Sonia: Forever a diamond

My youthful mom, Sonia Reyes Mayor, turns 75 today. She has always been her parents’ gem, her husband’s rock and her children’s paragon.

Like a diamond, Mom has a sparkling personality. She was my late dad Frank’s trophy wife, someone he presented to highbrow friends and socialites with pride. In parties, she could work a room effortlessly, aided by her near-photographic memory for names and details. 

She is also tough, unbreakable. At age 11, she was transported from the then sleepy town of Bongabon in Oriental Mindoro to aristocratic Vito Cruz in Manila, to be an intern at the St. Scholastica’s College. Even an 11-year-old now may have a hard time being weaned from the family home, but Mom didn’t succumb to homesickness or culture shock. Instead, she made lifelong friends in her new home, like Marcia Capinpin (Jesena), Ludy Borlongan (Zaldivar) and the late Angge (Alday) Soriano.

My Tita Marcia recalls, “As promdis and high school boarders at St. Scho, the four of us were always together for our classes, school activities and escapades. Sonia was also quite mischievous. She was one of those who went to our dorm’s roof deck on nights when we felt like it — although it was forbidden — making sure the German nun monitoring the boarders was already asleep in her room!  She was fun to be with as she was always game in any activity the four of us could think of!”

For college, my intrepid mother decided to go to UP Diliman to take up Business Administration, perhaps one of the first women from her hometown to do so and among a handful convent-bred girls who dared go to UP in the mid-‘50s. (All her four daughters followed her example and went to UP Diliman for college.)

But she never joined the workforce despite her impressive academic credentials. She married my father Frank Mayor, a handsome sales executive from Procter & Gamble, the year after she graduated from UP.

But Mom has always impressed upon me the value of a career, even if she was a housewife, a happy one. Like the 11-year-old who foresaw that going to Manila was for her own good, she somehow foresaw back in the ‘60s that there was going to be ample space in the ‘80s and onward for women in the corporate world, even in media, and she wanted her four daughters to make a go for it.

“Mom will always encourage you to take on a new challenge and she makes you feel like you are the best person to do it,” my sister Valerie, who runs a fleet of gasoline stations, says.

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Dad pushed us to excel with stern admonitions and his own fine example of hard work. Mom was the enabler, who rose before dawn every day to prepare our baon and was by the door every time we got home from school. In fact, I remember my first question to whoever met me at the gate was, “Ang Mommy ko?”

My sister Geraldine remembers the fancy triple-decker sandwiches our mom would prepare, a treat she always looked forward to during recess. Mom would even trim the crust off the sliced bread that she used for the triple-deckers, and once my classmate Tweety Quintero (now Olivares and an ophthalmologist) told me, “Oh, why don’t you make life easier for your mom and just eat your sandwich with the edges?” But that was my mom, she didn’t mind spending extra time trimming off the crust of her children’s sandwiches, even if it meant getting out of bed before the cock crowed.

Mom was always the type of person you would want to see at the end of a long, tiring day at school. She turned into cotton candy any boulders you might be carrying — trepidation over exams, problems with classmates or teachers, anxiety over grades.

She would tell me, “As long as you did your best, that’s fine by me.” With Dad, it was always, “Why aren’t you number one in your class?”

“When we were growing up, Mom was my refuge because of the simplicity of her expectations,” adds Geraldine, who was salutatorian of her Assumption high school class and graduated magna cum laude from her pre-med course at the UP.

“For Mom, there’s always light at the end of the tunnel,” says my other sister Mae, who migrated to the US over three years ago. “Mom will always find a way out of a difficult situation.”

My mom’s younger brother Edward shares, “Your mom has an ear for me whenever I call. She is there to listen and give me encouragement and prayers when I have some challenges to face.”

Mae also marvels at our mother’s guts. Mom got our house built when Dad was still pondering whether we could afford it or not.

 â€œMom is very positive in her outlook. She always wants you to look and feel good. And she has rubbed off that positivity on me in the way I live my life now,” adds Valerie.

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My husband Ed has no horror “mother-in-law” stories.

“Mom is very thoughtful. She remembers and greets people on their birthdays, anniversaries and milestones. She gives the right gift because she makes it a point to know the person more,” he says of his mother-in-law of 28 years now.

My mom’s inaanak Karen Loleng Parungo gushes, “I love the way Auntie Sonia remembers me on my birthdays, and on special occasions like Christmas. She never fails to give me something and I honestly look forward to it. She watched all my ballet recitals when I was growing up. She is like a second mom to me...”

Mom was always a caring wife and mother, and she stood by Dad’s side through his ups and downs. When Dad was diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas in 2009, she was hopeful he could and would lick it. And with such a positive wife beside him, Dad fought his cancer till the very end.

During the course of his treatment, every time we asked Mom how Dad was doing, she would always give us the good news. “He is responding to the treatment.” Sometimes we would wonder if she was in denial because she always said he was okay.

After Dad passed away, we asked Mom whether she was in denial. And she said she knew all along that Dad was fighting a powerful foe with his cancer but that she never lost hope because, “as long as I breathe, I hope.”

When I asked my niece Patricia Sotto what she admired most in her Grandma Sonia, she answered in a split second: “Her devotion to Grandpa even now that he’s in heaven!”

Mom has always looked at the bright side of life. And SHE is the bright side of our lives — truly a diamond.