Happy Gratitude Day

Today is Mother’s Day. What does that mean to a mother in her 70s whose children are around 50 and are today scattered around the world? Two of my three daughters are in San Francisco, one in England. My son is here but he is quarantined in the south while I am quarantined in Mandaluyong. How do we celebrate in the middle of a pandemic?

I think we celebrate by expressing our gratitude to God for the gift of our children. By the way, I now have 12: four I gave birth to, and eight are my husband’s children, technically called stepchildren, though I don’t like the sound of that because they feel like my children also. Every day, whether we are in touch or not, I think of this outstanding dozen, each with her (more girls than boys) or his own personality. I am filled with awe and immense gratitude to God for giving me the opportunity to belong to this huge family.

Once I was born and six months later my father died. I grew up alone, no brothers or sisters. I had an intimate family of five — my mother, grandmother, grandma’s sister who was married to a man I called Daddy Toot, my dearest surrogate father, and me. Now my husband and I share 12 children with 12 mates, 16 grandchildren. Plus the two of us makes 42 members in our family as of now. If we were to try to get all of us together, where would we fit? Yet we are all friends. I am profoundly grateful for that. It wasn’t my wish to have such a big family but God gave me this gift. I thank Him doubly on Mother’s Day.

Then we must thank our children for giving us the gifts of themselves. How they have touched our lives, taught us lessons, brought us laughter and tears and, now that they have grown, brought us friendship and grandchildren — another richness to our lives.

One recent morning my husband woke up with slurred speech and imbalance. I had to help him out of bed. I took one look at him and knew he had an ischemic or very small stroke. I knew it because I had had it myself. I had more serious slurred speech and while I knew where I was, I felt I was not there. He at least still knew where he was and why he was there. The problem was we were in the middle of quarantine. Going to a hospital was out of the question. Even my neurologist, Dr. Pia Banico, was also quarantined.

I did not want to go to a hospital for an MRI but finally got convinced to go to Cardinal Santos. I had just gotten an MRI there and I knew it was in a separate building. We could drive straight through, masked, and were done in half an hour. That was Monday. Today, Wednesday, Loy needs less help getting up and walks alone with his cane. His speech is still a bit slurred but it has only been about a week. He will get over it soon. Why did I not panic at all? Because I had had a worse stroke in 2003. Look, I have recovered. I know one day, sooner perhaps than much later, Loy will also fully recover.

Every occasion I have during the day, I thank God for giving me that stroke when He did, for making it more serious than Loy’s because now I knew exactly what to do and I did not panic. What would have happened if I hadn’t had that experience before?

His four older children created a Viber group that included Dr. Banico and me for our consultation. The neurologist could watch Loy raise his hands overhead and forward, listen to his slurred speech and prescribe medicine but she insisted on an MRI. The MRI said it was very small strokes, none hemorrhagic. Since then I give a daily update on their Papa’s situation with a photograph of how he looks today. Now the four younger ones are part of the group, too.

I copy what I report to his children to my Viber group with my children. Ours is more outrageous because my children and I share an outlandish sense of humor. But one day, as soon as everyone is out of these quarantine chains, as soon as ABS-CBN is broadcasting again, as soon as we are free and normal once more, as soon as life returns to what it used to be before the evil of martial law came in and changed our lives with the sudden shutdown of all media only to reopen with media that was totally controlled — one day when that happens, we will all get together and enjoy each other’s company profusely.

Until then, Mother’s Day for me is a day of profound gratitude to God. Thank You for our one dozen babies now all grown up. They are your remarkable gifts to us.

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