Origami Bones
Grandma would be up earlier than the sun. If I wake facing the window of my room, she'd be the first I'd see. Her back arched a little, a few strands of graying hair escaped her heart-studded clip. A hoe on her right hand, soiled with clay on the other. She'd be smiling while tending the garden as if the calamansi leaves were telling her a secret only she could hear. Then she'd turn her head passing her smile onto me for a good morning. She could always tell of my waking.
In late afternoons she'd tailor some sheets while I created some paper cranes. I started it since I'd learned that making a thousand would make a wish come true. Grandma would just let me without asking what it's for, and after dinner she'd string the finished cranes and double check my count.
At night grandma would sit on the upmost corner of my bed, still wearing the same smile from the early day. She'd pick up whatever book is on my nightstand, open the bookmarked page and say, "Come, come." I'd lay beside her. I'd tell her I'm too old to be read stories, but I'd let her anyway. I'd let her so I could hear the voice behind the smile, and all the while, wander my eyes on her aged skin that bore stories of its own.
One night I said, "Tell me of our story instead," and only then did her smile change. Mountain-heavy. As if both ends of her lips lifted all the sorrows of life.
That's how I knew. A speeding truck did not stop for the life of her daughter. I was the lone survivor. That's how I knew underneath her dress and aging skin are origami bones, creased and folded in the shape of my mother. And how her smile that had been my source of warmth concealed an unspeakable grief that for years were channeled to a love doubled for me who never knew that all along, she had always been my thousandth crane.
