closer to "happy greetings to you," offered with the whole hand, not just the words.
A Farm in Bukidnon, a House in Vallejo
You and Antonio raised Tess in Valencia, Bukidnon, down in Mindanao, before she ever set foot in Quezon City for high school. By the time she and I were building a life together in California, you were already the kind of Lola who got on a plane. Not every grandmother does. Some can't, some won't, some just never get asked. You came anyway, more than once, and that November 2007 visit is the one I have the clearest photographic record of — because it's the one where you, Rowena, and Bebot were all under our roof at the same time, and I had a camera in my hand at church that Sunday.
That's really what this photo is about. Not the vestments or the church steps, but the fact that for a few weeks that fall, three generations of this family were breathing the same Vallejo air. Bebot got to grow up a little with her Lola nearby. Jian and Nica got an apo relationship that wasn't just a video call. Tess got her mother and her ate in the same kitchen for Thanksgiving. And I got a photograph I still can't look at without smiling.
Time flies. It really does, Mama Helen. Jian and Nica in that photo are barely toddlers. Today they're grown, and Chesca — the baby Tess is holding — is a nurse.
What the Apo Carry Forward
Filipino families run on kapwa — the sense that your well-being and mine were never really separate to begin with. A Lola who flies across an ocean to sit with her apo for a season isn't just visiting; she's making sure the thread doesn't thin out between Valencia, Bukidnon and Vallejo, California. I think about that every time I look at this photo. You didn't just come to see Bebot. You came, and in coming, you gave Jian, Nica, and later Chesca a grandmother who was more than a name on a birthday card.
PinoyBuilt exists, in part, so my children have a place to find moments like this one after I'm gone — not just told to them, but shown, dated, and placed. This is one of those. Somebody, someday, is going to open this page and see their Lola Helen young again, standing outside a church in Vallejo with her daughter and her grandchildren, twenty years before they were born.
Maligayang Bati, Po
So: more birthdays, Mama Helen. More blessings. Enjoy today with everyone who made it — and give my regards to the whole family in Valencia, Bukidnon. I'm with you all in spirit, even if the ticket didn't happen this time.
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J.F.R. Perseveranda
J.F. (Jonjo) left the Philippines at age nine, spending a lifetime bridging the gap between his Marikina roots and his Chicago/Vallejo upbringing. A proud Hogan Spartan from East Vallejo and resident of LA/SF, he founded PinoyBuilt not just as a digital archive, but as a cultural compass for his three children to navigate their heritage, language, and identity with Pinoy Pride.
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