One of the exquisite features of going home are the moments spent with my mom. We have these conversations that may be trivial to some but entirely useful and profound to us. Prior to her stroke nine years ago, an event that was not only physically debilitating, she was the epitome of energy. It’s different now. Long retired from the daily grind of her office job, she merely stays at home these days -- dedicated to following her early evening soaps. She still reads her books and magazines. As a child growing up, she filled our house with a variety of the printed journals. It may have only been Steel, Dailey and Sheldon but they were nonetheless crucial in molding my personality. In late teens and early twenties, the age when prodigies were already established in their literary aspirations, I began immersing myself with the classics. I still haven’t rode the sad train with Anna Karennina (as Rory Gilmore elucidated in her high school graduation speech) or flip through all the Shakespeare plays but I know I’ll get there.Ah, her magazines from the 60’s were the kind of stuff that fueled my curiosity. There were the scrapbooks of Amalia Fuentes -- a chronicle of the Sampaguita star rise to stardom. I wasn’t yet in my teens when I was asking the question of her time, Amalia or Susan? Her Photoplay and Modern Screen collections, in-depth, exhaustive periodicals on Hollywood, were some of my staples to escape childhood ennui. That and all the JFK memorabilia. Our baby books and albums, meticulously labeled and organized -- now dusty and furrowed but still preserved and priceless are the stuff to show to potential life partners.
She has taught me the manners that the school system, with all my strict and rigid teachers weren’t able to emphasized enough to all of us students -- don’t be bitchy (my teachers were downright terrors). I didn’t become bitchy and temperamental. I wonder if that’s a good thing. Smiling was a must every time I dropped by at her office. Not uttering salutation to her colleagues would entice reprimand. “Saying good morning or good afternoon isn’t too much to ask, isn’t it?” she would admonish if I ever forgot good form. She wasn’t much of a domestic diva ( I’m not either but I stay home a lot and kind of trapped to be one). But she’s now dedicated to Martha Stewart on the Lifestyle Network. I miss gazing at our daily ritual before I sat forth for the western hemisphere -- the Korean drama, Days of Delight (133 episodes). We used to watch Gilmore Girls together and concluded that Lorelai should parlay her mother card more often.
A mother’s company is invariably different. Mother and daughter relationships are complicated. Ours was not. To think she was the people person. And I border on bleakness and solitude. But as a mother she was the icon to behold. All her four children turned out just fine (I have three younger brothers). She has given us her life blood and it was her distinct sense of nurturing that has impermeably shaped our lives.
