Celebrating the life accomplishments of Mamang, my beloved mother, whose 89th birthday it is today.
As a young girl living in poverty, Mamang looked after her four younger siblings after their mother died and their father left them all to fend for themselves.
Once she had made arrangements for her siblings to be cared for by nuns, Mamang then embarked on a desperate journey from her village to the nearest city, several hours away, where she randomly knocked on the door of a big house, asking if she could be taken in and fed, in return for servitude. The lady of the house took pity, and later even permitted my mother to attend a nearby college.
For years, Mamang stayed with many other live-in servants. She also endured some horrific treatment by older servants, because she alone was allowed to skip some tasks and go to school.
One day, the lady of the house was visited by a friend who proudly announced that her son had made it to the list of the college’s top students. The lady of the house looked at her friend’s list and was shocked to find my mother’s name there as well – Mamang was even higher up on the list. (She was second in mathematics.)
While working as someone else’s servant, my mother completed a degree in pharmacy with flying colours. Many years later, she became a successful pharmacist.
This is one of many stories that Mamang used to tell me when I was young. No wonder that she drove us all very hard. She even used to drill me in multiplication tables as I performed toilet duties behind a closed door in the morning: “six times seven!”
Mamang drove some other people crazy, too, such as my principal in grade school, in whose office she stayed and just wouldn’t leave until he allowed my sister and me, both untested transferees from another school, to be enrolled in their special section/category for gifted students.
Today, my siblings and I are successful because of Mamang’s sacrifices, and even though the husk has dried and continues to parch my mother’s view of life as something where she must always get ahead, regardless of personal consequences, and even though we have had many quarrels as a result, we who have sprung from her seed are hoping to compensate the earth for our good fortune by extra tenderness and love for others, including, of course, the remarkable, amazingly gritty person who started it all and loved us without limit in her own way.