Let’s Stay Together, Joss Ecleo

By Mikael Rizada Borres

Quotes and dialogue have been edited and/or shortened for clarity and length.

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Joss Chary Borj Ecleo was either six or seven years old when his parents separated. 

When asked why his father and mother separated, all Joss wanted to share was that each parent’s needs changed as they grew. Not only did they grow, they thought it would be best to grow apart. They had “different goals,” Joss tried to explain without giving much detail. “They weren’t on the same page anymore, so that’s why they separated.”

But Joss could narrate the earliest memory of him knowing his parents were separating. “I remember getting in a car. They [Joss’ parents] were in the front seat, they were talking about something. Then, we went to this place. They basically had to sign papers, and what I remember vividly was somebody asking me where I wanted to stay. It was either my dad or my mom.  

“And I was closer to my dad at the time, so I was like, ‘I’m staying with my dad.’”

Joss did not choose his dad knowing he would be spending the rest of his life with his father’s side of the family. He thought that he won a “vacation” with the parent he felt closest to at the time.

“So when that happened, I didn’t really have an idea of, ‘OK, my parents are separated,’” Joss said, stressing the word “separated.”

Joss’ “Broken” Family

Joss finds it difficult to explain his household to others, opting to give them an abridged version of the story. He tells them that he belongs to a “broken family,” and he holds no fondness for the term. However, he has found the usage of the label par for the course considering the long-standing – and rather narrow-minded – norm of what a family ought to look like: a dad, a mom, and their offspring, and everyone loving each other to no end. Society seems to brand a family as “broken” if they have, willingly or accidentally, crashed away from this outdated norm.

After finalizing the separation, Joss’s mother moved away from Surigao del Norte, where Joss and his father have lived at since. Since then, his parents have been leading different lives, creating their own families and having children with their newfound partners. The main string still tying those two people together is their son Joss, a product of a love that ceased to exist.

Living with his father, Joss found people who cared for him and who got their care reciprocated by Joss. Though Joss may be a half-sibling of his father and stepmother’s children, Joss can express how his stepmother and half-siblings treat him like a full-blooded son and brother. Whilst his father worked outside Surigao in some years of Joss’ youth, his aunt bankrolled his childhood and adolescence, and his lola nurtured Joss. “I’m very close with my lola [grandmother] and tita [aunt]. They’re basically the ones who raised me,” said Joss. 

The kind of affinity Joss developed with his father and his new family cannot be said for Joss’ distant relationship with his mother. The last time he saw his mother was in 2016, when he attended one of his stepsister’s graduation. The stepsibling is from his mother’s side.

“A little awkward” is the phrase he used to describe his last conversations with his mother, recalling the questions that were running through his head as they attempted to converse.

But Joss asked the wonder that reigned supreme in his mind to his mother: Mommy, why didn’t you reach out?

Joss’ mother could have tried reconnecting with him, but as he learned from her, she failed to muster up the strength and courage to do so. For almost a decade before she saw her son again, the guilt of leaving Joss choked her.

One instance from his junior high school days stands out for him when asked about moments of him questioning his circumstances. “I vividly remember – this is a cute story, kind of,” Joss prefaced. “Basically, I was going home, riding the car, and I saw a tricycle in front of me, and there’s this kid who was crying. There was a mom consoling the kid. I was around junior high school, and I looked at that, and I was like, ‘Aw.’ You know?”

To this day, Joss ponders the relationship between him and his mother that could have been. He does not bear spite or resentment towards her as he appreciates the reasons behind his parents' separation. But a tinge of longing sits within him. “There’s an unexplainable connection that I want to be able to explore with my mom,” Joss shared. “With my dad, I’ve gotten the chance to get to know my dad, but I also want to get the chance to get to know my mom and to know who she is as a person. It’s just that it’s something that I need to check.”

When asked what he would ask his mother if he had the chance to talk with her once again, Joss replied with a simple question: “How have you been?”

Toys With Tita

Joss acknowledges he was, in his own words, a “devious” child growing up, placing himself into “very sketchy” situations. He brawled against other kids in his neighbourhood through a street fight; he fired his luthang (a Filipino bamboo toy gun) behind enemy lines during the “putok wars” (shooting wars) he fought with his childhood friends. At the end of the day, he’d come home with bruises all over his body, which he timidly remembers as his “war scars.” His lola scolded him for his antics, never pleased when seeing his “war scars.”

“One time, I was with my tita for the summer in Manila. She was a flight attendant before, so she had a bag. And then, she basically went to work with her bag that had her flight attendant stuff. When she and her bag went through the X-ray, the guard laughed.”

The airport guard told Joss’ tita to check her bag herself. When she opened her bag, none of her work-related items were in the bag. Instead, she saw Joss' toys. Joss thought it would be hilarious to replace all of the stuff his tita had in her bag with all his toys. “It was so funny at the time, I guess.”

When his tita came home, Joss saw the anger he had drawn on her face and expected an uproar from her. But she held onto the bag and took some of Joss’ toys out of her bag, then asked Joss, “Did you put these in my bag.” Joss admitted. Whilst acknowledging his fault to his tita, he waited for him to get an earful from her.

“You know what she did? She sat with me on the couch and said, ‘OK. Let’s play.”

Joss continued: “I was like, ‘Huh?!’”

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Joss confesses to being “all over the place.” Back in Surigao, aside from hitting the textbooks, he pushes himself into different depths. He dabbled in dancing and singing and joined local pageants. In college, given the larger variety of opportunities available in Cebu City, he continues to explore various would-be passions unrelated to his aspirations in his academic field of computer science.

However, Joss worries his involvement with the many student organizations within and outside his university may just be a futile attempt at branching out, “wasting time” that could have been spent on ideas and pursuits more aligned with the future he aims for himself. A “So?” would be his tita’s response. “‘She told me, ‘You don’t really waste time by doing things you genuinely enjoy.’” 

Joss tries to accept his tita’s affirmations, but the notion of him “wasting time” in vain still rings true to him. His tita would respond along the lines of, “‘You’re having fun. Just do that, continue doing that. As long as you’re enjoying it, so be it.”

Looking For Lola

Young Joss had attachment issues when it came to his grandmother. His lola, then a part of the politics of Dinagat Islands (as many in the Ecleo clan are) as a provincial board member, travelled between Surigao City and the islands every week through the hour-long ferry ride. She worked in her constituency for most of the week, then came home to Joss on the weekends. Joss, however, wanted his lola’s presence on the daily. 

Throughout his childhood, he had more than ten different nannies. He “purposely acted like a spoiled brat” and drove many of them out of their jobs with his “devious” stunts, forcing his lola to spend more time with him as she searched for a replacement. “I remember, back then, there was a period when they couldn’t really find a nanny for a lot of weeks.

“And I remember how my lola would really go out of her way to go home every day in the evening, to just be with me. One of my relatives would look out for me during the day, and then my lola would arrive at nighttime,” said Joss. “And my lola would really spend time travelling from Dinagat to Surigao in the night. Then, in the morning, she would attend a session, so she’d have to wake up early and then travel from Surigao to Dinagat. I could see the effort that my lola was trying to make to take care of me.”

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Parents and guardians are bound by a dichotomy – good cop, bad cop. When a parent or guardian has the honour of being called the “good cop,” he or she tends to be more conciliatory, providing the other person with a haven for comfort. Joss’s tita, as he sees her, gets the “good cop” label. “She’s the person I can go to and I can ramble about my life,” Joss describes. “And my tita’s soft. She consoles me and stuff like that. She’s the understanding, chill type.”

Joss’ lola, in his own words, is the “bad cop,” but not because of some dictatorial tendencies she possesses to constrict her grandson. She’s a bad cop because she’s all in on “tough love.” She does possess lofty standards for his grandson to persevere for, expecting Joss to aim for the academic summit and be in the constant grind of hitting the textbooks.

As the second youngest child out of nine siblings in an aspirational working-class family, his lola learned the value of hard work as she strived for the life she wanted. “I got my work ethic from her because when I was growing up, she’d always be the type of parental figure who would tell me to not settle for less when I know I can do more.”

We Are Family

I asked Joss, “Have you ever thought about them not being in your life?”

“Yeah,” Joss replied, “especially with my lola.

“I remember this one time when we were eating dinner, and then my lola likes to joke around, saying, ‘Joss, make sure you’re going to be acting right because I’ll be gone.’ And of course, it’s just a joke. And of course, I laugh with my family about it. But deep down, it’s a really scary thought because all my life, they [Joss’ tita and lola] have been there. I think it would be very hard to navigate my life without them. My tita and lola guided me throughout my life, and they’re the strong pillars that I can really cling on to whenever times are tough.”

Having discussed how Joss hopes for a deeper bond with his mother, make no mistake: he does not seek reconnection to fill any void she might have left in him. For every lament of a lost maternal connection, he inserts an extensive verbal passage of gratitude for his lola and tita, his caretakers for most of his youth. 

One thing he memorializes about his tita and lola is their bond, which is so strong that its presence remains to be felt regardless of the distance from one another. “Growing up – looking back now, in retrospect – I never really felt away from them. They would always organize gatherings with my friends, give my yaya [nanny] money to take me and my friends out somewhere,” Joss recalled.

“With my lola and tita, they were always busy, but even though I was almost always left at home with my yaya, I could always feel that they were looking after me, even from far away,” 

As he reflects on his parents’ separation, he can say that he understands why his parents had to part ways. More notably, he does not find any need to resent his parents because he’s “lucky” to have his tita and lola, who gave Joss his home.

When asked about how he views his family situation, he does remember his childhood impulses of comparing what others had and what he did not have. “Looking back at it, I looked at my friends I grew up with during big school activities, when they give out the medals, it was either the mom or the dad with you getting those things. And for me, it was kind of weird because it was my lola or my tita.

“But when I looked at it, I kind of thought, ‘OK. They have their mom and dad, I have my lola and tita. It’s just kind of different but also kind of similar, in a way. I never really thought about it that much. I just knew my situation was different, but I never  thought about it like ‘Why is my situation like this?’

“I’m not really looking for anything more than the love and affection that my lola and tita have provided for me because that was enough for me.”

Joss and Mikael conducted an in-person interview on Saturday, July 8th, 2023.

Recommended Song: Let’s Stay Together - Tina Turner