crossline

Snapshots of my Mama
Jona Branzuela Bering

“N-eat n u? No cellphone sa gbi-i h lbi na ky gbi-i u duty. Yaw pbdlong jo, ptuo u tawn.” Over-chopped text messages, crowded with consonants rather than with vowels, and the using of u instead of verbalizing the real word never failed to plant a smile on my eyes. I could hardly imagine my Mama riding the pop culture of text messaging but she already did. And sometimes her messages were incomprehensible which left me telling her to avoid over chopping her messages. And she would just reply: Wa u understand? Bogo di u? Hehehe. There it went, my mama going hip. I could not help but produce a healthy laugh.

The last time I went to Tuburan, my home, Mama said that I was molded after her, however upon my creation I was rubbed in a wrong way. I inherited her skills in cooking Pinoy dishes: how to sauté garlic and onions to a perfect brown; how to lessen the cholesterol of adobong baboy and to save cooking oil at the same time; the secret of a perfect tinuwang isda, she said, is a fresh, fresh fish. But mixing instant noodles, sardines and kamunggay as a passable breakfast soup cocked her eyebrows to the hilt, questioning, where the hell did I get such a recipe? That is what you called sopa a la jona, I grinningly answered, a genuine recipe.

Dressmaking, too, is one of our common denominators but she would be angered if there would be an incongruous difference in the stitches that her beloved machine produced. She could spot the differences, even how trivial it would be. She knew then I had touched her sewing machine. I had not mastered the art of sewing then; much more embroidering lies on my face.

Our philosophy in dressmaking however is in both extremes. Even how erstwhile the style would be, for her, every dress has a life of its own. One has to respect its style; even if it is reflecting the Nora-Tirso tandem or resonating the polka dots era. Changing it to fit the 21st century is not giving value to it. One has to adapt to the newest trend, I argued, restyling the dress is not a form of disrespect, rather, it is putting it to good use. And fashion also, is a cycle. And it is inevitable. If the skinny jeans will be out of style, I had allowanced the reinvented jeans with an inch or two for future adjustments and her sewing machine is always there to the rescue. No need to worry.

But she always worries even when the outcome is pleasant.

All the rivers run unto the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. It is Ecclesiastes. For her, it is a proverb or so found in the Bible, for me, it is a poem used as an introduction in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.

Worshipping books to the point of incurring insomniac nights, I have taken it from her too. And every time I go home, literally shouldering a bagful of books, the litany of losing my eyesight at a very young age will be repeated all over again. Since she is already partially sight-impaired and reading in a dimly lighted room, she said, had caused it. Ma, the keynote there is, dim-lighted room; the era of using kerosene lamps had already lapsed. And the last time I had my eye check-up, which was a month ago, I still had20/20 vision which is a rare case for urbanized young adults now.

For every argument she had, I could rebut. For every argument I had, she could motherly rebut.

The transition of a text addict (solely for her offspring), to a cook, to a dressmaker, to a debater, to a bookworm metamorphosed into one, a mother.

And I could still capture her in lens with her oblique angles, a detail would not escape me, I got a definitive and a subjective outlook towards her. After all she is my Mama.

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