One day in a year to honor mothers is a bad idea, if that is what Mother’s Day meant.
Generally, any human person with the right mind should honor their parents and husbands, their wives all the time.
But today I am convinced we need this day dedicated to all mothers.
As the world celebrates this day as mother’s day, I think about how I could celebrate and dedicate it to my wife, while I was jogging around the red-carpeted running tracks at the Burnham Park Athletic Bowl.
Several thoughts raced through my mind as I jogged and walked around the red tracks today. I seized and held on to the time when I met my wife during breakfast, after an early morning jog around the Lepanto airstrip in Mankayan town at the border between Benguet Province and Cervantes, Ilocos Sur. When she entered the door of the Community Recreation Center, I also happen to look up as the sun was rising. I froze with the sight as she brought with her, the sunshine. My life has changed after that dramatic moment.
Several sunrises later, long after I left home and returned to my work at the Bureau of Agricultural Research (BAR) in Quezon City, I held on to the vision of her coming into my life. I loved that day and the early morning sunshine after a rainy evening. Someday, she would be my wife and mother to my children.
Two decades and seven years later, my wife is a mother to three children and a grandmother too.
It is truly a good thing there is a Mother’s Day explicitly feted for everybody, especially fathers like me, to express our appreciation for the boundless love of a wife and mother that inspires her caring ways, wisdom, and sacrifices to grow and help build the home.
As I jogged and walked around the tracks, I decided to leave my wife alone to celebrate in solitude – in peace and quietude. I noticed, she bought herself a book yesterday.
Meantime, I will write this message for my column at the SunStar Baguio, expressing my appreciation for her great work as a great mother.
She had other plans that reminded me of the first day we met. After waking up, she spent time exchanging stories with her daughters and sharing a good laugh. During lunch, she told me we would visit our eldest son and his family at Quirino Hill.
“Let us spend time with them, especially Zoey, our first grandchild before they visit our daughter-in-law’s grandfather in Manila next week,” she said.
The sun never stops shining indeed even during rainy days. That is obvious. Even a child knows that. But if moms radiate the sunlight, you can feel their warmth by celebrating mother’s day as they see fit. Just for one whole day, be with her, listen to what she says, and understand her message to your being a husband, son, daughter, and grandchild. Light and warmth for the family usually is radiated through the mother.
Our ability to express and articulate our thoughts, to communicate, is a gift that is necessarily channeled to mothers and then to the children.
I say so because most fathers are quite and express what they think with action rather than words. In most instances, the action is artless, inappropriate, or does not measure up to what was really meant.
Mothers do it differently. I guess they are more loving. They possess the power to transform burdens into something worthwhile. They are willing to go through time to get their message across. They are patient if that is necessarily what it takes, no amount of effort is too strenuous, and no expense too costly, if it makes their loved ones happy, healthy and comfortable.
That is why they can talk with dignity and grace. Believe me, my children’s aptitude for words were given to them by a mother who read to them while they were young. They can talk to other people as they were listened and spoken to by their mother. What did they have from me but stares, gruff, and an angry demeanor out of nowhere that my youngest daughter would readily classify as behavior that does not build civilization or well-being at home!
In front of me, my children would rather be silent when they commit mistakes. With their mom, they talk and explain how it is. I am pissed all the more.
Alright, mothers have wisdom and intuition that is far reasonable than mine. I think it is because mothers can feel more, and have more respect for human beings.
If that be so, we do well to listen to them more.
If that be so, we should entrust our children to no one but their mothers.
If that be so, mothers must be honored all the time, with all due respect, and all due security and commitment.