To Flora Suico, my mother, wherever you may be

I am not a superstitious guy although, as a Filipino, I cannot help but be exposed all my life to superstitions here and there. Early yesterday as I was having my morning coffee, a brown butterfly came fluttering briefly around me before my army of cats chased it away. I was always told, and expected to believe, that such rare visits are by departed spirits, usually close relatives, incarnated by design as non-scary butterflies.

Yesterday, November 24, was the birthday of my mother, Flora Suico, of Wireless, Mandaue City. She died in 1963, just a couple of weeks after I turned 10. Clearly, there is not much I can remember her by other than that she was a loving, kind-hearted and soft-spoken woman well-liked by those who knew her. Born in 1922, she would have turned 100 yesterday. Maybe she was indeed the butterfly who came for such a special day.

I am one of three children she bore with my father, Teodoro Tundag of Cabadiangan, Compostela. My elder brother Frederick and younger brother Mario both died in infancy. What sibling relations I lacked, my mother had plenty. In fact, too plenty she probably never got to know all of them up close and personal. Flora was one of 26 children sired by Teodoro Albano through different women he never married.

At this point let me digress to ask for the indulgence of the reader if I might bore them with a very personal matter. This does not happen very often but Arlene the wife insisted that I have never once written about my mother so that her 100th birth anniversary, even if she is no longer among the living, would be the perfect time to remember her for posterity and to mark the occasion. So here we are and thank you.

I do not know how to explain the brood of 26 to which my mother belonged. From the bits and pieces I gathered at a very young age, my grandfather Teodoro Albano was a train employee of the old Cebu railway that ran the length of Cebu Island. Given that Cebu is a very small place, my wife theorized that many of the women who bore him children must have known one another, lived not far from each other.

Some of these women were probably even "repeat offenders" as my grandmother Timotea Suico certainly was, bearing for Teodoro Albano not only my mother but also her only full sister, Beatriz. I think but am not fully sure that there are others in the 26 who are also full siblings (same father and mother) although most are just half-brothers/sisters. Teodoro Albano must have been very endearing and irresistible to women.

Flora was a teacher, a graduate from the University of San Carlos teachers college and taught at USC South in Dumanjug, Cebu. She was a beauty, was a barangay queen and a Women's Auxiliary cadet sponsor. She introduced me to the Classics by way of a subscription to Classics Illustrated. She also had papers delivered daily, opening my eyes early to the written word.

Aside from Flora and Beatriz, Timotea had another child, a son named Florentino, who was not by Teodoro Albano but by Jose Montayre. Jose, however, went on to marry Timotea's sister Arcadia. To his dying day, Florentino never learned to forgive his father for the "left turn." The song "Shame and Scandal in the Family" by Trini Lopez was probably inspired by stories like these and times such as those.

If I am to measure my mother by human standards, she would deserve to be in God's grace in heaven. She taught me what conscience always considers right: Be home before Angelus, never eat your errand on the way home, never be late, never interrupt adults talking, say please/give thanks/respect elders, be in your Sunday's best for Mass, etc. And I can't end this without saying she made the best clay pot humba ever.