My mother, whose name was Irenea, was a small woman with a big heart. She barely stood an inch or two below five feet but her spirits were majestically higher than her own height. She never stood small in her daily battle against the financial complexity brought about by the inverse proportion of meager income earned and number of mouths fed. She conquered all obstacles in life without the least hint of giving up. She taught us how to face the difficult reality and survive poverty.
We learned to laugh and cry at the storms and hurricanes, ups and downs, and roses and thorns of our life. We learned to make people believe that we were not financially hard-up and, good thing, they looked up at us as wealthy.
My mother was tough and physically active. There were no idle moments for her especially when she was younger. The petite body never hindered her from doing manly activities like cutting the firewoods using an ax, climbing the rooftop of our house to fix the typhoon-damaged roof, and making a chicken “house” out of scrap – and we all “inherited that talent”, may I correct, my elder sister outdone my mother’s manliness for she not only climbed the roof but dared to scale up the lanky coconut trees in our backyard. My mother probably would have survived if she was lost somewhere in the middle of the Amazon jungle. That’s why we called her Amazona.
The most important phase our life was our growing up years. Many did not know what our family went through. When we were younger, striving to live each day was a struggle we brawled together with our parents. We had never had the comfort and luxuries in life – no television even. To pass away time, mostly during summer, we just ran off to the beach or climbed up the guava tree in our backyard. We became contented with the basic necessities for we didn’t have other options anyway.
In a way, the intricate experiences we went through gave us some useful tips on how to continue to exist during difficult times. These real-life experiences helped in molding us to become what we are now and these are my extraordinary saving graces for my own family.
Never discuss financial problems in public. My mother reminded us to be always discreet with our financial status. She, most often than not, never allowed us to let others know with respect to our monetary problems. It was unavoidable, though, especially when we were made to bring the “trademarked” one-eight sheet of intermediate paper- with “Good For” as the heading and my mother’s signature (sometimes forged by my sisters whose golden hands can replicate of signature of my mother) as the closing, to the Man Bening - the bakery owner who allowed us to purchase on credit breads, some of our favorites were pan de carne, pan de leche, and ilang-ilang, or to Man Erie or Mana Lucy- the meat vendors who gave us a kilo credit limit of meat.
Look and feel decent even if you only have a single cent in your pocket, and even if that money can only afford you to buy a stick of banana cue for lunch, just savor its sweetness for it will definitely help you energize.
Learn to recycle. We learned to recycle our food – we concocted a variety of new menu out of our leftover viands, vegetable and rice. Whatever was left from our previous day’s banquet was re - cooked into a new food and, literally, there was nothing left for the dogs to eat. Our dresses were recycled too – the long and outmoded dresses given by our Aunt in the United States were cut and re-sewn by my mother, despite her inadequate sewing skills, to give it a new look. Her favorite and only style of dress for all of us girls was a gartered on the waist balloon skirt with matching spaghetti-strapped blouse. Our school bags and notebooks were never spared from recycling. The unwritten pages from our notebooks, from the previous year, were compiled to make one or two new notebooks.
Never add mouths to feed. My mother neither employed maids nor encouraged relatives to live with/work for us – she believed they were plainly extra mouths to feed. All of us in the family were involved in doing the household chores, the young girls did the cleaning of the house, my elder sister and my mother did the washing of our clothes and the boys did other stuffs outside of the house. This does not mean however that we did this as our routine activities. Sometimes the girls worked the manly stuff when the boys were all away and the vice versa. For that, all of us learned how to cook and bake food - both for humans and the pigs, wash the dishes, sew our own clothes, clean up our mess and the whole house, and grown plants.
Plant. We had lots of fruit bearing trees, vegetables and other ornamental plants surrounding our house. Aside from harvesting and eating fresh fruits and vegetables, we were able to save, and even earn, money. My elder bothers were even made to sell coconuts when our finances run out.
Pray. We were taught to pray for guidance and more blessings but were not taught to rely purely on prayers. Prayers must be coupled with actions.
Poverty was our passport to get a college diploma – we were made to believe, rather forced to believe, that education was the only way to be freed from poverty. All of us seven children managed to get a college degree, and majority of us pursued post graduate degrees, even if going to college was a bumpy ride.
My mother may not have the chance to read this article anymore, for she has been dead for more than a year now. Had she read this, she would have had a hearty laugh and I am a hundred percent sure, we would have a day-long reminiscing of the past conversation.
