This was on the Friday edition of the Saipan Tribune: Ma’s Day Just when I finallywelcomed the awe in soaring to the heights of transcendence, the fearlessdescent into the profound depth of my bottomless abyss, and the embrace of thesocial breath of the soul, the dexterity of my fingers decide to quit, makingit a difficult to open and close an ordinary zip lock bag! Welcome to the world of aging, a level ofconsciousness quite a bit lower than spirit angels. I am a more than ascore away from mother’s age of 94, consigned to a ward for the elderly at aKuakini in Honolulu, being cared for a skeletal medical dysfunction made fragileafter a loss of balance that brought her to ER. She is no longer ambulatory but the graciousness of the smile on herface, a feature I was told was now partly mine, and the clarity of a mind thatstill can handle printed words, can only be the source of wonder, albeit, witha bit of resentment that life gives us so much wealth of sensual awareness andskill at the start with semblances of smarts, and reverses the volume of eachat the end. Mother now inquires ifanyone saw her husband who had not visited her in a week and might havewandered off again into the night. Heoccupies his share of their Mililani Memorial plot, has been since 2007. We always hear of howhuman existence is wasted on the young, unappreciative of all its wonders, andrecklessly exposing it to careless adventures that often nip the bud of livingat a tender age. On the other hand, thewisdom of experience and age accumulates in heaps that unless one organizeslayers of memory, we often accuse the elderly of losing their mind. It now shows that loss of brainpower is notthe case, but speed in accessing the internal database, by current research,slows down as the search engine is distracted by many other pieces of data. The fading dexterityof my fingers is equaled by the difficulty of rising back up on the sole powerof haunches without assistance of crutches when getting down seem to come withease. But it is in the chastity of themind about knowing, doing, and being one thing that remains to be a constantchallenge. Diversity of options isdistracting. How many of us “retirees”understand how busy we seem to be all day, and after sun down, if honest, donot remember if we accomplished anything at all, save possibly played Russianroulette with our house keys that seem to have a knack at showing up in many differentplaces? Mother today will mostlikely be haunted again on the anger that developed on the first six years ofher life. She did not know her father, ayoung man from a poor farmer family who had the misfortune of siring her withthe daughter of an uppity family that withheld blessings of matrimony. Doomed in serfdom, her father hightailed itto the United States without knowledge that another child was on deposit. The forsaken lass took to her bed in despairand died while giving birth, my mother attending at a young age to a colic brotherwho added a digit to the statistics on infant mortality before he was two. My mother, a girl in apatriarchal ambience, was ignored or taken for granted while an older brothergot all the schooling. He became amember of the Philippine Scouts who proved himself worthy alongside MacArthur’sgrunts in the Bataan March. Mom’s perseverance gother to join an aunt in Manila with intent to enter Union College near thePhilippine Women’s University. GeneralTojo of Japan was at the time dreaming of Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. My devout Catholic mother noticed and respondedto a poor Protestant theology student next door, 7 years her senior, who fellfor her charms, rather than entertain the Imperial officers’ leers in heraunt’s Jaladoni household in Ermita, Manila. Mother’ maternalgrandmother raised her until she died; by the time she was twelve, she was anorphan shunted from one relative to another. As was customary, the head male in the family held real estate titles. Her grandmother handed her land titles in hergrandfather’s name. A trusting heart juvenile,she handed them for safekeeping with one of her Uncles who named his son thesame as Mom’s grandpa. No need to spellout the details of what followed later when she tried to redeem the titles. Though she married aforgiving parson, my mother retained a black blot in her heart for kin so muchso that my siblings and I became familiar with our paternal lineage woofs,warts and woes, but on our Ravelo side, mother wanted us to know only what shethought was the good side. Mother’s Day is now aday for roses and chocolate as matriarchs head the tables in restaurants. I am partial to mother because when my fatherleft to pursue graduate school while I was barely ten, mother’s touch ratherthan papa’s words formed my persona’s mold. Mama at KuakiniHospital in Alohaland is the lei’d wahine of my heart this weekend, albeit,from quite a distance. Let everyone whocan, give their mother a hug, and the day off Sunday from the kitchen and themop. I will light a votive candle formine.