Taps

The day is over. Mommy Ely passed on at 2 today.

When a mother dies, the guardian of childhood memories, carries with her vivid sounds and images of the beginning of a family, the birth of her children and their stories of growing up.

She leaves behind her snags and tangles of everyday affairs and hopefully, leaves them all behind in full abandon. 

I am only a daughter by law. But I share in her children's bereavement because i bore her grandchildren and my children bore her great grandchildren and happy that they have experienced their "impo" and her special brand of love. 

I partook of that special brand of love. It made me strong and brave and I am partly who I have become now because I rose to the challenge of being my own person, of loving myself and raising my children the way i believed I should. Oh how I remember my panic when she would visit my house in the early years.  I was only 24. And i know that if i wanted to pass her test, i should run a finger across my table and window sills to check if i wiped well enough.   And if i passed that, i would fail on a tiny piece of thread on the floor!  Where could that have come from? She would pick it up to my dismay, angry at myself. Well, i told her then that my husband prolly pulled what was loose in his shirt!! I remember how I was so foolishly independent and innocent and was not thinking that life could be complicated.  

In the end, i would like to believe that I was her favorite. 

Fare thee well Mommy. You left on a beautiful day just before your golden shower have started to fade and fall. Thank you for believing in me and for loving my house and appreciating what I do. You were the first and only, THE art patron of emma gutierrez.  You bought a painting on my first exhibit and on the next and joined my scam when you bought my calendar, burdened by your   affliction yet strong in your desire to be a part of my project . That was whoahh!! 

In heaven, there is no more scam but you blessed mine. 

In heaven, there is no dust. 

In heaven, your handsome soldier waits. 

Woot! Woot mommy. You can kiss him again! 

P.S.

Please say hi to my folks up there. Tell them about me and my children and grandchildren. 

maderwud and some truths

There is a children's story about a duckling or a chick who  went around the farm looking for his mother.  He saw a horse and asked:  are you my mother?  He met all kinds of animals and asked all of them the same question before he finally, at least found his parent or maybe just got adopted by a mom who really could not tell anymore if she lost a chick or a duckling or gained one more! Readily, this lost fellow was taken "under the wings" of a gullible fowl!

I can't blame this chick or duckling for getting confused, for how can you really tell from among the hens that are clucking or the ducks that are quacking which one is yours?

I really cannot understand for I have never been there, how nannies or yayas are able to love someone else's child completely and many times over than the real mother?

There are  siblings who sacrifice their own dreams for their other siblings and will not in the world count the cost.  They know nothing else, not even the word "sacrifice", because there is no time to mope.  It just happened that their mother or father gave birth and that's all. There was no choice left for the "good" child.

These are stories of motherhood in different contexts and personas.  One does not have to be a mother to give enduring and heroic love. In the same manner that you would be lucky to have a great mother, one is cursed to have a very BAAAD one!

Today, on our way to Shangrila to get some clothes for Justo,  the topic of becoming a mother came up in our conversation.  It started with the hamsters that Jacob and Jose are now crazy over.  I don't remember if someone said that he is the mother of Fluff and Muff, that the concept of  "boy mother" was once more mentioned.  This idea came from Jacob in our nightly bedtime stories where I would tell about a T-rex egg (Jose) that found its way to a brontosaurus' (Jacob) life.  Here in this story, Jacob took care of the T-rex Jose. Then  Jacob would say, "I take care of him because I am the "boy mother".  Then they will act out a situation with pillows and blankets dramatizing scenes from the "Land Before Time". 

Anyway, Jose asked today while crouched on my lap:  "What's a boy mother?"  "A boy mother is like our story of the T-rex and a brontosaurus," I said.  "The mother is not a girl but a boy who takes care of a baby just like a real mother would." 

"Who's 'maderwud' Ima?

(It would help if you know that before this, Jacob complained of a headache and Jose echoed immediately that "I av a eggache too!""

"Maderwud" is not all about being great and enduring.  It is something that happens because you have to do it, otherwise your young will go wandering around looking for his mommy and finding a "tikbalang" instead.  Motherwud is not always the way pictures show it or stories tell it.  All the more it is not as sweet as how Hallmark depicts it.  It is about getting up in the morning, dragging yourself to the kitchen on hard and difficult days, cook breakfast no matter what.  One does not always feel the love overflowing, nor smiles radiating from a kind motherly face.  A mother is an ordinary person doing a job that is sometimes greater than her/himself.  Some mothers would even have to take anti depressants just so they can look at their babies!

For all the wrong and right things, we "maderwuds" reach the point in our lives when we are halfway there and we cannot believe that our children have grown and that we have actually nurtured human beings if not monsters or gremlins. 

Just thinking outside the box.

my son Vitty with daughters Sofia and Ziva

Daddy and my older sister, Ellen

Happy Mother's Day my beloved mommy-Mary, sister Ellen, daughters Ana & Marie, sis in law Fay, Jessie, Tpie and Eva and everyone who came from a mother- let us toast a hard-boiled egg!!!!!!!

my brother Emmanuel and daughter Jodie

Sugar and Ana

Sugar and Juaqui

Sugar and Vitty

Jasmin at 91 watching her daughter Roxy with new pups

N.B.  The moms are not in the pictures because they were busy taking the picture. :)

A song for Maring

 

She's a woman with a size 8 slippers

And she answers to the call "Maring!"

Like a bell, like a ring Maria, Maring!

She's a woman! She's a lady!  She's a babe-h!

She tangos and dips with a giggle

 loves eating sweets 

before the main dish

And she's cool 

when she carries a bouquet of moringa

everyday in her top-down jeep!

She's a witch- the good kind

she's a medicine woman!

She loves Plato and geometry

She perfected her Chemistry!

Oh Maria! Oh Maring!

You're the lady for Maning, he-hey!

Oh the peaches and cream skin

You're the lady for Maning!

you're the lady, you're the lady

for Maning.