ate jenny and my grandmother

Sometimes there are people who, through no fault of theirs and no desire of ours, become an influence in our lives.  They become part of the reason why you're fucked up, or why you're a star in your own right.  And they don't know it.

I had Ate Jenny.  She was a first cousin on my mother's side.  She was already sort of grown-up when I was a teenager.  She lived in Manila, I lived in the mountains.  Back in those years when you only saw your relatives when there was a wedding or a funeral, I didn't know if she was a knockout or a nerd, but boy, they said she was smart.

My tyrannical grandmother brought me up.  She had high esteem for smartness.  She had respect for noble professions in medicine, law, accountancy, architecture, all those fields of study that could give you additional abbreviations before or after your given name.  Needless to say, she had the opinion that writers, designers, and poets die of hunger. She was a teacher (and so are both of my parents), so she thought teaching was nobler than all those professions combined, but she didn't want me to become one.  Lesson plans gave you prematurely white hair.

All my teenage years I heard about Ate Jenny.  She studied in Far Eastern University back then, and her grades were always wonderful.  She could write really well, even her sisters said so, and they would recall with misty-eyed fondness how her writing could touch their hearts.  My grandmother was usually quick to find fault in my mother's family, but she had a grudging admiration for Ate Jenny and how she was raised.

My grandmother said I was also smart.  Suspiciously, I was sent to Far Eastern University to study high school, and I was encouraged to write.  So I wrote letters to my grandmother every week, in English.  I wrote poetry.  I wrote short stories.  I wrote in my diaries.  I hid what I wrote.

Ate Jenny was in medical school then.  I would accompany her when she did her reviews.  I was impressed by the fact that you reviewed for the medical board exam by going to Parks and Wildlife, sitting on the grass, reading those thick books.  And then she passed the board.  Ninth place, I think.  Back home, my grandmother waxed ecstatic, as though she paid for the review sessions.  And when I went to college, she declared that I would take Psychology, which could lead-- in a roundabout way-- to Medicine.  Then she declared that I would take advance summer classes to hasten the college process, after which I was supposed to become a doctor.  Of course.  Like Ate Jenny.  I didn't know if I hated her, but she has unofficially become THE idol whose accomplishments I could unquestionably surpass, with a grandmother like mine.

Life interfered.  I didn't become a doctor.  I grew up, got married, had kids.  I still write.  Once upon a time Reader's Digest Asia published a story I wrote about my grandmother, and I know she would have been proud.  But every now and then I would start thinking, would my grandmother have been prouder if I had become like Ate Jenny?

Maybe.  But this is who I am now.  Ate Jenny is in the US, a heck of a doctor, and she praises what I write when she finds the time to read my blog.  I met her husband a couple of weeks ago, and he said that their daughter writes well too.  He said he told Jenelle to write me.  How about that?  It gives me a warm feeling.

If my grandmother was still alive now, and if she would mention that one could still study to become a doctor at 37 years old (and that she would pay for medical school)--- AND if Ate Jenny would second that, maybe I would.