happy mother's day!

it would have been vigan, corregidor, or the banaue rice terraces for us this mother's day. but since mama just had tracheostomy last march and still has eleven radiation therapy sessions left, we content ourselves with the usual dinner with the rest of the family this year.

my mother and i used to have this love-hate relationship when i was a lot younger. she always made me feel like she was never ready to take on the role of being single mother to me, even years and years after my father died. i remember her telling me, in one of our countless fights that staying and taking care of me singlehandedly here in cebu is much of a sacrifice for her, since if she had her way, and had it not been for one of my father's final wishes that i finish my studies in the city, she would have long packed her bags and returned to negros where she could live an infinitely more comfortable life with her own parents. i know i resented every word she spoke, and it was times like those that i utterly missed my father.

fast-forward to the present times, when i am already years older and a hundred times wiser... seeing mama everyday victorious in her continued fight against breast cancer, i have come to respect and be proud of the woman she has become. i now realize that the situation could not have been easy for us. we were only like two warring sisters growing up together, still internally struggling with each of our own personalities. i, being the typical teenage girl who thought she knew better, and she, the young widow trying to learn the ropes on living the life so different from the pampered one she lived as my grandfather's spoiled youngest daughter and as my father's prim little housewife. now as i watch her play with mishi, ace, khyra, and especially dane, i like to think mama could be given a second shot at motherhood: to my future kids, this time. indeed, from frenemies to bestfriends... happy mother's day, ma! and get well soon. as in really soon!