I didn’t go to church yesterday morning.  My son was competing in an extemporaneous speech contest in Bocaue, Bulacan.  It was an invitational meet and the original schedule was for Saturday, January 28, 2012. The event was rescheduled for Sunday.

My son wasn’t convinced that he should go and compete. He was disgusted with the last competition he was in. He won first place in the school-wide competition which gave him the right to represent the school in the district-wide competition. He won second place there and earned the right to compete in the division competition.  He won third place at that meet.

He was scared that there was ‘trend.” And that he might end up in fourth place this time. I told him it was ok.  He wasn’t competing to win, he was competing to hone his skill and to gain experience. He was unconvinced.  He said it wasn’t worth the effort.  What his Dad said two days before the competition nudged him to go. His Dad said, “Kahiyaan na yan, anak. Your school is expecting you to represent it. Their hopes are pinned on you.  Win or lose, you are their bet.”

We almost didn’t make it to the meet.  We left the house late and had minor vehicle mishaps along the way.  The faculty chaperon assigned to coordinate the event for the school’s competitors, Mr. Norman Companero, had to register for my son because we were late and registration was about to close. He was going to be the 17th speaker, the last to speak.

The sponsor of the event is the UP Lakan. It is an organization of students from UP Diliman who are all from the province of BuLAKAN. The top three winners in this competition will move on to compete in the nationwide extemporaneous speech contest to be held on March 4, 2012 at UP Diliman.

The judges were all graduates of UP. One was a magna cum laude major in Speech and Drama.  One was a writer also a major in Speech and Drama. The last was a journalism graduate, summa cum laude. That meant that they knew what to look for in a good speech. Win or lose, it was going to be a good contest.

It was the first time I watched a competition my son was in.  The first competition my son joined, I didn’t know about. The second competition he joined, I was there but I was outside as parents weren’t allowed inside the competition room. On the third competition, I didn’t have the nerve to stay seated.  I was too nervous so I sat outside. After that, my son said that I should have stayed inside so I could have heard the speeches. I guess he wanted to discuss it and compare impressions.  He assured me that my presence will not make him nervous.

Yesterday, he had no coach around and I was there, all by myself, nervous.

I felt so sorry for the first three contestants: they were more nervous than I. They blanked out and could not even string three sentences together.  They were valiant, though, they went on and on, words dripping uncontrollably and incoherently until they lost steam.

The other competitors were also nervous but they were trained, I supposed, by teachers who learned English from before the 2nd World War.  Their syntax and sentence structure were disturbingly Filipino although their accents resembled the singsong collegiala accents of popular TV show hosts.  They seemed like” little brown American wanna-bes.” I felt the acid rising in my stomach and I wanted to look for a DepEd official I could strangle for their incompetence.

One said that politicians will one day establish the “rule of the crocodiles.” And I wondered about that until I remembered that Filipino idiom we use for corrupt and greedy public officials: “buwaya.”  That contestant also said that “politicians put their faces on the billboards of their projects only to carry their own chair.” I recoiled at that: it was a transliteration of the Filipino idiom: “nagbubuhat ng sariling bangko.”

It was surreal.  Fourteen speeches, each 4 minutes long, each speaker had a different face but all of them sounded exactly like Melanie Marquez declaiming, or worse, Miriam Defensor Santiago on a verbal rampage while on steroids. I was on the verge of throwing up out of fear and disgust.

I was so nervous for my son.  Mainly, I was wondering whether he knew anything about the Anti-Epal bill, the proposed bill in the Senate that would prohibit politicians from plastering their names and faces on billboards announcing their projects. When I texted my husband the topic, I knew he was feeling what I was feeling, for he said: “Alam kaya ni Paolo yun?”

The other kids had witty quotes from poets or politicians for their introductions.  They used archaic words like “harbinger.” But they all said the same thing: they were supporting the proposed bill because politicians shouldn’t praise themselves at the taxpayer’s expense.

I was on tenterhooks, wondering what my son was going to say: wondering if he had anything to say at all!  What can he say that had not yet been said, after all?

When he came in, he smiled slightly, took a deep breath and said “I don’t know what kind of guts it takes for a person to stand up in front of other people and convince them to vote for them in an election; to say, vote for me, “I’m the man for the job.”

I was panicking.  It was kind of near the topic, but it wasn’t a head-on discussion. Would he be able to connect the introduction with the theme?

“I don’t know much about politics, it gets things done, but it’s also very dirty. It’s a dirty game.  Where I come from,  I come from Meycauayan, Bulacan, candidates staple P500 bills to sample ballots so people will vote for them.  It’s cheating.”

Whoa! I wanted to scream: “Anak, libelous yan!”

“So what’s the difference between stapling P500 peso bills to a sample ballot and pasting your face on a billboard to announce your project?”

And then he paused.  I thought he got mental block. My stomach was churning acid.

“It’s just another subtle form of cheating.”

I was stunned: I was floored.  I think I nearly shed tears.  I was in awe. It was like an intellectual left hook that came from nowhere. The teacher and the lawyer in me knew that he nailed it. The mother in me hoped he had nailed it: that he had given the judges what they wanted to hear.

Compared to the other contestants, my son did not try to impress his audience. He did not raise his voice when he emphasized his point. But one thing I noticed, compared to the others who said “I believe….” my son didn’t state his beliefs. He didn’t even discuss what the Anti-Epal bill was, he tackled the very practice that the bill was supposed to prohibit and he said why it should be prohibited. It was all very “subtle.”

He didn’t try to convince the judges, he didn’t try to persuade them to see it his way.  He just gave his opinion. He seemed to believe in what he said with every fibre of his uncharacteristically calm being.

I was in awe. I was never that articulate when I was 14.  He used simple, everyday words, but he strung the words differently. I would never have used the word “subtle” at all — I probably didn’t know what it meant when I was 14!

People were congratulating me, telling me “nagmana sa ina.” But I knew, I may have given birth to him, contributed half of his chromosomes but he is a unique individual created by God who thinks, feels and speaks for himself. That was what I was in awe of.  He was an individual sort of like me, but so different from me: he was himself. He had his own soul that wasn’t just a copy of mine or a mash-up copy of my husband and me.

At that moment, all I could think of was, he almost died when he was a baby!  Oh, Lord, thank you that he didn’t die then. Thank you for the chance for him grow into this person I see before me. At that moment, I was just grateful that he’s alive. Here he is, growing up to be a man who believes in some things that he has thought of long and hard. And he has the guts to stand up and say out loud what he believed in.

There was a part of me that was chiding myself for being a sentimental stage mother. But there was also a part of me that was looking at a younger would-be member of the intellectual sparring club, a future member of the legal profession, an equal.

When I heard one of the judges say: “It’s not your pronunciation, your accent or your use of really big words. It’s not about the form, it’s about the content.  It is having something intelligent, something worthwhile to say.  Most of you need to read the newspapers more and watch the news more so you can have something to say,” I knew the boy had a fighting chance.

When I told him that, he said, “Stop being a mom, mom.” I said I happened to be his mom, but I also speak for a living.  It is my duty to speak for others in court as it is my duty to listen to others speak.  I pare away people’s words to get to the meaning.  This is how I earn my living.  So I can judge if a speech is good or not.  But, I suppose he didn’t want to get his hopes up only to get disappointed if he didn’t win.

We left during the lunch break.  We had lunch at home and I went to Project 8 to the YP fellowship.  The awarding was set at 4 pm. I told Paolo to go back if he wanted to find out if he won.  He said it wasn’t worth the aggravation.  So I just asked the faculty coordinator to tell us if Paolo won.  I was hoping he’d text only if the news was good, not if Paolo lost.

At 5:00 pm, after the YP fellowship, I got the text telling me he won 1st place. I was happy, but the win was not as important as the chance of watching my boy growing up to be a man.  That was more important to me.

So this is how it is to be a mom with a teen-aged son. You try your best to shape and mold them while they are children and then, when they become teenagers, you have to step back and see the work in progress.  You have to take stock and watch. At some point, the clay will resist further molding. You have lost your right to mold them because they have become their own persons with their own thoughts, emotions, will and voice.

You will have to admit to yourself that they have come into their own; that they will one day stand before God to be judged by him even as they stand before people and be judged by them. You cannot shield them or hover over them lest you confine them in your shadow and you kill the life in them. It’s time for this mom to step back.

(Maybe just a little step right now….one little step back….he’s just 14….legally, I lose parental authority at 18….there’s time enough for me to prepare for that day….. right now, I will step just a little way back to gain perspective and to be thankful to God for the time and the opportunity to be a parent.)