And if you listen closely on calm nights, you can hear her on her boat, singing old Visayan folk songs to the sea, calling her father’s name into the waves—not in grief, but in greeting.
Florencia. (The water did not answer.) Nena. (A crab scuttled over her foot.) Singson. (The wind shifted.) Gonzalez-Belo. (Somewhere, a dog barked.) florencia nena singson gonzalez-belo
Florencia Nena Singson Gonzalez-Belo was born during a typhoon. The rain hammered the tin roof of the small clinic in Iloilo City, and the wind howled like a stray dog. Her mother, Luz, held her close and whispered, “Florencia. For the flowers. Nena, because you are the baby girl.” The long last names—Singson from her father’s Ilocano lineage, Gonzalez-Belo from her mother’s side—were a map of Filipino archipelago history: trade, migration, love. And if you listen closely on calm nights,
But her grandmother, Lola Belen, refused. “Your name is a prayer,” she’d say, shelling pistachios with her curved nails. “Every syllable is a candle for someone who came before you.” (A crab scuttled over her foot
“Just Nen,” she’d tell her teachers.
Growing up, Florencia hated her name. It was too long for scantron sheets, too heavy for a girl who just wanted to be called “Nen.”
“Just say it slowly,” she tells them. “Like you’re lighting a candle.”