Ma’s Day
Just when I finally
welcomed the awe in soaring to the heights of transcendence, the fearless
descent into the profound depth of my bottomless abyss, and the embrace of the
social breath of the soul, the dexterity of my fingers decide to quit, making
it a difficult to open and close an ordinary zip lock bag! Welcome to the world of aging, a level of
consciousness quite a bit lower than spirit angels.
I am a more than a
score away from mother’s age of 94, consigned to a ward for the elderly at a
Kuakini in Honolulu, being cared for a skeletal medical dysfunction made fragile
after a loss of balance that brought her to ER.
She is no longer ambulatory but the graciousness of the smile on her
face, a feature I was told was now partly mine, and the clarity of a mind that
still can handle printed words, can only be the source of wonder, albeit, with
a bit of resentment that life gives us so much wealth of sensual awareness and
skill at the start with semblances of smarts, and reverses the volume of each
at the end.
Mother now inquires if
anyone saw her husband who had not visited her in a week and might have
wandered off again into the night. He
occupies his share of their Mililani Memorial plot, has been since 2007.
We always hear of how
human existence is wasted on the young, unappreciative of all its wonders, and
recklessly exposing it to careless adventures that often nip the bud of living
at a tender age. On the other hand, the
wisdom of experience and age accumulates in heaps that unless one organizes
layers of memory, we often accuse the elderly of losing their mind. It now shows that loss of brainpower is not
the 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 dexterity
of my fingers is equaled by the difficulty of rising back up on the sole power
of haunches without assistance of crutches when getting down seem to come with
ease. But it is in the chastity of the
mind about knowing, doing, and being one thing that remains to be a constant
challenge. Diversity of options is
distracting. How many of us “retirees”
understand how busy we seem to be all day, and after sun down, if honest, do
not remember if we accomplished anything at all, save possibly played Russian
roulette with our house keys that seem to have a knack at showing up in many different
places?
Mother today will most
likely be haunted again on the anger that developed on the first six years of
her life. She did not know her father, a
young man from a poor farmer family who had the misfortune of siring her with
the daughter of an uppity family that withheld blessings of matrimony. Doomed in serfdom, her father hightailed it
to the United States without knowledge that another child was on deposit. The forsaken lass took to her bed in despair
and died while giving birth, my mother attending at a young age to a colic brother
who added a digit to the statistics on infant mortality before he was two.
My mother, a girl in a
patriarchal ambience, was ignored or taken for granted while an older brother
got all the schooling. He became a
member of the Philippine Scouts who proved himself worthy alongside MacArthur’s
grunts in the Bataan March.
Mom’s perseverance got
her to join an aunt in Manila with intent to enter Union College near the
Philippine Women’s University. General
Tojo of Japan was at the time dreaming of Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. My devout Catholic mother noticed and responded
to a poor Protestant theology student next door, 7 years her senior, who fell
for her charms, rather than entertain the Imperial officers’ leers in her
aunt’s Jaladoni household in Ermita, Manila.
Mother’ maternal
grandmother raised her until she died; by the time she was twelve, she was an
orphan 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 her
grandfather’s name. A trusting heart juvenile,
she handed them for safekeeping with one of her Uncles who named his son the
same as Mom’s grandpa. No need to spell
out the details of what followed later when she tried to redeem the titles.
Though she married a
forgiving parson, my mother retained a black blot in her heart for kin so much
so 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 she
thought was the good side.
Mother’s Day is now a
day for roses and chocolate as matriarchs head the tables in restaurants. I am partial to mother because when my father
left to pursue graduate school while I was barely ten, mother’s touch rather
than papa’s words formed my persona’s mold.
Mama at Kuakini
Hospital in Alohaland is the lei’d wahine of my heart this weekend, albeit,
from quite a distance. Let everyone who
can, give their mother a hug, and the day off Sunday from the kitchen and the
mop. I will light a votive candle for
mine.