My Real Mama

Some people question the idea of having a special day for mothers. They reason that it doesn’t make sense to celebrate people who are just doing their assigned duties or simply following their nature.  The people who see mothers this way have probably been deprived of a mother’s love or these people are just eerily cold.

But, yes, why the celebration of Mother’s Day? Children just naturally love a good mother every single day of the year. On the contrary, a bad mother does not even deserve a single day.

Of course, there are bad mothers. What do we call the mother who left her week-old baby at a dumpsite recently or the one who threw her infant into a creek? Those mothers must have been in very difficult circumstances, all right; but they must also be really bad beings to go against their motherly nature.

My own mother is not the best mother in the world, for sure. Mama is not very expressive of her love for her children. She is definitely not tender to us.

Growing up, we children mainly relied on ourselves emotionally – to each his or her own, so to speak. We kids each tried our best to come out as solid persons. But, good enough, the presence of other loving people in our life was a great help.

In our family, we called every woman elder “Mama.” I had Mama Ipion, my grandmother; Mama Bebing, my aunt; Mama Sencion, my other aunt; and many more. I never felt deprived of motherly love, what with so many Mamas around me.

And I never questioned the peculiar attitude of my real Mama towards us chidlren. I didn’t know how an ideal mother should be. So I just took Mama the way she was.

Then I got some education and learned that mothers were supposed to be this and that. Mama was none like “this” and “that.” I began to dislike the way Mama was.

That’s when life turned difficult for me. I suddenly had a lot of heartbreaks about my mother. My grievances piled up and made my life heavy. I became bitter about Mama.

It took me a lot of soul-searching to even out my feelings about my mother. As a young girl, she herself had no mother around in her life, and she grew up under her aunt’s care. Her mother married another man, and Mama had not even seen the shadow of her real father.

I figured out she had a very miserable childhood. In comparison, I was much better off. I had no right to question her supposed “lack.”

Indeed, as a child I was much better off than Mama. She was at least physically around in my life. And if she was not being an ideal Mama, her lack was compensated many times over by the many other Mamas I had been blessed with.

Now, when friends ask me who among the many Mamas I have is my real mother, my ready answer is: “All of them!” How lucky I am! And luckier that my Mama Lilia is still here.