by rossanahead | May 6, 2011 | children, family, Mari-an Santos, parenting
By Mari-An Santos
I attended a children’s party the other day. It was the birthday of a friend’s son. After greeting friends and acquaintances, I settled at a corner table and observed the revelry.
Children playing. Adults chatting. When it was time to eat, I was amazed at how the moms coaxed their still playing children to sit and eat while carrying on conversations with their friends, who were also moms trying to get their kids to sit and eat. The boys could not be bothered to look up from their PSPs and iPods to get a bite of fried chicken or spaghetti. But somehow, in the course of engaging us in conversation and pushing the plates of food towards the kids, when I looked again, the dishes were clean and the kids were running off to the play area.
Motherhood is indeed amazing. I pride myself in being able to multi-task. I think I have my hands full, juggling different projects, but having other lives in my hands, I don’t have to take on that challenge! Just to get through a children’s party like that, for example, a mother would have had to rouse her child from sleep. She would have had to convince her child to take a bath rather than stay in bed playing video games all day.
Assuming that the child got out of bed and took a bath, his mother would still need to get him dressed in proper, presentable clothes. Which, as I have witnessed, is a feat in itself! Even with bribes of games, prizes, food, and company of other children to play with, this does not guarantee that the family will get to the party in time. When they arrive, there is the added pressure to be sociable while still taking care of the child. From being wife and mother, she becomes wife, mother, and friend.
I visualize a cartoon where a mother tries to feed her child with one hand while cleaning the house or working with the other. If only her feet could do the same things as her hands!
And so I ask: Why do we celebrate Mother’s Day for just one day? Why not make it Mother’s Week? Or Mother’s Month? A day is not enough to let our mothers rest their weary heads and muscles to rejuvenate them for the rest of the 364 days of the year. Nevertheless, I send a tight and lingering embrace to generations of mothers. It may not be much, but I know that mothers have such huge hearts that they will value every thoughtful gesture that comes their way.
by rossanahead | Apr 23, 2011 | children, family, Mari-an Santos, Uncategorized, woman
By Mari-An C. Santos
My mother turned 60 last month. But looking at her, you wouldn’t have guessed it. Her hair is still jet black and her face hardly has any wrinkles. Her voice is clear and she walks with sure-footed steps. I usually associate 60-year-olds with grandmothers. But my mother is not a grandmother. (Don’t remind her though–she might decide to take it up with me and my sister.) She is a wife, mother, sister, daughter, friend, aunt.
Everyone says we look alike. I always say I got my looks from her but my temperament from my father.
Mama always worries about what to cook for the next meal, that I have a complete first aid kit for my trip, and that our balikbayan relatives have everything they need. Whenever I come home to Manila, we always have these long mother-daughter talks. Aside from telling me about the interesting things that happened around the household, she tells me about her past. That’s how I found out about the time when she went up to Baguio all by herself to meet my father. But since they didn’t talk about where and when they’d meet, Mama had to go to different places until they finally, literally, found each other.
She told me about the first time she came to Manila all the way from Zamboanga. Mama was a nurse and had come to the “big, bad city” to work. Save for her older sister, she did not know anyone in Manila. She stayed at a boarding house and worked the graveyard shift at a small hospital, treating people at odd hours for the most bizarre injuries.
These were revelations to me. My mother, who’s usually escorted by my father, commuting a very long distance for an undetermined date? My mother, who’s always with someone, alone?
I’ve known my mother all my life but it seems that I do not really know her. Listening to her stories, I realized that we have a lot more in common than I had previously thought.
I look forward to many more years of getting to know my Mama better.
by rossanahead | Apr 9, 2011 | Education, Mari-an Santos, woman
By Mari-An Santos
After my last post, my parents asked why I did not mention “the swimming classes.” In our house, this is one of the most enduring stories. I cringe every time my parents recount it with such gusto and glee.
The summer when I was 8 or 9 years old, my parents enrolled me in swimming lessons at the YWCA in Manila. My parents, like most, wanted to keep me busy with extracurricular activities during summer vacation. Succeeding summers saw me taking ballet, piano, and jazz dance classes.
On this particular vacation, my parents decided that I had to learn how to swim. If you read my previous post, you know that I was not a confident child. Putting on a swimsuit was enough to freak me out, and going out in public where people would actually see me?! That was out of the question. I’m sure I cried and wailed over this–hemming and hawing cannot even begin to describe it. Wailing and pleading and begging were probably involved.
Sure, my parents didn’t know how to swim, but they made this an argument “for,” whereas I was satisfied that if it was good enough for my parents to go this long without learning, then it was good enough for me. No dice. As a child in this debate, the “government” side won.
A few weeks in, as we were learning to breathe underwater, I swallowed a large amount of water and started wailing: “Mamamatay na ‘ko! Mamamatay na ‘ko!” (I am going to die! I am going to die!) I wanted to quit. I never wanted to get into the water again. The next day, I pleaded with my parents, but they told me I should not give up and had to finish the lessons. And so, I obediently went.
Obviously, I’m still alive. When we were in senior year of high school, I was reunited with the YWCA pool as we took our diving P. E. class there. I aced that class.
Today I swim every chance I get. And not just in the swimming pool either. I’ve done Boracay, Panglao, El Nido, Siargao, Bauang, Pagudpud, Currimao, Mactan, Dumaguete, Puerto Galera, to name a few. Of course, I have swallowed my fair share of water and I’ve smashed against some rocks. But I’m still swimming with my own two feet.
by rossanahead | Mar 30, 2011 | Education, Mari-an Santos, woman
By Mari-An Santos
A child so anti-social that she didn’t want anyone’s skin to touch hers in a crowded jeepney. A girl so timid that she couldn’t be coaxed into joining parlor games even after all the other parents had stopped thinking it was adorable. A pre-teen so shy that she would read a book in the middle of a party that her mother had forced her to attend. That was me.
All I had ever wanted to do was write. That is, after my fourth grade teacher “discovered” that I could put words to paper and sent me, along with a select few, to a tete-a-tete with NVM Gonzalez. But as it turned out, it was not such a simple choice.
I had heard that college should be a time to build a network. But this quintessential nerd simply clutched her books and went to class early. I studied hard alright but did not make more than a few friends.
It was after college when I slowly came out of my shell. I learned how to approach complete strangers and talk to them without breaking into a sweat or walking away. I have even managed to make friends from different parts of the world. While I’m still a long way from being the poster girl for confidence, I can hold my own in polite company.
My mother no longer wonders, “What will happen to this shy little girl?” Though maybe sometimes she wonders what has become of her.
Can you keep a secret? She’s still here.
by rossanahead | Mar 23, 2011 | Mari-an Santos, travel, woman
By Mari-An Santos
“I believe there are angels among us, sent down to us from somewhere up above,” goes one of my favorite songs. This is apparent in little miracles of daily life. But it was even more vivid during my recent holiday in Thailand.
I so enjoyed the hospitality and kindness of Siam last year that I returned with two friends in tow. As we were by no means experts on traversing the streets of Thailand, we often relied on the kindness of strangers.
There was the young man in Bangkok who I asked if I was at the right bus stop to MBK. Indicating that he could not speak English, he proceeded to call a friend on his mobile. When his friend was unreachable, he asked people for directions. And as it turned out, I was on the wrong side of the road. He not only pointed out where I should wait, he also helped me cross the street.
There was the girl on the train from Bangkok to Ayutthaya, who along with her mother, was making flowers from ribbons for her brother to offer at the temple. We asked what they were doing, entranced by the rhythmic movement and ease by which they transformed a simple band into a floral replica, and soon, she was asking about the Philippines. At the end of the ride, we gave them some polvoron baon and she gave each one of us a rose.
There was this woman and her husband in Ayutthaya who we asked about how we could walk get to our house from the night market. She said that it was too far for us to walk. They let us ride in their car and drove us there instead! She gave us her number to call in case we needed anything else while in Thailand.
There was the sales clerk from 7-Eleven who, a few minutes after I asked for directions to the Warorot Market in Chiang Mai, drove up in his motorcycle as I was walking down the street, clutching the tiny sketch he had made for me. He said that he would take me part of the way since he was on his way there too.
There was this couple giving an old friend a temple tour of Chiang Mai that generously offered me a seat on their Benz to join them for the day. I ended up exploring Doi Suthep, a popular hilltop temple frequented by tourists, and a little known pagoda that had a 600-year-old history. We had a late dinner at an authentic Thai restaurant.
God has situated angels all over to help us in many different ways in the form of people we meet on our way. When you open yourself up—of course, not too much, but just right—people reveal to you their most beautiful qualities and you in turn are able to show others the good in you.
Photo by David Marcu on Unsplash
by rossanahead | Mar 15, 2011 | Education, Mari-an Santos, woman
By Mari-An C. Santos
A year ago, when anyone asked me what my sport was, I had to stop and think, then say quite sheepishly: “I know how to swim and bike. I sometimes trek up mountains but nothing regular. Yoga isn’t a sport, is it?”
Nine months ago, three friends and I dared to enter the world of kickboxing. We thought that we were just going to bob up and down to upbeat music while simulating kicks and punches like a montage from a movie. And so we readily agreed.
At the gym, we punched, kicked, and hit the air with our elbows and knees. The result was a lot of huffing and puffing and begging, neigh pleading, for water breaks. But we were determined not to throw in the towel. An hour and a half later, we were actually filling out membership forms. Was it peer pressure? Overdose of happy hormones? Who knows? We were actually signing up for more torture, I mean, lessons.
The four of us made up the “girls class.” We moaned and groaned and complained but we always finished the class anyway. We invited more friends and our little band increased.
When I went to Thailand last year, Ricky, the gym owner, referred me to a friend who he had met when he competed in Muay Thai there. Believe it or not, I underwent Muay Thai training in the land of its birth—twice.
A lot has changed since then. Some classmates have become too busy to attend, one moved to Los Baños where she joined another Muay Thai gym, we have new trainers. I have stuck to it. It’s not just because of the noticeable weight loss or my improved strength and endurance. I’m in the best shape I’ve been since, maybe grade school when we did a lot of outdoor activities. But more importantly, kickboxing has helped me discover a part of myself that I never knew existed.
Photo by bruce mars on Unsplash
