Punchline
Super Juanas, the stronger sex
By Ermin Garcia Jr.
THE world is celebrating Women’s Month with the theme “Weaving the Stories of Women’s Lives” this month, for a reason.
The reason? Here’s my hypothesis – the women in this presumed man’s world have been unfairly, if not wrongly marginalized over the centuries. It started with the centuries-old premise that man is the stronger, superior sex, and woman, the opposite sex, the frail and fragile being whose main role in this life is to reproduce. What gobbledygook!
I dare say the woman is actually the stronger sex. She is!
In the spirit of Women’s Month, permit me to share my story, as man, about the Super Juanas, the self-sacrificing, unheralded strong women who are beautiful in every way, and believe you me, without whose presence, men would be utterly lost and unstable in their missions to save the world!
* * * * *
Before the machos, the learned and the wise men, rush to challenge me to cite historical, scientific and astronomical data to prove my thesis in a do or die debate, they must know that I have none to offer.
I can only offer to articulate what my senses tell me and continue to experience today.
My first evidence is my mother, Paulita, she who would have turned 89 last week had she not died in 2005.
She was a fantastic cook and a baker, a seamstress and a math wizard, a chauffeur and a sportswoman, a nanny and a singer, a home “doctor” and a housekeeper, and a finance manager and a teacher. These all rolled into one, on top of being a wife and a mother. And there’s the tipping point right there. She gave birth to us, all 5 children every year, raised us, fed us, helped us with school work, drove us to school, dressed us practically on her own with little or no help from a yaya. Could any man with 3 PH.Ds believe he can do all that? Did I say my mother never earned a college degree?
On the other hand, my father was a great journalist, a doting father, a good provider and a thoughtful husband.
Without any thought of speaking less of my father because he had his own strengths, but I believe he was not capable of doing even half of what my mother, a woman, did. Could any father have? I am a father today and I know I can’t and couldn’t have.
* * * * *
Then, what human being could go through life, become emotionally stronger after seeing her youngest daughter (Karina, my sister, when she was 12) drown at the then Blue Beach in Dagupan, only to see her husband two years later, all bloodied before he succumbed to an assassin’s bullets.
My mother, the woman that she was, suffered deeply yet silently, and uncomplaining. She never cried again in front of us kids after our father died. She became my and my sisters’ pillar of strength. On her own, she decided to support our schooling by moving on. She packed our stuffs and left Dagupan to start a new home in Quezon City, a place that was completely strange to her, but where our schools were located. She set us up comfortably in a small apartment while she combed the area daily to look for a permanent domicile for us. I saw her smile widely the day she came upon a house for sale on a street that she found out was just recently named after “Ermin E. Garcia.” Without any second thought, she bought the house with the accidental death insurance benefit that was paid her. No buts.
Paulita, the fragile woman, found us a home on her own to call our own.
In her late age, the payback on her health caught up with her. She had diabetes, coupled with hypertension. She had to undergo a thrice-a-week dialysis for almost 7 years. She took the bodily punishment to live for us. Nurses and doctors who knew her said she could have lived through 12 years of dialysis given her attitude and purpose in life, and could have earned the title “the longest living dialysis patient.” Indeed, she could have had she not died from a hemorrhage as a result of a fall from her bed.
She moved to the next life on March 13 but not without showing us how simple faith in God and in one’s self can make a person truly strong.
* * * * *
Then, I saw how my sisters, Charisse and Frieda, raised their families as they knew how as exemplified by our mother, but perhaps with more ease because of their new lifestyles. Still, without speaking less of their husbands, I doubt very such if their husbands could do half as much of the multi-tasking they do so well.
I know I can’t do half as much what my wife, Patricia, does for the family.
My eldest single sister, Josie, is an educator and a hands-on farm administrator and a farmer herself who is a committed advocate of organic farming. I wish I had the patience and the tenacity to do as well as she does today than when I was the farm administrator. Juggling from her advocacy to teach poor children to dealing with some opportunistic farmers, to growing medicinal plants everywhere she could find space. Could any gentleman-farmer hope to accomplish just as much?
Then there are the working mothers, especially single mothers. How many men can actually claim they can make things work, plod through on many issues at the same time with whatever resources they have just to keep the bodies and spirits together of the people they love? This single-mom named Julie Ann, and thousands more like her, distinguish themselves every day as accomplished multi-tasking moms. How many single dads can claim they can accomplish as much without whining… and frantically searching for a multi-tasking partner?
So what ultimately makes the female, the stronger sex?
She doesn’t have the muscles and the mind that most men work on to accomplish single tasks but she has the mind, the will and the body to accomplish as much and as many tasks to make her feel she is woman.
I rest my case.
In case you are wondering if I wished I were a woman, no I don’t. I am happy being a man, never mind that women are the stronger sex. But that’s another story.
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