MAMA MIA!!!

She got married at age 18; gave birth to her eldest daughter at 19. Before she reached 21 years old, she's already a mom of 2 daughters. The following years saw her juggling the roles of a wife, a mother, and a student trying to finish her college degree. By age 28 a baby boy came as an addition to the family. The dream of getting her college diploma had to be set aside to take better care of the children.

Her husband worked for a steel fabricator. She augmented the family income by being a direct seller of cosmetics and a seamstress at home. Life gave her neither riches nor great opportunities. But she tried her best to give her children the important things they need. Her creative ways and ideas made sure that the family would not go hungry. Together with her husband, she never made the children feel that they were poor. But she neither gave them the idea that they were well-off. They just lived within their means.

Years later, the steel fabricator closed down and left her husband jobless. I guess there was not much choice for her back then but to go abroad and work as a domestic helper/caregiver in HK to send her eldest daughter to college.

Up to now, even if her eldest daughter is already working, she opted to stay and work there until her youngest son graduates from college.

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The woman is my mother.

Whenever I feel like life is being unfair to me and i wanna whine about it, I think about the things she have gone and had to go through raising me and my siblings. Wala pa sa kalingkingan ang mga pinagdaanan ko kumpara sa mga pinagdaanan niya. At 27, I'm still a whiny baby. My mom was pregnant with her third child (my brother) when she was my age.

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I gave her a call yesterday just to greet her a happy birthday. Nevermind that the long distance call would cost me mucho dinero. I used to send her pesonalized greetings but i got busy with work, so I hope that simple phonecall will do the trick, if not equate to the more dramatic effect of my personalized greeting cards.

Happy Birthday, Ma! I love you.