Yoo, what you doin’, Momma!

By Emmanuelle

This time, Louie (my beloved computer) and I will use a life story known to us to depict another but parallel life situation. Both are true, but the latter is more familiar to you. In fact, you are going through it:

Papa and Mama were so enamored with each other that there was no point to extending the engagement any longer. Anyway, they felt they had been engaged all  their lifetimes. They had known and loved the other since they were born. Small towns were like that.                                                          

So, at the tender age of eighteen, they were married. Their parents from both sides were landowners and also in business, so Papa and Mama got to finish college. Unlike other young couples who started aimless, they knew where they were going exactly. At a very young age, Papa entered politics, as his father did before him, and almost all the male members of his family. Mama got to stay at home to bear and raise his children. She also got to manage the family business she learned from her side of the family. Papa fixed the ground floor of the family   townhouse beside the town hall to serve as her receiving office; a few steps to the back, two flights of stairs up, and the manager turns into our Mama dear.

When Papa was in his late twenties, he was on his first term as mayor. Three terms later, and in his early forties, he was aiming for a higher office. He was also father to a dozen of us, and not so innocently, to half a dozen more, our other siblings never borne by Mama. Just the same, our half-siblings were brought to the house to be raised among us. Mama loved and cared for them as much. Anyway, we were already so many, and we kept running from one room to another, with  our nannies crazily joining the race, and Mama was so busy counting her abacus down at the office, that she must have mistaken everyone for her own children, including the nannies.

After his term as mayor, Papa came down with the dreaded cancer and of the throat yet. All of us were so scared that the disease must have come from his shouting too-often at the top of his voice. You see, as administrator of the town and of his lands, he couldn’t help himself but get   angry at the Slow-Pokes! the Foot-Draggers! the Dumb-Oafs! which was how he called the people who constantly frustrate his brand of efficient management which was strictly patriarchal.

We were so scared we turned soft-voiced all the way. We were just as noisy and rowdy, but now you can hear the running feet and the bumps of bodies against bodies, against furniture, against corners; but you can’t hear a single shout, except oops, umphs and ows.

When Papa became so bedridden, even running around turned into a thing of the past. Mama dear became matriarch of the family, and the lands and the business and all our lives including Papa’s was borne by one small body. Mind you, she was a giant at less than five feet tall; she was also a gentle sheep beneath a rough  wolf’s clothing, who sang solo for the church choir and hummed a trembling soprano to put us hard-hearted ruffians to deep, dreamy slumber. Including the nannies.

From the time Papa laid his head on the pillow to this point in time, we learned the true meaning of loving and caring, of sharing and keeping responsibilities. And lots more.

And when we heard about the SONA of GMA, we had such funtime about it. The manner of designations of the Super Regions was so familiar we felt we never grew up and left home at all!

You see, the siblings among us who were green-thumbs at heart were given by Mama the assignment of helping care for the lands; the animal lovers among us raised poultry and hogs, aside from the pets we had; the business-minded took care of managing the sale of all surplus, and assisted in Mama’s ground floor trade; the mathematicians and the writers were our tutors; the musicians and the artists took charge of our heartstrings; while the religious guided our souls. Sometimes one took more than one role.

GMA must have been a once a visitor in our house. Yoo, Momma!

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