I spent the afternoon with my mother on Sunday, September 2, 2012. She is 74 years old. At age 65, she developed asthma.  At age 69, she had a severe asthma attack while in the car.  She had a cardiopulmonary episode consequent to the asthma attack and she was dead on arrival at the Mandaluyong Medical Center, the hospital nearest the Makati-Mandaluyong Bridge where her car was stalled in traffic.  They revived her.  She survived.  She spent one month in the ICU.  When she regained consciousness, she was not the same person she was before her heart attack. Until today, I am unsure if she had a stroke or a heart attack.  I don’t know if she suffers from dementia from stroke or Alzheimer’s.  All that we understand from the doctors was that her brain was starved of oxygen when she passed out and her memories were affected.  There are times when she remembers me and calls me by my name.

There are days when she calls me “Lily” thinking that I am her older sister, Lily.  Mama often said to me that I looked like Tita Lily.  My love for reading, Mama said, I got from her.  My penchant for baking, Mama said, came from her, too. Sometimes she would be talking with my Dad and then suddenly she would say to him, “Andyan na ba ang Kuya Mar?” (Kuya Mar is how my mother refers to my Dad when she talks about him with others).  My Dad won’t answer but just stare at her.  She would blink a few times and then smile and say, “Ikaw nga pala si Kuya Mar.”

Last May, my mother had severe abdominal pain. It’s  hard to understand her symptoms because she is always complaining about something. Then when you probe her about it, she would deny it or change her mind.  That time, though, my mother began throwing up so she was brought to the Pasig City General Hospital.  It’s a street away from their house in Pasig.

She had a blocked colon: a portion of her colon got caught in the stumps of her tubal ligation.  They had to surgically de-tangle her colon.  She was recovering from her surgery when she had a lung infection. It was probably pneumonia and she found herself in a similar heart/lung crisis she had five years before.  She spent one month in the ICU again.

My mother has three catchphrases these days.  She says three things continually.  Mama says “Huwag mo akong pababayaan, ha?  Huwag mo akong iiwanan.”  Mama also says “Hirap and hirap ako, bakit ba ako ganito?”  And then Mama says “Bihisan mo ako, baka dumating ang mga taga Paete, magalit sila sa akin at mukha na akong pangit.”

My mother has abandonment issues which date back to her childhood. Her father was a geodetic engineer and his work took him on assignments wherever he had to do surveying work.  He was with her one day and gone the next. He left one day during World War II and he never came back.  He died a guerilla. My mother sorely missed her father: he was the affectionate parent.  One of the few good memories she has of her early childhood was her father singing her to sleep as he carried her.  With her father gone, when she felt sad or when she felt ill, only her mother was there.  Lola Idang didn’t hug her children.

I think that her abandonment issues can also be traced to their lifestyle after the war.  Left a young widow at age 35, my grandmother, Brigida, had to earn a living for her brood of four.  She left while it was dark and the children were still asleep.  She cooked the rice before setting off to the pantalan to catch the fishing boats that came from Laguna Lake.  She bought or took fish on consignment so that she can peddle the fish in Paete.  By nine or ten in the  morning she had sold all the fish she could.  What was left was her children’s meal for the day.

Always, Mam said, only the ayungin was left.  So that was what they had for lunch and dinner.  For breakfast, there would be eggs and tomatoes or sometimes, my grandmother might leave a little money for her children to buy gatas ng kalabaw. They poured that over their rice for breakfast and sprinkle it with salt.

Mama was a sickly child.  She was malnourished after the war because they hid in the mountains.  There they ate camote, saba or casta niyog.  She developed sores on her skin and she had conjunctivitis and primary complex.

Brigida, my grandmother, was a woman with a sharp tongue.  She was not emotionally demonstrative.  She was hard and she was stern.  She hardly smiled.  When her eldest daughter Lily or her only son Fernando got awards in school, she never attended.  She said it would be too sad to see her orphaned children get awards without their father there.  She didn’t want to cry.  In fact, I have never seen her shed a tear.  She was quick to see and find fault in her children and she hated any sign of weakness in them. She nagged all the time.

Mama said Lola had favorites among her four children and she wasn’t the favorite.  Lola Idang loved Tita Lily because she was smart. Mama said (and I don’t know if it is true) Tita Lily was exempted from housework so that she could study.  Mama had to do the housework because Mama wasn’t very book smart.  Lola Idang thought Auntie Lily was prettier (Tita Lily resembled the Valdespina side).  Mama resembled the Cagandahan side.)  Mama looked like her father. Lola Idang was still angry with her husband for leaving her and getting himself killed in the war.

Mama said (and I don’t know if this is true),  the Cagandahan clan didn’t quite favor Lolo Francisco’s marriage to the town beauty, Brigida.  They thought her too pretty for him.  They also knew she was poor and she only had a fourth grade education.  The Cagandahan clan were middle class.  The first born, Bernardo, was a lawyer.  The daughters Titay and Doray were school teachers and my grandfather Francisco was a geodetic engineer. The Cagandahan clan also owned a grocery store.

Brigida (Lola Idang) carried herself ramrod straight, like she was a queen although she only peddled fish. She was a morena with very fine mestiza features.  She was a look-alike of the actress Tessie Quintana.  She was that beautiful. Francisco was ostracized by his family for his marriage also because Brigida was Roman Catholic and Francisco was Protestant.  He taught Sunday Schoool in church and brought his daughters with him.  Brigida always stayed home on Sundays. She was obstinate that way, Mama said. Brigida didn’t socialize with the Cagandahan clan.  She was proud that way.

When her brood was orphaned and they barely got enough to eat, Dada Doni, Brigida’s mother-in-law saw her ragged grandchildren tagging along with their proud mother all over town as she peddled fish.  She spoke with Brigida and asked if Delia (my mom) could stay and help her at the grocery store.  Mama’s health was most vulnerable. It was charity and Lola Idang wouldn’t hear of it.  Pining, Dada Doni’s youngest daughter was the only Cagandahan Brigida spoke to.  Brigida was civil to Pining, her sister-in-law, so Pining tried to mediate.  Pining was diplomatic and this got my mother away from home and into Dada Doni’s home.

Mama said Dada Doni herself bathed her with gugo and hilod and hierba buena. She cleaned her sores and galis.  Dada Doni brought her to the doctor and to the dentist in Sta. Cruz.  Dada Doni made her drink milk three times a day.  Dada Doni gave her dates and prunes to eat for the iron and the Vitamin A she needed.  Dada Doni gave her chocolate to fatten her up.  Staying with Dada Doni was not a vacation, though.  Dada Doni made mama go to church; she taught Mama to tend to the store, to make change, to repack sugar from the sacks to plastic bags.  She had to clean, cook and sew like any respectable girl.  Dada Doni made her read to her from the Bible. It became a summer ritual for my mother and her sisters to spend the summers getting fattened up by Dada Doni only to go back home to their mother at the end of the summer. When they came home, they had new underwear, new shoes, new dresses that Tia Pining sewed for them.  Pining doted on Mama and her sisters.  They also had hampers of food.  Lola Idang never said thank you, she said, “Now I have more clothes to wash.”

This all changed when the girls reached high school. Lily had a scholarship and she had to live in town so she need not walk all the way home from school, losing the precious day light she needed to study.  Mama was apprenticed to Tia Pining who taught her how to sew she also went on to high school but she went to the public school.  Lola Idang couldn’t see why her girls had to go to high school, they were going to get married anyway.

While at Tia Pining’s, Mama learned how to make papier mache toys.  She learned how to make kakanin.  She learned how to sew clothes for the santos (icons) that her relatives carved.  She learned how to braid the santo’s hair.  She did odd jobs here and there, earning a few pesos.  She put all her earnings in a can of evaporated milk.  This was her present for Lola Idang when she got home so Lola Idang won’t need to send her to the sari-sari store next door to “utang” from the store. Mama said this made her feel very small because people always told her “Naku, Delia, napaka-ganda mo, hindi bagay sa iyo ang mangutang.”

On Saturdays, Mama helped Lola idang peddle fish.  Lola Idang made more money when Mama came along because Mama was a good salesperson.  After school, Mama asked their neighbor for one bilao of kakanin to sell to the mang-lililok and their apprentices all over town. Always people would tell Mama, “Napaka-ganda mo naman, hindi bagay sa iyo ang mag-lako, hija. Dapat sa iyo, mag-artista.”  She would then ask her Tio Tony, a film director, for a part in the movies but he always said no.  Hindi marangal ang buhay artista, he would say.  Mag-aral ka na lang, mas marangal ang may pinag-aralan.

My mother finished high school in Mandaluyong where Lola Idang relocated in the 1950s.  She went to Jose Rizal College.  Always she sat up in front.  When the roll was called, she would raise her hand but only up to her chin she wasn’t shy, but she had stopped and started schooling so many times, she was older than most of her classmates.  Only the professor saw her raise her hand.

One day, the class comedian said to the teacher, “Sir, sino po ba iyong Miss Cagandahan?  Lagi na lamang ninyong tinatawag pero hindi naman naming siya nakikita.”  The teacher asked my mother to face the class.  My mother was embarrassed, of course.  She was more embarrassed when the class comedian said “Bagay naman pala ang pangalan ni Miss Cagandahan sa kanya. Kamukha pala siya ni Sophia Loren.”  She was more embarrassed when the class comedian turned out to be the head of the Junior Police at Jose Rizal College and he asked her to be his date for the ball a few weeks later.  My mother said no, her mother wouldn’t let her.  She just said that; she never asked Lola Idang’s permission. She thought that would put the class comedian in his place.

For college, Mama enrolled at the University of the East and took up accounting while she apprenticed at Tia Pining’s dress shop .  She had only a year or two to go when business beckoned her.  She needed to make money because Uncle Nanding got sick.  Mama set up her own dress shop and had modest success with it. She dropped out of college.

One day an American Bible Baptist missionary knocked on her door and taught her how to be sure of her soul’s salvation.  The American missionary invited her to attend a Bible class.  When she attended the Bible class at the Bible Baptist Church on Castaneda Street corner Nueve de Febrero, her classmate, the class comedian, the head of the Junior Police, was the Bible class teacher.  His name was Marcelino.  He’s my Dad.

Lola Idang hated my Dad’s guts she called him “si Bisaya.”  When he came to see my mom at their home, my grandmother wouldn’t even let him in the door.  She would slam the door in his face.  The door slam usually alerted my mother that my dad was at the door.  My Dad would knock on the door until my mother finally came to the door. They got married in January 3, 1966.

My mother was a business woman.  Alongside her dress shop, she had a notions shop and a beauty parlor.  My Dad worked as a policeman while finishing his law degree from FEU.  When my Dad passed the Bar, he told my mother to stop working.  My mother became a housewife and mother to five children.

At age 46, she became a real estate sales assistant.  Months later, she became a unit manager.  She moved to Fil-Estate and she became a branch manager and then she became an Area Sales Director.  In 2007 when she had her heart attack, she was already Assistant Vice-President.  My Dad told me once that my mother earned more than he did.

Although she had her own job, my mother was a dutiful wife.  She waited on my Dad hand and foot.  She made breakfast, lunch, dinner and meryenda for him.  She prepared his bath, prepared his barong and prepared his socks.  Dad never had to bother with the details of daily life on the home front because Mama took care of all that. 

Now Dad takes care of Mama.  After 46 years of marriage, it’s Dad’s turn to take care of Mama. He treats her the way he treated me and my sister.  He treats her like she is his little girl. In late 2007 when Mama had finally left the hospital and was recuperating at home, I noticed Dad.  His troubenized shirt did not match the color scheme of his coat and tie.  He wore different colored socks.  Dad was lost for a while without Mama.  He had a heart attack, a mild one.  He couldn’t function and he walked around dazed, as though bereaved.  He was.  The woman he married and the woman who came back from the hospital were two different people.

Mama’s secret to keeping Dad faithful to her all those years? Mama said, always treat your husband like you would your favorite son. She doted on him and always cheered him on.  She always took his side, no matter what.  Then when they got home, Mama would quietly and calmly tell Dad why she thought he was wrong.  Woe to anyone who ever took Dad on: they got a trouncing from Mama. She was that fierce and loyal to Dad.  Mama still massages Dad’s hand when he tries to hold her hand. As Mama sleeps, Dad holds her hand.  I asked him why.  Dad said, “Sabi kasi niya, huwag ko siyang pabayaan, huwag ko siyang iwanan. Panalangin ko lang, huwag  akong kuning una.”  Come to think of it, I remember what Mama said, what she used to say,  “Hindi na tayo mamatay, Dad.  Sabay tayo sa rapture.”