Everyone tells me that I look like my mother. I usually have to point out that I have my father’s sleepy eyes, and that is the trademark of the men in his family. Great. I also point out I have a melted nose (my mother’s nose is pert and proud). Mine is more like a melted scoop of ice cream kindly carved a bit by a humble spoon. I looked at the photos of my mother when she was my age. There was no way I looked like her. She was a fashion model. I am a fashion editor. There is a world of difference there.
When she was young she lived all over the world, Egypt, Germany, Japan and a bit of Spain, I think. A lot like what I’m doing now. I’ve lived in London, New York, have been intensely discovering India and soon I’ll be moving to a quiet lakeside town to partake in a writing program where I will hopefully have the guts to finally churn out my novel properly. It’s been on my hard drive rigor mortis for almost two years.
She also has a fabulous BFF, Charina Zaragoza, who is a legendary beauty. My best friend Wendy and I always call each other Charina and Emily as a joke and sort of homage to the two women we admire.
I would pore over my mother’s old photos. There she was, swished in a Leonard dress on an ordinary day with her BFF Charina wearing a more Marisa Berenson-esque ensemble. Then there would be beautiful Nina Ricci dresses, splashy Puccis and the occasional country girl Gucci dress. Where were all these dresses?
She, of course, gave them away. I was such a tomboy growing up that she never thought I’d grow up to be quite that tarty. When I was little she made me wear these fancy little diamond studs. I lost them in camp; as punishment I had to give away my cat. It was rather very Joan Crawford of her, but my cousin cared for the cat while I atoned for the lost stone. I eventually got the cat back and lost all affection for precious things. She told me that I needed to learn how to be grateful and know the value of things. The message was lost on me. How could my Persian cat Ashley be deposed for a lost rock that I never even asked for? I think her abbreviated lesson was expounded more decades later when I spoke to Tita Charina about it: “She just wanted you to have the best but she also didn’t want you to turn out for the worst.”
For many years my mother struggled to give us a great life with great care so we did not turn out to be the Menendez brothers. She exposed us to charity work at a young age. It was something commonplace in our home. Nothing spectacular. Something that every person should do. When I went on immersion for high school everyone was shocked. Some came with pretty, creative slips from their parents, fearing kidnapping. I was comfortable where I was. I slept on the floor with the kids. My mother seamlessly showed us a world of pleasure but also a world of reality. “Sacrifice is the most human of all actions,” she would say in her campaign speeches and when she would make my brother and I give up our toys for other kids for Christmas. What happened outside also happened inside. There was no disparity, nor hypocrisy.
During my growing-up years, she was the “bad cop.” She had an iron fist hidden in a velvet mitten. She had a commanding temper; I only inherited a B-side version of that temper which is more hysterical. Where as she could make her superiors take notice, I simply irked mine. Anyway, I was dead scared of her. She was quite creative in making us learn a lesson. She was a true original. Aside from the Ashley exile, I remember her surprising me in the staircase when I went out late with my first boyfriend three weeks before his prom. The surprise alone, her wrapped in a blanket with a scary “What have you been doing” baritone, had me terrified that I didn’t even care to negotiate for the punishment. She knew that scaring me was enough. She didn’t believe in suffering. Eventually I got to go with the prom with my boyfriend, with my cook, bodyguard and semi-yaya in tow. I’m sure it was an extension of the punishment as my entourage seemed to be quite the crowd pleaser. If she couldn’t trust me, I’d have to answer to the household trio for my personal affairs.
Eventually there came a time when I realized I was a grown woman and felt I didn’t have to listen to her anymore. No more threats, no more curfew and yes, no more allowance. My parents cut me off at 19. My mom always told me it would be good for me. So I succumbed and peddled my crooked smile to sell my favorite cola, hair gel and so on to pay for rent. I suddenly was a model, but my agency was quick to put me on the “personality” category. At least I had that to fall back on.
We have had our personal wars, so cold that blood wouldn’t even have a chance to seep into the glacial temperature. Words so explosive it would break Boy Abunda’s mirror. We were like passionate French lovers, except we were mother and daughter. Even so, recently we had an implosion. Just this spring, I rolled out walking by the Crillon with my shades on pulling at my trolley while I had an unlit cigarette wedged in my mouth. It was something out of a Woody Allen movie. Except it was real. Also that I’ve gone from grown up-ish to true adult.
The fights in the past were like a game, to see what I could get away with. But now it just hurts. I love my mother. I love her, not because she’s my mother, but because I respect her. I admire her. To hurt her is a sin.
There comes a time when the definition of who your mother is to you changes from the biblical sense and rearranges itself to a more personal and deep meaning. My mother is my hero. She has taught me never to give up on great love. That what the world lacks is fortitude. She has taught me that party friends can suck big-time. She also taught me to never have to answer to anyone but only do things I can live with.
One day, I visited her and saw she was in a rather plaintive mood. I asked what was wrong; she asked me, “Where did I go wrong as a mom?” Out of nowhere. I stood there silently. I didn’t answer her because words were superfluous. Or I was too dumb to come up with something fitting.
So today I just want to tell her, she never went wrong. In fact, she was everything right in my world.