re-post: Nanay Ko
(written about a year ago.. posting it to show a friend)
Inspired by a visit to my mom a few days ago, and the songs of Lei Garcia and thinking of this Saturday's PWC-Q International Women's Day show celebrating mothers... It's not quite polished, but I thought I'd share.
Nanay ko
turning the pages of my mother’s history
she reveals the things she didn’t know
were things that should be known
like how the second boy was one year old
when she left to go to teachers' college
because she and daddy decided
they needed one of them to have a decent job
and my mother was “bright”
the struggle of a woman
to leave her children to attain her full potential
and what is a woman?
if not a mother
and what is a mother?
if not mothering her children
but what is potential?
if not measured in dollars and cents
she tells me of teachers' college
and board exams
and working in one-room dirt floor classrooms
for hungry children who couldn’t speak English
and I say, 'What about Inday?" my sister.
"Oh. I had to take maternity leave in my fourth year college"
As an aside.
a career woman. i think that is what she would be
Now helping my father through school as he had helped her through hers
and with another child now - four
and a job with no rights
no right to unionization
A teacher's job: a woman's job.
an “honour”, i think they called it. a choice, also
it is shameful to speak too loud.
it is improper (too womanly?) to cry.
she breaths slowly, blinks quickly
no tears. no tears.
and i learn about my Lola, her mother
who put seven children through school
by sewing underwear and selling rice
and mortgaging pieces of the Carisma family farm
because she had lost her husband and was an orphan herself
alone.
my mother talked about her mother before
when i was a child she told me about
this woman, her “Inay” after whom she was named
and that this woman had Faith.
Faith.
as though inner strength did not exist
only God ("the Father") carried.
she couldn’t have done it alone.
After 10 years of teaching primary school in Iloilo,
and 9 credits towards a Master's degree,
My mother travelled to Canada with two young children who had never ridden an airplane.
My mother left behind in the Philippines two older children because they could not afford their airfare yet.
To join my father who had left to join his sister who had left because she was a nurse and that’s what Filipino nurses were trained to do: leave.
“Legacy”, some call it. Cheap, complacent third-world labour, I say. I’ll say it louder.
A one-bedroom apartment, and two children and then four when the others finally joined
and then one of them got lost to the darkness
and another, too, slowly losing control
“you’re lucky,” they tell me. "you grew up different”
I don’t know what to say, but I think I should say thank you. maybe. i don’t know.
I say I’ll be worth the struggle.
She worked in a factory, crowded with other Filipinos who came to Canada for that better future. because factory jobs pay better here than professional jobs do back there.
and their families needed money back home.
she took courses at night while her kasamas shared in her mothering tasks
and she doesn’t remember how they all got fed.
“I would say, Please God, let them be fed... and there was always enough rice”.
Three years, it took her to prove herself a worthy teacher. Three years of assembling chairs in a factory in Montreal’s East End while she took evening courses and thanked others for helping with her children. Ten years of experience as a teacher in the Philippines was not enough. An English exam was not enough. Orientation to this province’s school system was not enough.
but a job. in a school! FINALLY! thank God.
And still there were teachers who challenged her accent.
and still there were students who challenged her stature
and there she was challenging herself
working
then pregnant again. at the age of forty-five. and willing to do it all over.
and hoping that i would be different.
(i am.)
i asked her once about her past
and she told me about teachers' college
and board exams
and coming to Canada in 1971
and now I say, “What about being a mother?”
and still she says... well, she doesn't know what to say
and that is what
... frustrates.
because who celebrates mother? Other than Hallmark and flower shops on that second Sunday in May? Government-sanctioned, Capitalist love.
who celebrates mother when careers cloud their minds and they see nothing but their own dollar worth, too?
I want to grab her by the collar and SCREAM that she’s amazing
and I want her to smile and nod and say yes
but I want her to believe it
because I don’t think she believes it
and she needs to believe it.
She needs to believe in herself.
As mother.
Let us raise our fists and salute our mothers
and raise our voices to praise our mothers
and thank our mothers
thank our mothers
mother
mother
mother.
Inspired by a visit to my mom a few days ago, and the songs of Lei Garcia and thinking of this Saturday's PWC-Q International Women's Day show celebrating mothers... It's not quite polished, but I thought I'd share.
Nanay ko
turning the pages of my mother’s history
she reveals the things she didn’t know
were things that should be known
like how the second boy was one year old
when she left to go to teachers' college
because she and daddy decided
they needed one of them to have a decent job
and my mother was “bright”
the struggle of a woman
to leave her children to attain her full potential
and what is a woman?
if not a mother
and what is a mother?
if not mothering her children
but what is potential?
if not measured in dollars and cents
she tells me of teachers' college
and board exams
and working in one-room dirt floor classrooms
for hungry children who couldn’t speak English
and I say, 'What about Inday?" my sister.
"Oh. I had to take maternity leave in my fourth year college"
As an aside.
a career woman. i think that is what she would be
Now helping my father through school as he had helped her through hers
and with another child now - four
and a job with no rights
no right to unionization
A teacher's job: a woman's job.
an “honour”, i think they called it. a choice, also
it is shameful to speak too loud.
it is improper (too womanly?) to cry.
she breaths slowly, blinks quickly
no tears. no tears.
and i learn about my Lola, her mother
who put seven children through school
by sewing underwear and selling rice
and mortgaging pieces of the Carisma family farm
because she had lost her husband and was an orphan herself
alone.
my mother talked about her mother before
when i was a child she told me about
this woman, her “Inay” after whom she was named
and that this woman had Faith.
Faith.
as though inner strength did not exist
only God ("the Father") carried.
she couldn’t have done it alone.
After 10 years of teaching primary school in Iloilo,
and 9 credits towards a Master's degree,
My mother travelled to Canada with two young children who had never ridden an airplane.
My mother left behind in the Philippines two older children because they could not afford their airfare yet.
To join my father who had left to join his sister who had left because she was a nurse and that’s what Filipino nurses were trained to do: leave.
“Legacy”, some call it. Cheap, complacent third-world labour, I say. I’ll say it louder.
A one-bedroom apartment, and two children and then four when the others finally joined
and then one of them got lost to the darkness
and another, too, slowly losing control
“you’re lucky,” they tell me. "you grew up different”
I don’t know what to say, but I think I should say thank you. maybe. i don’t know.
I say I’ll be worth the struggle.
She worked in a factory, crowded with other Filipinos who came to Canada for that better future. because factory jobs pay better here than professional jobs do back there.
and their families needed money back home.
she took courses at night while her kasamas shared in her mothering tasks
and she doesn’t remember how they all got fed.
“I would say, Please God, let them be fed... and there was always enough rice”.
Three years, it took her to prove herself a worthy teacher. Three years of assembling chairs in a factory in Montreal’s East End while she took evening courses and thanked others for helping with her children. Ten years of experience as a teacher in the Philippines was not enough. An English exam was not enough. Orientation to this province’s school system was not enough.
but a job. in a school! FINALLY! thank God.
And still there were teachers who challenged her accent.
and still there were students who challenged her stature
and there she was challenging herself
working
then pregnant again. at the age of forty-five. and willing to do it all over.
and hoping that i would be different.
(i am.)
i asked her once about her past
and she told me about teachers' college
and board exams
and coming to Canada in 1971
and now I say, “What about being a mother?”
and still she says... well, she doesn't know what to say
and that is what
... frustrates.
because who celebrates mother? Other than Hallmark and flower shops on that second Sunday in May? Government-sanctioned, Capitalist love.
who celebrates mother when careers cloud their minds and they see nothing but their own dollar worth, too?
I want to grab her by the collar and SCREAM that she’s amazing
and I want her to smile and nod and say yes
but I want her to believe it
because I don’t think she believes it
and she needs to believe it.
She needs to believe in herself.
As mother.
Let us raise our fists and salute our mothers
and raise our voices to praise our mothers
and thank our mothers
thank our mothers
mother
mother
mother.