I ACCIDENTALLY put my shirt on backward today.
I decided to just leave it like that, the superstitious part of me believing that it is a good way to shake bad spirits off my tail. It could also be because I don’t really care about how I look anymore after being in quarantine for so long. My superstitions don’t end there though. I tend to knock on the walls whenever I walk in the darkness to let spirits know that I am passing by. I excuse myself when passing through tombstones in the cemetery, apologizing if I accidentally step on one. It’s actually quite normal for my family to practice these rituals.
Despite these superstitions, no one in my family was ever afraid. As a kid, my mother would reassure me that they were good spirits whenever I was afraid of ghosts in our house. I can tell, even then, that she fully believed that. No spirits will harm me as long as I pay my respects to them.
I’ve grown up a bit now; the rational part of me downplays these thoughts and practices. After all, I don’t adhere to any religious practices. If ever I do see a demon, what am I going to do? My guardian angel would probably huff and go back upstairs because I forgot how to pray the rosary. I still let these superstitions guide me though. For the most part, they are quite harmless. It costs me nothing to be kind to wandering souls should they actually be there.
More than acts of kindness, these bits of superstition are rooted in both culture and history. I wasn’t the only kid in class who told my classmates to choose a number from one to 26 whenever someone bit their tongue. It’s always fascinating to see that these rituals are shared with other Filipinos, albeit with variations depending on where they’re from. It is as if we all carry small pieces of culture and history with us, passed on by our elders.
As Filipinos, we also tend to define family history and legacy with names and occupations. My grandfather was Vicente Perez and he was an engineer. My mother was Vivian Mangaluz and she was a bank manager. These are true but they were also so much more.
For me, these superstitions are a unique remembrance of my family history. These rituals that my mother unconsciously taught me to do are habits that my grandparents also instilled within her.
The superstitious habits they passed on to me revealed something about them that documents never could. They told me that my grandfather probably didn’t want to go bald or crazy by sleeping with wet hair (It didn’t work because he was already balding during his early years). My mother most likely welcomed guests if someone dropped a spoon or fork, because she never dropped a knife to cancel the visit. These rituals were small things that revealed what they believed and valued.
It’s not that I want my descendants to remember me as the paranoid tita (aunt). I only wish to somehow carry these small legacies, and to pass them on if I can. On the off chance that there are duendes and other bad spirits following my family, it’s a nice reminder that there are good spirits with us.
