No other love - Why And Why Not

Going on a date with your mother was, I thought, the most charming American idea of all.

Many moons ago when I was newly arrived in New York, my Filipino friends and I entered a restaurant of Fifth Avenue and were instantly made to feel that we were in the wrong place. "Do you have a reservation?" asked the headwaiter. "It's Mother's Day, you know."

Our first reaction was to jump at the officious guy in penguin suit and accuse him of racial discrimination or something terrible like that. But it was good we merely gritted our teeth and held our horses. Quickly surveying the premises, we were stunned to see this ocean of little old ladies in the company of adoring younger men. every lady was dressed to the nines, pearls, corsage and all. The string orchestra was playing romantic music and you could hear the clink of champagne glasses over hearty laughter.

What otherwise may have looked like a gigolo convention, much to our pleasant surprise, turned out to be this splendid gathering of grateful (or guilt-ridden) sons taking their mothers out for dinner. It was one hearthwarming scene, we soon realized, that was being replicated in just about every other restaurant or café all over America.

No other day beats Mother's Day for sheer volume of telephone calls, restaurant reservations, and the mega-sale of chocolates, flowers and yes, pearl necklaces. Not Christmas, not Valentine's Day and most certainly of all, not Father's Day.

Whatever doubts there may be about which person is ultimately most important in anybody's life are resolved every time May 14 comes along. Talk of globalization. This practice of setting aside a day for mothers may have begun or, more accurately, reached full media hype and commercial expression in America, but it has since spread like wildfire to all corners of the world.

The bittersweet memory of my first brush with Mother's Day lingers to this day because I had vowed that I would take my own mother on such a date as soon as the opportunity presented itself. I did not know how long martial law would last, but I also had no inkling that before the next Mother's Day, Mom would be gone from this cruel world and I would forever be deprived of going on any date with her. Perhaps in the next life.

Still, that wonderful brush with the idea and the pain of losing Mom got me thinking about motherhood. Although the Americans, always more enterprising and outspoken, seem to have cornered the market on how to honor the most important person in anybody's life, they can't possibly hold a candle to how Filipinos worship their mothers. In the words of Irving Berlin, not for just a day, but for always.

Yes, worship. Ours is a culture that has always venerated mothers. It is no coincidence that Philippine Christianity is one of the most Marian in the world or with a special devotion to the Virgin Mary as the Mother of God.

I'll probably be slaughtered for saying that the deepest bind of all is between mothers and sons, especially first sons. It is stronger than that between fathers and sons, or mothers and daughters. Of course, there are exceptions and no mother will admit she favors one child over the rest.

Still, we are often told of mothers and daughters engaged in eternal warfare, not to mention fathers and sons locked in mortal combat. Seldom or never do we hear of mothers forsaking sons. Indeed, there's that folk saying about "having a face only a mother can love." It refers to wayward or ugly sons being, in the end, secure in the thought that there's one person in the world who will never turn her back on them. Not while she lives.

When I was starting out as a journalist I was sent on assignment to Muntinlupa to the National Penitentiary and was, of course, taken on a tour of the death chamber. On the wall was a rogues' gallery of convicts executed on the electric chair. I asked the old warden which one he remembered most and he pointed to one sad-looking young man. I asked why.

"Because his last wish was not to eat lechon but to hear Mama," said the warden, who proceeded to hum this very sentimental melody. "He was a coldblooded killer who never expressed remorse. But as soon as the song begun he started crying and could not stop sobbing all the way to the execution chamber. Everybody in that room, very unforgiving men like me, was also in tears. It was the saddest day of my life."

Some said the convict never had a mother; she died soon after he was born. Poverty and bad company led him into crime. Nobody could put him on the straight and narrow path. Or so he wanted society to believe.

Perhaps the doomed man was just straining for one last ounce of sympathy. But during that visit (and more so today), I was disposed to believe that the way he clung to the memory of a mother he never knew was a telling measure of the transcendental importance of mothers. The umbilical cord is never cut, not even by death. Always, there is the desire to crawl back to the womb and, there, find peace.