MAMA BECKY

My friends and I were out in our frontyard talking about how stupid our dads were, and after 20 mins the next logical thing to talk about was how fabulous our moms were.

My mom's really the best mom in the world. I'm sure that you say the same thing about yours, but if God were to judge, Mama Becky would surely get the Best Mother in The Whole World award. Of course she's not perfect, she's far from that, really. But every time I talk about her with my friends or anyone else, I realize how proud I am of her. All of her, and that includes her habit of telling me that I am a pig.

THAT'S JUST MAMA
So she struts in the house after a good haircut courtesy of Salon de Manila, asking everyone how her new bob looks when she's had that cut for 10 years; refuses to eat rice in the evening but stuffs our faces with all the carbs she can afford (yes she wants us to be healthy, but I always insist that I have the right to go on a diet like her); gets really impatient when I go shopping but takes hours raiding Kamiseta to find that crisp white collared shirt when she already has three; and makes plans to take Zoe and me to the cinemas and have dinner in a nice restaurant but decides it's better to rest at home when we're already dressed up.

HOW SHE FEEDS US
She's an excellent cook, but when she was just learning, but because she would just leearn two dishes at a time, we used to have just bola bola or menudo for a good three years. Now she's added chicken garbanzos, adobo, alimango, chicken tinola, this beef dish ZOe and I love, and the famous fried eggs and hotdog. And when it's Sunday afternoon and we're scavenging in the kitchen foe somethign to snack on, we hit the big drum beside the fridge that she filled with V-Cut, Piattos, Potato Chips, Kornettes, Taquitos, biscuits, green peas, butong pakwan, and of course kiamoy. Paired with at least 3 bottles of Yakult, we go and watch THe Buzz until Mama decides it's dinner time.

ON THE FOUR-LETTER WORD
Not a big fan of drama, I realized how much of a character she was when I had my first heartache! It was a Holy Week pupply love kind of thing, when he kissed me on Holy Tuesday and fled the country on Good Friday. So on Holy Thursday, not wanting to let go (I know, YUCK), I spent the whole morning in bed in my stinky pajamas, cyring my heart out for a thing with a boy that didn't even last a week. I thought that Mama would excuse me from the Visita Iglesia (which was attended by our whole clan, which meant a grand convoy from one chruch to another) at 3 PM, but being a tough chick she dragged me out of bed and forced me to hear the two-hour mass with swollen eyes, nose and brain. Ok so I went, thinking that I could tell everyone I just didn't have enough sleep that's why my eyes looked really bad. But upon reaching the chruch premises, everyone was giggling, from my grannies down to my 3-year-old cousin, asking me why my boyfriend had left me, and some other questions following that. Yes my mother had a problem with discretion and I think I inherited it. There were times in the past when I knew she was having problems with a man she liked, but I didn't dare ask her. For her, that's really not a good topic for a mother-and-daughter talk, but I managed to sympathize in whatever way I could, like offering to take care of our business whiel she's away. Anyway it's the same case vice versa --- when I had more boy problems, she just made life easier for me by not nagging 24/7.
And when I broke up with my first boyfriend, she visited me at work and had coffee, and she told me that I was so lucky I got out of a relationship with a man who believed that patriarchy is the key to a perfect relationship. My mother doesn't tolerate that kind of crap. Generally, she's just not a fan of all that lovey-dovey shit and men who thought they could rule the world. Duh! Becky, Zeena and Zoe ARE the world.

HER TAKE ON MY LIFE
Surprisingly, my mother has been very supportive of my plans, even when I didn't have any yet. So I told her I was leaving the country, and she's fine with that, as long as I was. At the airport her eyes were watery but she never let a single tear fall, and I think that's the kind of strength only Mama Becky has. So now we chat a lot (when we're both at work and bored), and we chat about really random things, like just recently when she said she went to a transvstite fortune teller who was so sure I'd marry an engineer. And that time when she told me about Zoe's menarche. Hahahahaha. OK and the time we were making fun of my dad's lousy life. She just lets me be, and that, I think, is the reason I want to succeed in whatever this is I'm getting into. I want her to be proud of me. I want her to be able to say that "I trusted my daughter and it turned out ot be a great decision."

Ok so maybe my mom's not even reading my blog but I'm sure she knows everything I wrote here. She's crazy and loving and youthful and just everything you want from a mother (and then some . . . ) And maybe next year when we see each other she's going to ask me who I'm dating, how her "new" bob cut looks, and feed me adobo or menudo.