I. Sugar and Stone

In the district of Jaro, where the cathedral bells

keep time for the living and the dead,

the Javellana and Lopez clans planted a tree

whose roots drank from Spanish decree,

Chinese trade, and Ilonggo soil.

From Manuel and Gertrudis came brick and faith:

Cristino, whose bricks built a city,

Marcelina, whose womb held the next generation,

Roberto, taken too soon,

Ruperto, who stepped in as father and provider,

David Jamili, who changed a letter

and carried a truth:

“They are our relatives.”

From Eugenio and Marcela came sugar and influence:

Gil “Tan Gil”, whose hacienda fed a clan,

Benito and Vicente, who married Hofilena sisters,

Presentacion and Elena,

daughters of a house whose name sometimes read Javelona,

sometimes Javellana,

binding the families tighter still.

And from that union rose Nelly Garden,

the Queen of Heritage Houses,

and Casa Mariquit,

the oldest stone voice in Iloilo,

where money once slept under hardwood floors

before it learned to rest in a safe.

II. The Violin and the Piano

In Cadiz, Negros, on a sugar hacienda called Faraon,

a child was born who would make a violin sing

in Carnegie Hall,

the first Filipino to stand alone on that stage

and draw beauty from four strings and a bow.

Gilopez Kabayao,

son of Dr. Doroteo (physician, violinist)

and Marcela Lopez (pianist, daughter of Tan Gil),

carried in his blood the rhythm of hacienda work,

the discipline of faith,

and the quiet pride of a clan that knew

how to turn wealth into art.

His mother, Marcela,

granddaughter of Eugenio Lopez and Marcela Villanueva,

sat at the piano and taught her children

that music, like land, must be tended,

that a phrase, like a harvest, must be earned.

The Kabayao family became a quartet,

then a legacy:

violins, cellos, pianos,

a house where scales rose like prayer,

where practice was not punishment

but promise.

III. One Tree, Many Branches

I write this in Walnut Creek,

thousands of miles from Santa Isabel Street,

from the Jaro Cathedral where Cristino sleeps,

from Nelly Garden where Vicente and Elena once walked,

from the hacienda where Marcela Lopez first touched the keys.

Yet I am there.

My father’s voice-“They are our relatives”,

is the same voice that whispered to Gilopez

as he lifted his bow to the lights of New York:

You belong to a larger story.

We are not the same branch.

I come from Manuel and Gertrudis,

through Cristino, Marcelina, Roberto, Ruperto, David Jamili.

He came from Eugenio and Marcela,

through Gil, Albina, Marcela, Doroteo, Gilopez.

But we grow from the same trunk:

Jaro’s stone and sugar,

faith and family,

the careful choreography of marriage,

the stubborn will to endure.

Let this be our family music:

not one instrument, but many;

not one line, but many;

all playing, in their own key,

the same old Ilonggo song:

*We are relatives.

We are relatives.

We are relatives.*

Amen.