Woman clutching her umbrella.

(From Philippine Daily Inquirer)

Byline: Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

SHE is the year-end image that continues to stay on my mind. She was on the national screen shortly before Christmas day. An elderly woman in a squatting position, looking down on her dead kin, then looking up in supplication to those around her. There she was, in her frail form, squeezing, wringing her folded umbrella with her hands. The mud outlines around her finger nails were dark enough for me to see. She had come from a muddy place where the earth cascaded like a river in a fit of rage, engulfing her village and taking away hundreds of lives, homes, farms, the scent of wild flowers and ripening fruit.

She could not muster a wail. Her weeping was faint, for that was all that her lungs could let out. But her hands looked strong and able, wrapped around her folded umbrella. These hands she used to dig earth, sow seeds, cut firewood, build fire, rock the hammock, bathe the babies and the beasts, move mountains. Suddenly mud and water poured on her village. Suddenly she was helpless and left with nothing. She lost the people that defined her home. She lost them to the mud.

Payong na sira-sira. It could not protect her from the rain. But the umbrella was all she could lean on now and use like a staff, a crutch. She wrung it like wet laundry as if this act, this movement could hasten the coming of tears and drain the pain from the deepest parts of her where she had stored her small dreams and village memories.

There is something about tattered umbrellas and people in distress who hold them folded and close to their chests that shake the boulders inside me. I once interviewed a bunch of long-term prison inmates for a couple of days and I remember this one prisoner who always came to the visiting hall with his wet umbrella. It was like his most prized possession.

I've always had a soft spot for the men who go around the city streets during the rainy season to repair umbrellas for a small sum. They carry with them skeletons of discarded umbrellas which are their source of spare parts. They shout, "Gumagawang payong!"