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(This space will be reserved for literary contributions from readers. The PUNCH encourages readers to write and email to us their thoughts about their impressions and ideas about life in and outside of Pangasinan, whether social or economic or cultural. No politics, please. Thank you. – Publisher). 

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My Mother
By Yoli Tucay

Mother’s Day is very different from any other holiday, at least for me. It’s the day where my daughter and I have our brunch and reminisce for a couple of hours about things we “majorly messed up” on as a mother/daughter. The jovial knit picking of our roles is, to say the least, entertaining. Until my own mother makes it to the picture, then it becomes a somber realization, guilt trip, and pangs of nostalgia all over again.

In the Philippines, her skills were limited to being a housewife and a mother. It wasn’t an easy task. I have pictures in my head of her balancing batya on her head, walking along the river’s side until she spots that ideal location where she sits under the sun for the next hour or two doing laundry. She wanders the treacherous land of pugaro looking for dried sticks so she can cook the following week. The sight of her balancing bundles of this fuel on her head while maneuvering a teetering bamboo bridge sends up shivers. She’s famous around town for her bartering skills as well. For next to nothing she’s able to feed and clothe her family. The balancing acts she performed raising nine children, oftentimes on her own, is unfathomable.

When she immigrated to California in the mid seventies, life got a little easier. There’s a stove, a washing machine, and yes Dad was finally able drive her to the store. Bartering, however, was trickier, so she had to find a job to supplement Dad’s income. For the next fifteen years, she picked strawberries, worked at packing sheds, and collected aluminum cans. Life in the United States seemed over rated.

Pacing, as family and friends fondly call her, has won a few awards in the heart of those who know her. Her hands are forever marred by the hard work she’s endured, her face masks the pride and joy of watching her children graduate, marry, and bring home grandchildren, and her heart bares the scars of losing a child and a husband.

Her life, as she knows it now, is reduced to almost nothing. Her eyes are pools of uncertainties, her mind stores memories she longs to remember, and her childhood ways slowly creep back to strip her of any dignity she has left. This disease that’s slowly eating away my mother is also wrecking havoc in my own world. Although guilt, anxiety, and anger, are suppressed in the back of my head, memories of her is part of my daily existence. Spunk, determination, and loving – traits I will always strive for from my mother, which I hopefully will leave behind for my own daughter to remember me by.

   

  Yoli Tucay
mcescher4yr@yahoo.com
Cambria, California

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