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 decided 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 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 2006.

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 the 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 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 by the anger that developed in 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 2.

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 the 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 12, 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 to 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’s 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 10, 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.