The accidental Assumptionista

In celebration of the Assumption Alumnae Association’s 50th year, it is encouraging all alumnae to share their “AC (Assumption Convent) story.”

Last Tuesday, I shared the AC story of Gina Bautista Martin, who found her life’s calling working among the farmers in Negros Occidental. She called the farm, her “corner of the sky.”

Gina’s work among sugar farmers has had exponential results. I can only look up to her with awe.

Today, I’d like to share with you my own AC story.

* * *

 Was it serendipity?

I was already set to start nursery school at another Catholic girls’ school in Quezon City when fate intervened and decreed that the fabric of my life was going to be plaid. You see, my father, Frank Mayor, was assigned suddenly by his office to Iloilo City. Change of school plans for me. Nay, change of life’s plans.

In Iloilo, my parents’ new friends recommended that they send me to the Assumption Convent, a school no relative in both my parents’ sides of the family was a graduate of. But trusting in their friends’ recommendation, my parents took me to the Assumption Iloilo campus — a charming school whose colonial buildings were shaded by majestic acacia trees and had a view of a pristine river. My mom Sonia took me by the hand and led me to a classroom with gaily painted kiddie chairs, and smiling nuns. I felt right at home.

Thus started my journey with the Assumption Convent, a journey that took me to Assumption Iloilo for five years, Assumption Herran for three years, Assumption Antipolo for a year, and Assumption San Lorenzo for three years.

Whew. No, I’m not in the habit of jumping schools — it’s just that after five years, Dad was reassigned to Manila, and off to Assumption Herran I was sent. Assumption Herran was sold to the Gokongweis (it’s now Robinsons Ermita), and a new Assumption campus was built in the verdant hills of Antipolo. Wherever Assumption went in the next decade, I followed.

After graduating grade school in Antipolo, my batch went to another campus, in San Lorenzo Village in Makati.

* * *

Though circuitous, my journey with the Assumption always had a clear direction. St. Marie Eugenie, a French nun who founded the Religious of the Assumption, believed that, “To educate  is to transform the world.” And somehow, the nuns made many of us believe we were part of the platoon that was going to effect this transformation — whether we ended up housewives or rocket scientists or both.

After we learned our ABCs, we were peppered with “Vs” — values. It was while I was at the Assumption, with our immersion programs in poor communities and outreach programs in orphanages and public schools, that I learned by heart what Spider-Man only articulated recently: “With great power comes great responsibility.”

A good education — which we were being given — was and is power. Every day, it was opening new doors for us. It was ensuring a life of privilege for most of us when we became adults. I knew then that an Assumption education on my resume was going to land me a good job (it has), it was going to give me courage when I stood on a podium somewhere (it still does), it was going to give me confidence when I met my future mother-in-law (it sure did).

At the Assumption, I knew that the privilege of a good education had to be paid forward, even before it could be given back. My father burned the midnight oil to send all his four daughters to Assumption, but the price of being an Assumption girl was not the fees he paid for our diploma. The price of being an Assumption girl was  — and still is — the constant striving one has to do to be deserving of the privilege.

In school, they taught us, “Noblesse oblige.” In French, “noblesse oblige” literally means, “nobility obligates.”

It is the idea “that someone with power and influence should use their social position to help other people.” Of course, I’ve never thought of myself as nobility, though I used to daydream in grade school that I would someday be a Kennedy. But I knew that though my family was of modest means, that I was privileged to have been given an Assumption education. Nobility isn’t just a title, or social class. Yes, it connotes “means.” The means to be able to help transform society with the tools given to you by your education.

* * *

Being an Assumption girl had its challenges when I was starting my career. Some people used to think that AC girls had nothing between the ears, only diamonds dangling from them. Some people scoffed that AC girls thought life was a walk while “making tusok-tusok fishballs” in the park.

I think all that is changed now — Tessie Sy Coson and Nedy Tantoco  are Assumption girls, Senators Loren Legarda and Grace Poe, to name but a few.

As for me, I have not stopped trying to be deserving of the privilege of my Assumption education. Second only to my parents, it was the Assumption nuns and teachers who molded me into what I am today, and my gratitude is spelled hopefully in the way I live my life.

Given the gift of being able to express myself in writing, I have tried to use that gift, not really to transform the world, but to ignite little transformations here and there. One reader who transforms from being discouraged to inspired because of what she has read in my column  — that is already  one big transformation to me.

* * *

Sometimes, I wonder if it was really just by accident that I became an Assumption girl.

I’d like to think that it was really meant to be.

(You may e-mail me at  [email protected].)