My Mother’s Hands

She was married at nineteen and thrust into motherhood at the prime of her teen years. A reluctant wife and mother,  she bore three sons, one after the other, and three years later, when she least expected, and wanted it, she had me. Then, she had two more after me.

I do not have any memories of playing with “Mamang”.  It seems to me that during our childhood  she was consumed by the inexhaustible amount of housework involved with  raising four kids and later two more.  There just wasn’t time enough or hours enough left in the day, it seemed.

A few times a week she would squat on a bench by the running water outside the house with a towering load of laundry that she would wash by hand. I remember two to three rows of clothesline sagging with the weight of all that laundry, which at the end of the day had to be folded and piled away.

Once a week, usually on a weekend, lay the even formidable task of ironing all those pants and shirts with the old fashioned, heavy charcoal-powered iron. She ironed neatly and methodically, something that I have not been able to imitate even now. All these conjures images in my mind of  sweat and hot coals, and the clink of the iron closing and opening, and ashes scattering in the wind and the scrunch of the iron surface on dead and dried banana leaves. 

The household cooking involved a lot of wood, charcoal and smoke, mornings, noons and evenings.  Now I understand why so many times during those years she would be coughing so much at night for weeks at a time.   It was from inhaling all that smoke which presently had damaged  her lungs with chronic bronchitis.

And there was the hauling of buckets of water to the house to be done, and  housecleaning to be done and the herculean task of keeping her brood fed, cleaned, disciplined, educated, spiritually fed  every day of the week, every month of the year, year in and year out.

On top of her full time job as a mother, she was a tailor. I remember her as always bent over her sewing machine, her tape measure round her neck, her sewing scissors and her “guhit” or square red colored “marker”  (to mark on the paper patterns and on the clothes) on the side.  People would come from all over to have their pants and shorts custom sewed by her and I would observe her measure their waists and hips, and crotches.  Her Singer sewing machine was a part of our lives, as kids, and later as teenagers. In the house, the sewing machine was always running even into the late night hours, weekdays, weekends as there was always pants that need to be finished on time, pile on pile sometimes, and never enough time to do them. And so a lot of times she’d toil on into the night…and wake up she would in the early morning to cook our breakfasts and send us all to school, clean and fed. 

The blankets that we used as children were made by Mamang from scraps of left over material from her customers’ pants. So we would have quilted blankets made from pieces of gabardine, polyester  or like textile of different colors, textures and designs. They were never soft enough for blankets but they did the job of  keeping us warm. My culottes, skirts  and my brothers’ pants and shorts would be made from material she’d recycled from second hand clothes made new again.

By far, I have not met a more long suffering wife and daughter-in-law than my mother. I recall many a time when my father would drink and gamble away his paycheck and come home with nothing and my grandmother would shell out her money to help us, not without a lot of words. She had to bear all this for so many, many years and for so many, many years until my grandmother and father passed away she stayed.  She was stuck in a house that was not her own, forced to live by someone else’s rules, yet she kept her pains and frustrations inside herself. Never once did I hear her talk back to our grandmother.  I have memories of being tagged along with Mamang in finding our father on payday, just so he doesn’t sell our monthly ration of a sack of rice and spend away his paycheck. I also recall   when she would confront our father who’d come home drunk at night. It wasn’t one of my best childhood memories.

My mother prayed… every night.   Even when I was already a young adult, living with my mother, at night I would always find her praying outside the mosquito net on her bed. She sent us all kids to Sunday School and to church camp when we were young.  Sundays was the time when I see my  mother transform herself into the beautiful woman that she is, with make up and some nice clothes and her heeled pumps.  She is taller than the rest of us… 5’5’ or so. And she likes nice things.  She was a very attractive woman, with Spanish mestiza features and light skin.   I knew my mom basked in these compliments … and then she comes home, takes off her best clothes and shoes, and becomes Mamang again.

The never-ending washing and ironing of clothes, the cooking, the daily housework, the emotional and mental strain of living and making a living ravaged my mother during the best and youthful years of her life.  She was not only our mother, she was also our provider. Without her  we wouldn’t have all graduated from college. In order for me to take my board exam she sold her old, reliable Singer sewing machine. The earnings from her sewing gave us transportation money to and from college every day. It helped feed us so we didn’t get hungry while there   and helped support us in pursuing our  dreams.  Our triumphs now are Mamang’s triumphs.  She was mother, provider, tailor extra-ordinaire.

I wish I could find that Singer sewing machine again and keep it as an heirloom in my home; a talking piece; a symbol of my mother’s hard work, sweat and tears.

But then, I find, I have an even  more powerful symbol of Mamang’s  love, selflessness, and  sacrifice ----

 

         HER  HANDS.

               Happy Mother’s Day, Mamang!