My weekends belong to Candida

There are 365 days in a year and  aside from Holy Week and Christmas break  I only get to celebrate 104 days with my mother. Those days are the sacred weekends that she tightly guards. They belong to her. She owns them. I lovingly give them to her.

Come Saturday morning, my mother waits for me at home  ready with a calm yet welcoming smile as she serenely sits on the rocking chair of my late father in our terrace. When I alight from the car, she stands up, her eyes light up and, with a spring in her feet, dashes to meet me as I unlatch the green gate of our humble home. I kiss her hand and she automatically reciprocates with a warm embrace  so warm I can just lounge on her shoulders for a long, long while. What is it with a mother’s love that can make a child, either four or 40, feel so blessed and at peace by simply having her around?

At 40, I still get pampered like a kid by my mother. She cooks my food, making sure she uses only the ripe yellow guavas in my favorite sinigang na tilapia sa bayabas. She turns our modest home in Cabuyao into a castle where she treats me like her prince. The love she showers me with is the nourishment that sustains me in the many, many days that I am not with her physically.

I have been basking in that privilege for the last 17 years  that’s how long I have been away from home since I started to work and live in Manila. I am the only member of the family who does not live with them. No amount of phone calls on weekdays can suffice for the wonderful feeling my mother and I experience when we exchange stories face-to-face on weekends.

And the stories we exchange can range from the most mundane to the most philosophical.  We talk about artistas and her addiction to Walang Hanggan. She really gets carried away by the things she watches. When I brought her to the CCP to watch Stomp, she almost stood up from her seat, ready to join the noisy merrymaking of performers on stage. When I brought her to the circus to watch Cirque du Soleil’s Varekai, she shouted as she got thrilled while the acrobats somersaulted in mid-air. When one performer missed a step and tumbled down the stage, my mother loudly shrieked: “Ay! Nagbalentong!”

We also talk about love  her love for my father, her love for each of her five sons. We, too, talk about pains  like the occasional hole in my heart. Then we laugh. We love to laugh.

At 67, my mother has a very deep sense of propriety despite having finished only elementary education. As she puts it, “Hindi naman itinuturo ng eskwelahan ang modo. Nasa tao yan (You don’t learn good manners in school. The person learns it himself).” She regales me with her wit and wisdom. That makes her a PhD holder in my eyes.

Most of the time, my weekends are non-negotiable. But my mother bends the rule sometimes. Like if I have assignments for work or an R&R with some dear friends that will inevitably swell to a weekend. But even that, I need to tell her in advance  a week or two weeks ahead prior to my missing the weekend at home. I need to prepare her emotionally for I will miss spending the weekend with her. Occasionally, I tag her along with me when I go out of town with my friends during the weekend.

To make up for some missed weekends, I sometimes surprise her by coming home in the middle of the week, in the middle of the night. She does not like for me to travel home late at night for safety reasons but there are times that Manila is just too much for me to bear that I need an instant break, a quick breather  in her arms. Her embrace is warm, enough to thaw the hurts and pains I occasionally experience. Her words of wisdom insulate me. She does not have to say a word because her mere presence heals me. Her solemn silence is the cathedral of my strength. Her smile is the fortification that shields me from harm. Her laughter is an ultimate source of my joy, a cause for celebration. With her, every weekend is Mother’s Day.

So what do we do on weekends? We talk. We talk for long hours in my late father’s hammock under the himbaba-o tree. She’s an engaging storyteller and she delivers the punch line perfectly. One time, when she went for a check-up, she got trapped alone inside the elevator in the hospital near our house. For more than 10 minutes she was knocking hard on the stainless doors but no one seemed to hear her. Of all times she did not bring her cell phone but she brought with her black bag that contained bottled water, dark chocolates and cookies  as a diabetic patient, she does not leave home without her snack. She gathered her wits and had a picnic in her lonesome as her foot kept kicking the door. Finally the elevator doors opened. The first thing she told the nurse, as beads of sweat sprinted down her face: “Paandarin mo ang electric fan at pakitutok mo sa akin.” The nurse did not heed her at once so she told her: “Paandarin mo ang electric fan o baka gusto mo ring makulong ka sa elevator!” Yes, my mother can be taray, too. At times.

We eat a lot on weekends. She performs magic in the kitchen as she prepares the food that I hardly have in Manila. A weekend is not complete without ginisang mais with hibe, sinigang na tilapia sa bayabas, adobong pusit sa gata, inihaw na bangus and minatamis na kamote. She’s a simple woman whose taste buds shun complications. She’s a kitchen whiz who does not tire cooking for her loved ones. Weekends are special because my married brothers and their families eat at home, too.

We love to sing together, a sure thing we do on weekends. Music plays a big part in our bonding at home. We listen to her CD of kundiman songs or we converge inside my room to listen to some traditional Filipino music on YouTube. She still has that throttle in her voice and she still sings the songs with feelings.

Before Sunday ends, we visit my father in the cemetery. We’re quiet for a while as we allow the wind to deliver our love and prayers for Tatay. When my father was still alive, he was a fiercer sentinel of my time for my family. Now that he’s gone, my mother has inherited his trait of tightly guarding my weekend with love  so I will be reminded that the family should be celebrated while the time still counts, while the moment still matters.

My weekends are sacred. They belong to my mother.

(For your new beginnings, please e-mail me at bumbaki@yahoo.com. You may want to follow me on Twitter @bum_tenorio. Have a blessed Sunday!)