Happy Birthday Momsy :)

It’s Inay’s birthday today and I couldn’t just let the day pass without writing something about it. I called her the minute Clara and I woke up and Clara sang happy birthday to her and said I love you even. I also texted her that I will always love her enormously, long after all her teeth fall out.

She’s not exactly the ideal mother. She swears way too much for a toddler’s impressionable ears. She also acts like an overgrown bully - or a thug, more like – easily losing his temper at our maids and pets and neighbors, and getting into frightening  rages even before the term was invented. But for all her imperfections, she never made me feel anything other than unquestionably and unfailingly loved, and sometimes that’s all you need from a mother.

One of my favorite childhood memories is going to the market with her, mainly for the part where she buys me gulaman at sago and bibingka, and when we get home would whip up chopsuey or sinigang na spare ribs or pinakbet or tortang dilis. I don’t know why she chose to take me over Ehye and Idad. Maybe bcoz I’ve always been a good girl and can be counted on not to throw a tantrum while she haggled over some fish or the other. (Yes, believe it or not, I was a good girl. I transformed into a maldita only much, much later.) There was also the time when the entire country was having all these blackouts, so at night she’d take this lounge chair that we had just outside the gate and tell me stories about her childhood and youth.

What amazes me most about Mom is that I learn new things from her everyday. It could be something completely useless to me like a historical fact or medical data or whatever, or something really practical and wise like where to buy export overrun ceramics or the best Chinese take-out.  I never saw her sit down with a book but she has talked to me about classic lit like Doctor Zhivago and stuff by W. Somerset Maugham. We could also enjoy together the no-brainer antics of Indiana Jones and Luke Skywalker. She’s always up-to-date with current events, including showbiz matters. Just when I thought she couldn’t possibly be hiding anything else up her sleeve, she learned how to text, more than six months from the time she started using a cellfone. I almost fainted when I got my first SMS from her.

What I love best about her is that she’d always made me feel that she was happy with me just as I was - even back when I was just a little girl holding on to her hand while we went to market – and that I didn’t have to be anything to please her. She never made me feel like I failed her even when I was never really the achiever type. I even overheard her talking to her friends about how I gave up in the name of motherhood my high-profile  overseas career to a low-paying job as if  it was something that made her proud. Sometimes you need a parent to validate the choices you make, and to reassure you that, hey, you’re not doing too badly.

What I really admire about her is her simplicity. I don’t think being rich or powerful has ever been in her agenda. In fact, the one retirement dream she keeps mulling about involves a hut in the middle of a farm in Batangas and spending the rest of her days on earth caring for the orchids.

She need never read this blog to know that I love her back, that I would kill tigers for her.