My Mother is a Martyr

My mother is the type of person you wouldn't want for a company. She gets impatiently easily. She dislikes waiting for a long time, queuing for a long time, standing for a long time, or walking for a long time. She also cannot stand people who can't get her right and fast. Once we went to a mall to look for a pair of gold-colored shoes she could wear for my grandparents' golden wedding anniversary. My mother asked a saleslady if the store has one that's fit for the occasion. The saleslady asked her back, "What's the motif of the wedding, Ma'am?"

 Mama didn't bother to hide her frustration, so she told the saleslady sarcastically, "Gold, alangan!" as if every golden wedding anniversary's motif must be gold.

Yet as I look back on how she raised our family and how she valiantly mend it when it's almost shattered into pieces three years ago, I realized she isn't so impatient at all. Quite the contrary.

Born and raised in Pantukan, Comval Province, Mama came to Davao City to study for college. She got a government scholarship which enabled her to enroll at the Ateneo de Davao University. She took up BS in Biology. Back then, tuition fee at ADDU was a measly 17.00 per unit. Even so, Mama could barely pay off her boarding house, so she eventually had to stop.

By the time she's out of school, she had already been dating my father. Soon they lived as husband and wife. They cohabited for a few years before they finally got married. That marriage produced four children, seven if you include the three miscarriages Mama suffered. Well, those unborn don't have civil personality, so let's settle for four.

Both my parents were poor, not below-poverty-line poor but everything they had screamed lower middle class. So to help Papa feed the four of us, send us to a decent school, and keep us from degenerating into flat worm-stricken malnourished kids, Mama tried her hand at a number of jobs. She delivered lumber, sand and gravel to construction sites.She put up a karinderya. She peddled cheap detergent soaps like Rinso door-to-door . She sold  native delicacies like suman, puto rice, biko, and kutsinta outside the church. Until now when only our youngest brother has yet to get his college degree, Mama showed no sign of letting up. Today she has a small laundry business that is about to die but still miraculously manages to stay alive.

Perhaps the biggest scourge she had to endure came in 2010. It was my graduation day. Visitors had already left. I don't know how, but she confirmed what she had suspected all along---my father was cheating on her. He has an "other woman," a mistress, a kabit. From then on, the situation only worsened. Their hushed confrontations turned into violent episodes of fistfight, hair-pulling, face-scratching, and head-banging-against-the-wall.

Call her naive, but Mama didn't just watch while the family she helped build crumble. She knew our family was falling apart. So why try to build it one more time? She did try anyway. She did some things people told her not do. She searched for Papa when he left the house. She went so far as to confront face-to-face the woman who seduced Papa. She mixed in Papa's coffee that potion which the quack-doctor whom she consulted gave her.

If I were a Pope, I would canonize my mother at once. If not, I would be the first one to scream "Santo Subito!"

I'm not sure if it was her dogged determination to rebuild our family, or her stubborn love for Papa, or the quack-doctor's potion, but after three years of coming home on-and-off, of promising to never leave again but welshing on that promise, Papa finally came home and never left anymore. Our family was whole again. Mama succeeded.

Then on December 4, 2013, Papa died . Upon his death, the wounds we've been nursing seemed to have been obliterated. Of course, Mama still longs for Papa. Before she didn't know Papa's whereabouts. Now she knows where to go. The chase is over at last.

Mama may not be the most patient mother in the world. She may hate waiting, queuing, standing, or walking for a long time. Yet she knew what all great mothers know---love takes time. No wonder she takes time in washing my clothes, sometimes including my underwear.