Mother’s Day

Thirty years ago I joined an essay-writing contest for Quezon City high school students and won first prize for this piece, written when I was 15 years old. The judge was Pura Santillan-Castrence, whose sparkling essays I admired. I recently unearthed this while fixing my files. I am publishing this essays in memory of my late mother, Lilia Relato Remoto, and on the occasion of Mother’s Day.

It has been said that a mother’s hands shape the world. From cradle to college and even long afterward, a mother nags, laughs, cries, and goads you to be not just what you are but what you can be.

“Your mother belongs to the old school,” my father would say when we are baffled by her actions. She barks orders like a platoon sergeant, telling us children to fold our blankets, flatten our bed sheets and not to leave our dirty clothes on the floor like molten snake’s skin.

She also orders us to arrange our books, dust the windows, and sweep the leaves in the yard now that the maid has gone back to her hometown to join the fiesta and the baile (dance).

My mother is a worrisome woman who hates villains in soap operas, tends to her orchids as if they are diamonds, and plays well on our upright piano, which our father bought for her after they were married. She came from a musical family in Oas, Albay, and she required us to study the piano under her tutelage. When she has time, she installs herself in front of the piano and plays, her fingers running on the keys like swift spider’s legs.

Her warts of worry multiplied, though, when we all grew up to be lanky teen-agers. She thought it was a bad reflection on her, a home economics major who teaches music in school. She requires us to eat, and eat a lot. Since I am a rebel and always do the opposite of what my elders tell me to do, I ate less and less. She is a mean cook, all right, but sometimes, I would rather just sleep, or read, or watch TV.

Her exercise of motherhood is simple but not simplistic. She sticks to the essentials: study well, do not quarrel with each other, learn the house work, and keep away from bad company in the neighborhood and in school. Also, look both ways when you are crossing the street, do not poke fun at the disabled, and attend Sunday Mass.

Of course, she has her weak moments: she will frown when my father comes home late from work; she will frown when we come home late from school, and she will frown some more when the house maid takes hours to return from the market.

And she also talks a lot. I guess this happens, by reflex, from being a teacher. But I guess all these have made her more real, more human, and more alive for us.

We sometimes have our skirmishes. Being the eldest, I’ve been told to take care of my younger siblings until those words have clogged inside my ears like wax. Like most Filipinos, we are a tightly-knit group. But sometimes, I just want to climb the roof of our house and stay there, under the aratiles trees filled with their tiny, red fruits.

Sometimes I feel smothered, lost in the confusion of voices and faces and movements in the house. Sometimes, I just want a space where my spiky elbows can move about without hurting anyone. I just want to be alone, and not bothered by any one.

But when I get sick, my mother becomes a mother again. No more drama from my part about wanting some space and distance. My mother’s blurred outline becomes sharp once more, clear in my mind.

When my tonsils swell, like a fatal fever in my throat, she will rush to the room I share with my brother. She brings with her standard paraphernalia: blanket, rubbing alcohol, antibiotics, thermometer, and a glassful of lukewarm kalamansi juice that she herself squeezed.

She begins the ritual, naturally, with her scolding me for taking cold soft drinks, for letting sweat dry on my back. But after this, she settles back beside my bed, takes my temperature, shakes her head, pops a capsule into my mouth and washes it down with the lemony juice.

And then once again, I become the child, remembering the lullabies and the warm, gentle hands and not caring a bit if I am called, uh, a mama’s boy.

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I went to the University of Stirling in Scotland to take my M.Phil in Publishing Studies in 1990, which focused on editing, book production, and publications management. After my graduate degree, I immediately returned to the Philippines. I had two offers to take up my PhD at American universities, but I returned to be with my parents, who were both growing old, and my sister, Jenny, who has Down’s Syndrome.

A decade later, I was taking PhD subjects at Rutgers University on a Fulbright Scholarship, and just as quickly returned to the country after my studies. The call of serving the country and being with my family were too strong to be resisted. I stayed here and worked as Director of the Office of Research and Publications at Ateneo de Manila University, published my books of essays and poetry, and taught English, Creative Writing and Journalism at Ateneo.

I was here when my parents became sick and frail, going in and out of the Veterans Memorial Medical Center and the Philippine Heart Center. Before going to work as Communications Officer at the United Nations Development Programme in Makati, I would visit the hospital, and would do likewise, after my work in Makati.

When my father died on Oct. 19, 2009, I was devastated. But when my mother followed him to the grave a month later, I was quiet for a day. I chose her coffin and the room for her wake and everything, but only my mind was working. My heart, it had turned into a hole because everyone I loved was gone.

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