My mother and I had a date tonight.
Well, the original plan was to get a new mobile phone for me but the model I wanted was out of stock wherever we went, so we just took it as a sign, gave up, and had dinner instead.
It's been a while since my mother and I went out together like that. The last time was when my brother took the UPCAT around a year ago and I went with them for... uhm... moral support I guess. (I honestly couldn't recall why. I remember we had to wake up 3AM, it was really cold and clammy, and commute all the way to Quezon City which was way too far from where we live... oh, maybe I really had nothing to do.)
Anyway, while my brother was taking the test, my mother and I were walking the wet grounds of UP, looking for a place to have breakfast. We found one after a while and upon sitting down, my mother immediately asked, "Ganun ba talaga si Rafael?" ("Is Rafael really like that?")
I pretended to be thinking about it real hard while staring at a wet orange spot on the table. "Alam mo, 'nay..." ("You know, mother...") I looked at her, eyes as black as deep voids.
"Kailangan pa bang i-memorize yan?"
I chuckled and wiped the orange spot clean. "Seriously, 'nay, I'm sorry pero ganun talaga si Rafael." ("Seriously mother, I'm sorry but Rafael is really that way.")
She looks like she's still not convinced, but the evidence was pretty obvious already. My brother is, as a friend put it, gayer than springtime. And as is my mother's habit, she reverted to more practical things when confronted with something as disconcerting and something she knew was beyond her control, and proceeded to order our food.
Tonight wasn't all too different from that day. On a fantastically spontaneous whim, we had dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Glorietta under the pretense of being one of the old-moneyed rich (and miserably failing, much to our amusement). But despite the variance in setting, my mother had the same diffident and cautious aura, the same tiptoed precision of words. And this time we didn't talk about my brother. Instead we talked about her.
She told me how much she was like me -- until she got married and had us.
She told me how she would make it appear as if she followed every rule, bent to every condition -- as long as it suited her.
When me and my siblings came into the picture, convenience was pushed further and further from sight until every angle, every groove, every jagged edge in my mother's rose-colored life was occupied by us, and she hasn't been the same since.
Maybe that's why she goes easier on me compared to my brother and sister. Maybe that's why sometimes I see familiar flickers when her eyes become idle and listless, or when she tells me not to appear too complacent with what I have.
I know what she means. She could have been me -- she could have been what I am now exactly. But she chose another path so I could be myself. And maybe when the time comes for me to change... maybe then she would feel complete. I hope I can give it to her.
