Unlikely (Mommies)

It began with the sisters as mothers---

1. My mother said that I’m the eldest’s favorite because my Manay never hit me. When we (the youngest half of the siblings) went off to college, the eldest sister became our mother. I’d like to write about her but like most holy things her story remains elusive.

2. I say that the second’s my second mother because it was to her that I began confessing my secrets. I want to re-write her story but it will take a wedding.

3. (Amir, future brother-in-law, I know our mother asked you not to do what other men have done to her daughters. Thank you for being a protector.)

4.. My third sister is like the cool mom who goes with me through all the wild things, the dark things, and the roller coasters. The words in my head, unsaid, she has always read.

5. My youngest sister is my mother when it comes to being my Self. Yesterday I quipped, “Maybe someday I’ll get to celebrate this day with you and Mommy!” And she said, “Are you pregnant?! No shit, tell me the truth: are you pregnant?!” Geez, no, haha, but you’ll be the first to know. “If ever, that’s okay, get pregnant soon!”

6. I told my mother yesterday that the greatest story I will write will be for her and about her. She cried.

Baby, you say that they say that it takes a village to raise a child---

1. And I look at that 10-year-old picture, our village--- atheists, rockers, deviants, the younger dead, respectable aliens now.

2. Was I the one who took that picture?

3. You are an amiable mother, your daughter says.

4. And I always say that I’ll whack her ass if and when I find out that she’s disrespecting you and with “Hay, punyeta, kung alam mo lang ang hirap na pinagdaanan ng Nanay mo habang binubuntis ka ha. Grabe! Kung ako yun, maloloka ako! Umayos ka, umayos ka! And make no mistake, you got your brain, kid, from your Mom.”

5. My baby is now a ten-year-old-mommy.

The Evita Peron of Suburbia

1. Calls me sexy and asks how I am, surprised by my turning vampire and so what about our dinners? Weekends and perhaps a holiday before she returns to more business.

2. She’s saddened that she could not enjoy more time with her third son, almost two months old, and please reserve July for the christening.

3. Pooh will be there.

4. Happy mommy’s day, Bitch.

5. Someday I will tell your sons that you’re famous for declaring “VIRGINITY IS A CURSE!”

Pooh(ta!) on a Camel

1. I miss her and her no-nonsense-talk about what is stupid and painful and go for whatever would make you happy.

2. All for my whimsy and weirdness.

3. Like once I went to a gathering in her home, Evita and Baby and Poohta all with children then. I said, “Can I bring one of my cats next time? My baby.”

4. And, “Can I bring Inchika home with me? Please?”

5. Inchika, her first daughter, and Poohta said, “Hoy, hindi yan toy!”

6. And no kidding, Torotot Boy still has a death-tag on his head…Wuuuusaaaaaaa.

7. See you in July, Super Mom.

Katitang The Kid

1. Who once thought that she’ll never have a child.

2. There’s a memory of a guy who once told me about looking at you and there you were riding around on a kid’s tricycle.

3. Cysts and birth control pills.

4. Now there’s Lucia.

5. (And horny high school boys, ugh, what little pigs for slaughtering.)

6. And have found that you can do anything and everything but all you really want to be is a mother.

7. Be scared oh foolish children and adults who would dare to hurt this child.

Honeybunch and Mahal

1. With your boys and your girls.

2. Maybe someday they’ll be sweethearts haha.

3. Far far far from what was high school and college, life now.

4. Did you ever think you’ll be mothers?

Mommy and Lola and Yami

1. You all used to call me (and yes until now, age will never outgrow those childhood names).

2. Nowadays I’m “Big Sister” and mostly “Ma’am” or “Miss”.

3. I don’t know about “yummy” but to some I’m still “Yams”.

4. The elementary boys call me “Miss Minchin!” Damn drunken bastards.

5. I was a mother even then, wasn’t I?

6. And all whom I have taught and will teach will be my vicarious children. Except nowadays I don’t treat them like children, more like post-grad teenagers.

My Wife

1. You know you have also been my mother.

2. You did not abandon your son.

3. Death comes and we feel something die in us too.

4. Time.

5. Be well and let the dead not take you away from me.

On this Sunday last year

1. The hurt from the dead telling me that I’ll be a bad mother was still felt.

2. Foul.

3. Single mothers are admirable.

4. I say ‘Wow’ when I listen to what they have to do and what they’ve done.

5. Single mothers are also, at times, unreconstructed women.

6. It’s all about being whole without a man.

7. Only then will single mamas be ready for another man, an equal, and not men who want a surrogate mama they can fuck.

This Mother’s year

1. On this Sunday I hope that mothers would forgive themselves from all the guilt that they would feel.

2. That women who are trying and failing to have children would stop punishing themselves.

3. There’s a smile from heard sentences like “I want you to be the mother of my children.”

4. The first page of a new notebook is about its mother. It remembers that she had cried when her children each gave her notes. And that it noticed how its dad has become sweeter to its mother. Or how easily the mother cries as she grows older. Its dad prays that mother lives longer to continue being the family’s mother.

5. I’m sorry Mom for all my failures.

6. Thank you for keeping your silence all throughout these years and now saying, “My daughter was holding herself back because the man needed to get ahead first. I saw what she was doing. I saw the pain that she was going through.”

7. Loving Mother, Fierce Mother, always holding on to her children who have gone astray, I hope I don’t break your heart with my choices.

If I’m afraid of something, it is a world without my mother.

0. It is unimaginable.