The idea of spending Christmas away from home – at an aunt’s farm, was so entrancing that on the dawn the bus picked me up at home (today, buses in small towns still pick up passengers by pre-arrangement) I forgot to kiss my mother goodbye. I was then only 11.
I didn’t know how long the trip had taken or how rough it had been through rugged roads from the capital town of Masbate to Mandaon because I immediately fell asleep in the bus and awoke only at my aunt‚s nudging and found myself gaping at the eyeballs of an old man who had stuck his head into the bus window at the terminal. He was my aunt’s father, and gently, he bade us come, the carabos were ready, we should be off before the sun went higher.
The ride up to the mountain farm was an experience straight out of my Grade I Pepe and Pilar reader. I sat behind my aunt on one black beast, and when we went down a hill, I had to get hold of its tail to keep from slipping. Along the way we stopped awhile for a lunch of rice and dried fish, and as we ate the carabaos quietly nibbled on young grass, not minding the flies and birds twiddling about on their backs.
How could I have remembered home when I was in that farm?
I was a "city girl and so was pampered by lolo and lola and aunts and cousins, given the first plate of freshly roasted pinipig and fresh water fish still squirming when broiled over orange-hot charcoal; the first crack at coconut sweets and boiled camote which we dipped into saucers of guinamos and lemoncito.
We spent mornings chasing after mayas, driving the carabaos away with coconut fronds, hunting for dulce maria and climbing guava trees. Or visiting millions of relations and feasting on plates of suman and bibingka and large bottles of Tru-Orange at each stop. How children love to eat, as that is the only sensual pleasure they know. Some nights we slept late, listening to our aunts and cousins tell ghost stories, and although we were trembling from fear, we prodded them to go on, please, don’t stop.
But the delights at that mountain haven slowly vanished. My novelty as city princess wore off, and so did my cousins. We began to quarrel, and it became clear that they resented the special treatment I was given. I became lonesome then, and tired of eating rice and salted fish – the daily fare – and I hated the dark nights with only gas lamps about the house, and having to squat behind the bushes in the backyard because my lolo did not have a sanitary toilet inside the house. I told my cousins it was so much more fun living in town because there we had parties and refreshment parlors and parks and movie houses while out in the countryside they had nothing but mosquitoes and croaking frogs for sounds, and a game of patintero to entertain themselves with.
In my alone-ness I missed my mother. All of a sudden, I could see and feel her, stroking my tired bones when I was high with fever, sitting behind her sewing machine, tending her patch of marigolds, playing the violin, or humming something from Verdi’s La Traviata. I could see her tossing her head as she laughed. And hugging me. And I thought, why, there was no one in the world who loved me better than my mother. I had forgotten my father although now, I tell myself my father loved me as much as mother did.
What is it about mothers that little children, chattering wildly at the breakfast table, suddenly become weepy when their mothers make an entrance? What does a mother have that makes her child feel so good wrapping her arms around her waist, clutching at her skirt, lying down beside her in bed to ask her for things she wouldn’t dare ask her father? How things seem right when mother is around, scolding and yet forgiving, worshipful of you, her flesh and blood, proud and bragging about your accomplishments. How mournful the days when you reach home and find your mother not the kitchen, in the bedroom, not anywhere in the house. How absolutely dismal to spend Christmas away from your mother.
It was on the last day of the year that my aunt and I finally got back to town. The journey back was long and dreary. And then we were in front of her house. At the door, I caught sight of mother behind her sewing machine. What a bright sight she made, what joy to come home to her.
Christmas is like that; like a mother. It feels good to wrap your arms around it. To touch, to feel, to see, to smell it. How things brighten up when Christmas is about, expensive for all its giving but then, what price the joy of giving? Mothers are always giving and forgiving. One hangs on to Christmas when it’s time for it to go. Because when it goes, the joy of other days is less joyous; the giving and forgiving and loving are not easy. Like when Mother is not home or has gone away for good from our lives.
Christmas mothers the best in all of us. Even the din of the most ferocious wars is silenced on Christmas Day. Christmas makes children of us all. We turn silly with smiles and laughter and helplessly weepy. What is it about Christmas that we only think and feel the very good and the very best in us and in others, that moves us to tears?
You and I know why and can only thank God that among the days of the year, He decreed a Christmas Day to nourish, to touch, to love and mother us all.
Have yourselves a merry, Mothering Christmas.