My two mothers

In our culture, it’s not unusual to regard someone as our own mother other than the woman who bore us in her womb. Such is my case. I grew up in a home with two mothers.

For us siblings – we call ourselves the four D’s and the two L’s – it didn’t matter who our biological mother was. As Mommy is wife to Daddy, Nanay is Daddy’s Ate, her older sister. They both survived the war. Their two other sisters died young. Questions were not asked why Nanay and her two L’s left Manila to live with us in Sorsogon. What mattered was our family expanded.

Mommy bore me and my three other siblings in her womb. She patiently nursed me with her milk for, by her recollection, what seemed like forever. She tells of my distaste for commercial milk. When I became a mother, my daughter resisted the first drop of formula. My daughter fed on my breast milk until she was almost four years old. My mother gives a hearty laugh at this sense of deja vu. As if in vengeance, she once teased me, I had paid her my dues.

I was five when I became aware of Nanay’s considerable role in the family hierarchy. She called the shots and ran the household while my parents busied themselves as public school teachers. Nanay barely made it to Grade 2, unlettered my father guesses, but by my yardstick Nanay was a chief strategist – with meager budget she could whip up nourishing meals for a family of nine; a master chef – her kare-kare from scratch is an heirloom recipe; a seamstress – she stitched dresses out of retasos for us girls, and a very talented singer. She loved Pilita Corales songs but the most memorable song I heard her belt out was “You’re my Everything,” her lullaby for my baby brother. If she was unlettered, how could she have sung lines like “you’re my everything, the sun that shines above you makes the blue bird sing…” in impeccable English? Functional literacy is a concept I learned from graduate school. Nanay epitomized what it meant to be functionally literate.

My two mothers were born worlds apart. Mommy to parents who pampered their unica hija, bought her fine clothes and jewelry and sent her to Manila for college. She reminisces her love for literature, how she enjoyed reciting Shakespeare’s sonnets but detested mathematical equations. As a student she spent weekends with friends in Escolta, the in place of her generation. During sem breaks, she was permitted to vacation with friends in Baguio but not in Hong Kong.

Nanay was dissuaded from going to school. There was no need, she was told emphatically, because girls would marry anyway. The birthright of going to college was given to Daddy the male child. Nanay went to Manila not to study but to earn a living.

She got married at 16, raised children and lived a colorful life replete with fascinating subplots that would pass for a blockbuster telenovela. In what appears like an urban legend, Nanay regaled us of how she singlehandedly rescued my then four-year-old younger sister and barely seven-month-old baby brother when a huge fire hit Sorsogon. Daddy was attending a Boy Scouts jamboree in Laguna, Mommy was in school and so were we, the older children. The fire quickly engulfed our newly renovated ancestral home built on solid narra, fitted with capiz windows and furnished with antique fixtures. Nanay told of how she succeeded to unlock a drawer containing Mommy’s valuables, dragged the refrigerator out of the house and still managed to punch a looter who attempted to steal our belongings. Nanay was barely five feet tall and quite stocky but her strength would put Linda Carter, the Wonder Woman of their time, to shame.

While we temporarily stayed in a relative’s house, Mommy swiftly worked on a mortgage for a modest two-bedroom home, far from the spacious five-bedroom house we had. In the face of tragedy, my two mothers stood as the sturdiest pillars, while we literally rebuilt our lives from the ashes. The humble dwelling would for many years stand witness to the monsoons and summers, Holy Weeks and Christmases, successes and ordeals in between of our family with two mothers.

There was never a rivalry between them. I sensed it when they talked about their favorite subject: in whispers, whimpers and impish laughters. When this happened, Daddy who was usually seated within hearing distance would cough, yawn or pretend to read the newspaper intently.

Nanay passed away six months after my parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. My Kuya and his wife, who lovingly took care of Nanay from the time of her illness until she breathed her last, talked of how she struggled then died peacefully.

In our family portrait at my parents’ golden wedding, Nanay was already holding a cane. If I were to caption her picture it would be this: in my illness I am vulnerable but surrounded by my loved ones I am invincible.

Invincibility is a trait I try to emulate from my two mothers. This aspect of their character is what perhaps sustains and endlessly inspires me, both as a mother and as a human being. I know that from strength love flows – boundlessly.

When interviewed by The New York Times three months ago upon the death of his mother who died at 98, rock and roll superstar Bruce Springsteen quoted these lines from his memoir: “Through my mother’s spirit, love and affection, she imparted to me an enthusiasm for life’s complexities, an insistence on joy and good times and the perseverance to see the hard times through.”

I am convinced that my two mothers had likewise imparted the same to us. Maybe in their distinct ways, but certainly in ways too deep, only a mother’s heart would know.