EVERY day since I came down on April Fool’s Day, I've observed my mother, who is 83 years old, do her morning rituals—praying the rosary, opening her pile of novena booklets, lighting votive candles before the image of the blessed virgin.
Despite these exercises in piety, some of my siblings, daughters and I agree that this matriarch who has dominated our lives is increasingly growing narrow-minded, judgmental, almost unforgiving of hurts that go back more than 50 years ago, strutting about like she’s everyone’s moral superior, a superwoman who can do no wrong.
I admit that I see bits of myself in Mom's pronounced traits, but since I learned that being happy is a conscious decision, I’ve also realized that my redemption lies in heading in Mommy’s opposite direction.
Nowadays, I want to be the type of middle-aged woman who has and keeps friends with people who are my children’s age or even younger. My best friend for the summer of 2010 is my niece Bianca who is turning eight this week.
We write side by side in our respective diaries when she sleeps over in Pasig. When we paint side by side, we talk about anything under the sun.
A few weeks ago, I taught her some basic wet on wet watercolor techniques that enabled her to paint clumps of bamboo on the left side of her sheet of watercolor paper. Then I let her be, telling her to think of any image she may want to put on the right side.
After slightly dipping her brush confidently into a small plastic jar of water, she mixed black and white pigments to produce gray. All this time I was painting my own thing. Strange, but I can’t remember what my own subject was because I was looking from the corner of my eye what it was Bianca was up to.
Before I knew it, the right side of her paper was full of tiny elephants, a herd of them headed in the direction of the bamboo grove. Curious, I asked if there was a stampede about to happen. (By the way, Bianca’s term of endearment for me is Tita Elephant.)
Her answer was so logical it floored me: “They’re hungry. They’re going to eat some bamboo leaves.”
In the noontime of my life, I’ve decided to find snippets of joy in incidents like this.
No longer is there a great need to be independent by holding down a full-time job or to maintain the veneer of a solid family with father, mother and children under a roof. Whatever projects come that I can have spare time for, I accept.
I’ve also decided that I don’t have to put up with the things that the grouch I’ve lived with on and off for over 25 years says and does. If he hits the 10 over 10 mark on the grumpy old man scale, I can always hop into a bus from Baguio to any point of Luzon now that I’m done with school and earning some pin money again. When he and I have cooled down, we can again do things we enjoy doing together like eating out at the newest "in" place in town or reading our own books in bed, sharing one adjustable lamp light between us. Who's to say that ain't rock-solid love?
Beyond that, I’ve kept my sight on just three things that make me happy, grateful and less agitated these days in the sweltering lowlands: writing, painting and being with Bianca.
Photo of bright kid and her pink elephant taken by ANNA LEAH SARABIA in July 2009
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