A Woman of Power

In celebrating Women's Day today, a lot of people have been asking what the definition of an "empowered" woman is. The hell if I know. If someone does manage to nail the definition down, please let me know.

Growing up I always thought I knew what an empowered woman was not. That was my mom.

Yes I love my mom. I love her deeply, with all the Elektra complex/teenage angst/conflicted relationship feelings that come with a mother-daughter relationship.

When I was really young I loved her unconditionally. I followed her around all the time. Picked flowers for her. Drove myself crazy trying to do what would please her. I loved her as much as any 6-year old child could love a parent.

But as I grew older my feelings for my mother became more complicated.

I questioned why she should have so much authority over me, considering it was obvious that it was my father who ran the show - both in and outside of our home.

It bothered me that her career - was taking care of me and my brother and sisters. I felt that outside of our family she had no life. Her life revolved around taking care of our house, taking care of us kids, and taking care of my dad. And I always asked myself - how could that be enough for her? Didn't she want more out of her life? Didn't she think she deserved better?

When I was in my late teens to early twenties it got to the point, and to this day I cringe at myself whenever I remember, where I looked down on my mother. On days when I would be angry with her (and those days were very frequent back then) I felt that she was just a few notches above the household help. I was a tremendously pompous asshole, and to this day I feel bad for every time I made her feel that way.

In those days I thought I was just, to paraphrase an old co-worker, the shiznit. Whatever that means - I sure felt that way. And I would constantly tell my dad that I would rather die than grow up and be like my mother. I was going to grow up just like him - a master of the universe. I would be "the man". I promised him that I would never get married. And even if I did I would never have kids. Because kids would drag me down, hold me back.

I would look at my mother and tell myself: "there's no way in hell I am going to spend my life taking care of other people, and putting their needs before mine. I am more important than that. People are going to have build their lives around me, and not the other way around."

I would watch as my mother kept our house spotless, prepared home-cooked meals, made curtains and table cloths (yes, my mother sewed our curtains and table cloths. She even sewed our pj's as kids. She could've given Martha Stewart a run for her money.) --- and I would think --- what a waste. She went to college for this?

I was such a jerk.

As I got older I learned to be kinder, if not more tolerant of my mother. It helped that I had gotten married and lived away from home.

Then she got sick.

And everything changed.

12 years ago she got diagnosed with Progressive Supra-Nuclear Palsy. It's a rare neurological disease that slowly robbed her of the ability to move, the ability to eat, and the ability to speak. It has even robbed her of the ability to blink.

It is a thief that stole a little bit of my mom each year, until there's barely any of her left.

And it has taken me 12 years to realize, and appreciate, what a wonderful woman my mother is. And how much I have wronged her, and failed her as a daughter.

The start of her disease marked the start of my own journey towards motherhood. I met John the year she was diagnosed. And in the course of these 12 years I have built my own family. Had the children I swore I would never want. And discovered how much of my mother is in me. And how much more of her character I wish I had in myself.

More and more I wish I could be the woman my mother was. Be the mother she was to me to my own kids.

I will never be half the home-maker she was. I will never be as great a cook. I will never have the patience, strength and energy she had that got her through raising 4 kids --- hell, I struggle daily with the 2 I already have.

And I don't think I will ever have the grace and love that she showed me whenever I said or did something bad to her. All the times I made her feel little -- to make myself feel bigger.

Would that God bless me with even a measure of that grace, love and forgiveness that my mom constantly showed me.

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Every couple of months my mom has a nasty bout with pneumonia brought about by her condition. May be once year the doctors will ask us to sign a document that says we authroize them not to revive my mom in case she codes. And they ask us to say goodbye.

And every time they do, I tell my mom how much I love her. How sorry I am for every time I hurt her. That I appreciate, now more than ever, every little thing she ever did for me. And that she is the best mom anyone could ever ask for.

But the words, they ring hollow to me. They ring hollow to her, because we don't even know if she can still hear us. And even if she did, I don't know if she still understands. But I say them anyway. Because I'm hoping that she does. I'm hoping that her spirit is free from the cage that is her body now --- and that wherever that spirit roams --- it hears my words.

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As of today my mom's been in the hospital for almost a month. She came in with pneumonia, suffered a heart attack, was put on ventilator and we were told she wasn't going to last the week. They told us to say goodbye.

5 days later she was off the ventilator, she was kicking the pneumonia on its ass and was out of the ICU.

3 days later her pneumonia came back (with friends), she was taken back to the ICU and put back on the ventilator. She presented with a 40 degree fever that wouldn't go away despite the fact that her body was wrapped in a thermal blanket that was set at 4 degrees. It was hinted that she might not last the weekend. And that may be we should say goodbye. Again.

4 days later she's out of the ICU, her lungs are clear, the pneumonia is gone, and she breathing room air. She's not even on assisted oxygen! Just room air.

I'm not sure it that qualifies her as an empowered woman, but it certainly proves that my mom is a woman of power.

So I celebrate her today.

Perspective

So this long weekend is finally at an end. And not a moment to soon.

It has not been a great weekend.

We started off the mini-break with a weekend long stay at the Peninsula from Friday to Sunday. But instead of being the relaxing holiday we thought it would be it was.... in a word - stressful. From getting rained out which meant no pool time for the kids, to problems with construction noises, John forgetting his CPAP (which gave everyone sleepless nights) and cancelled dinner plans and flake outs, it was like a National Lampoon vacation movie. Only not funny.

When we got home Sunday afternoon one of the pipes in our laundry area burst. Of all the bloody luck. To prevent flooding the whole downstairs area we had to shut off the water main. Which meant the whole house had NO WATER.

It took the plumbers (who thankfully were available even though it was a holiday) 2 days to fix the problem. 2 days. The Medinas were unwashed for 2 days (except for those moments of desperation when we'd turn on the main even though it meant that water was gushing out of the busted pipe downstairs --- sorry Mother Nature! The toilet needs to be flushed!). It was like a National Lampoon home movie. Only not funny.

Oh this weekend. It's like Mercury was in Retrograde or on Gatorade or making Lemonade or whatever it is that Mercury does that seems to louse up people's lives.

And yet. And yet. Every time something new would go wrong John and I would just console ourselves with the thought that a) it could be worse; b) there's a bright side to this.

The rains that kept the kids from swimming forced us to let them hang out in the tub instead. Which they apparently dig more than the pool. Plus it meant that I wasn't forced to get into a bathing suit.

Despite the fiascos with the room --- the sheer size of the suite we occupied gave Livie enough (safe) room to learn how to run. She runs! She runs! Albeit very wobbly but still she's pretty fast once she gets going.

The cancelled dinner plans and flake outs meant we just had dinner at Spices instead with John's sister and our good friend Jaime. At 50% off! With free wine! Altogether not a bad night.

And the water pipe bursting. Well... we finally learned how to work our water tank, how to turn it on and how to fill it. So now if there's ever a water shortage ---- we'll never run out of water again.

So I can choose to focus on all the things that went wrong, or I can choose to let all that negative energy go and just look on the brighter side of things. The things we learned, the memories that were made and the fact that we now have unlimited running water.

Oh, and the best part of all --- this weekend is finally over. :-)

A Sister Speaks

In honor of the Oscars yesterday (which I missed because of my brother's wedding), I am posting the speech I gave last night. A lot of people came up to me afterwards because they really liked it. I told them that it took me an hour to write, and I wrote in the middle of the night because I completely forgot about it because I was out of the country up until the day before the wedding. But may be it resonated with a lot of them because I wrote it from my heart. Even though he's a fully grown man, even though he's now married with a family of his own, he will always be my baby brother and I love him.

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I’ve been asked to give the speech on behalf of our family tonight, not just because I’m the smartest and funniest of all us Titong kids, but also because being only 18 months older than him, having been his room mate, and having spent countless hours listening to Dave Matthews and U2, smoking illegal cigarettes and experiencing existential angst together --- I’m the one who knows Epi best.

And knowing my brother as well as I do, I have decided to entitle my speech tonight: Top 5 Reasons Why We Wish Anj All the Luck in the World (aka Stuff that might have changed your mind about marrying him 2 hours ago but now its too late and we have a strict no-return, no exchange policy in our family).

5. He’s secretly in love with… the best man (you know I’m talking about you Anton Palma!), and they may or may not have been carrying on a secret affair for the last 10 years. Later tonight ask him about OMD’s song Secret and why it has special meaning for the two of them.

4. He carries all of our genetic waste material – case in point: notice how white I am, notice how dark he is. He is short. He is fat. And in the words of Homer Simpson: “Baldness is hereditary”. That’s why it’s a good thing Anj is so pretty, because at least now his kids will have a fighting chance.

3. And speaking of genetics, it is a fact that the father carries the math gene and will determine how well your kids will do in math. Your husband carries the dubious distinction of earning the lowest math grade in the history of the Ateneo High School. So Anj, I hope you’re also good in math.

2. You are marrying the world’s biggest cry baby. He’s more emotional than a woman who is having PMS. I would say he cries like a girl, but that would be an insult to girls. He cries at tv commercials and sad movies. I have seen him cry when girls dump him. He used to cry during swimming class when we were kids. Nowadays (and Anj can attest to this) he cries in the hospital when they have to stick a needle in him.

1. And the number 1 reason why we wish Anj all the luck in the world --- He has not one, or two, but three bossy, loud, cranky, OLDER sisters. And everyone knows that a sister-in-law is 10x worse than a mother-in-law, and now she has 3. So if that doesn’t merit her all the good luck in this room, I don’t know what will.

While he is not a prized catch, I must admit that my brother has redeeming qualities:

1. He is kind. And generous. To a fault.

2. He is funny. Sometimes even when he doesn’t mean to be.

3. He is loyal.

4. He is smart. Hopefully in all the right ways.

5. Most importantly he values family. And in the sum total of all things, that balances everything out. A man who values family, who puts family first before all things, is a very rare and precious man. And you should count yourself lucky for having found one in my brother.

Earlier I said that I am giving this speech tonight on behalf of our family because I’m the one who knows Epi best. To be honest, I am giving this speech on behalf of the two people who loved him the most, but could not be here tonight.

It was no secret growing up that my mom loved Epi the most, more than all of us girls combined. We never held it against either of them, because they always had a special bond. Plus it was kind of obvious that he was her favorite because when we were kids and my mom used to ration the M&Ms because they were hard to come by (for the benefit of those of you too young to know what PX goods are --- imported chocolates were hard to come by and were usually brought home by relatives from the States or bought in Cash and Carry), my mom would give each of us girls 10 M&Ms after dinner for dessert. And she would give him 20. And it was like that with everything, so medyo obvious diba?

Eps, she loved you so much. She loves you still. And while we argued about whether or not she could be here today, I know you understand that it would be too much for her, and it won’t be good for her health. But she is always with you, with us. Remember the M&Ms, the kisses good night, the hand that held yours through so many things in childhood and after --- and know that she is here with you now . And always.

And if Dad were here, well, who knows what he’d say? You think I’m funny? You should have met that guy. He might joke about the fact that you were the rascalliest of all his little rascals. He might kid about how different you two are from each other, and how much better looking he is than you.

I like to think that he would say, in a very simple way, how proud he is of you. Of the man you have become. He never gave up on you, and I believe that is why you never gave up on yourself. And I think it’s the most wonderful thing that even he, with all his love and hope and faith in you, could never have imagined how far you would get, and how much further you can still go.

And while he is no longer here, he still lives on. In you. In all of us. He can live forever, if we raise our children right. If you love you children the way he loved us. If you believe in them the way he believed in us. Then his legacy of what a great parent is and should be, will be continued, first by us, then our kids, so on and so forth. And that will be how he lives on.

If you could be half the father he was to Sophia and all your future kids, how lucky they will be. If you could be just as he was, they would be so blessed. And if you could be more than that, then Daddy would consider his life well lived. Because all he ever wanted from you, from all of us, was to be the best person you could be. And you are on your way to being that. You could be the man he always knew you would be. And that would make him so happy.

I know that he’s looking down at us right now from heaven, smoking his cigarette and drinking his scotch. And I know he’s telling everyone he’s with, with pride: That’s my boy, that’s my son.

I love you little brother, even though you still owe me P500 from 1998. You are the best brother a girl could ask for.

And Anj, I hope you like David Hasslehof. I hope you don’t mind being the one who turns off all the lights at night, since my brother is afraid of the dark. And I hope you like guinataang bayabas because that is the Titong national dish and we all have to like it.

We’re so happy to welcome you and Sophia to our family, the only family that makes the Addams family seem normal.

Congratulations to you both.

Mother's talk

I never wanted to become a mother. I never even wanted to become a wife.

When I was 23 I promised my dad that I would never get married, and at the time I meant it. I was preparing to take my GREs, I had just finished taking my TOEFL and all I could think of was moving to another country and getting my master's degree.

When my friend Twinkle told me she was getting married, I spent long hours trying to convince her that it was a ridiculous idea. We were only 23 (well, she was 24)! The world was at our feet. She was supposed to go to law school, the same way I was supposed to get my MA. After her wedding reception a bunch of guy friends and I went out drinking and toasted our wonderful single-ness and vowed to never let ourselves get caught in the same trap.

Then 6 months later I met John. At first there was no cause for alarm. He was a die-hard bachelor who had never had a serious girlfriend. On our 3rd date he told me that if I was the kind of girl that just wanted to get married and have babies then may be I should date someone else. Because he wanted to get married at 40, if he ever did decide to get married. I told him that by the time he was 40 I'd be 33, so that would be perfect because I didn't want to get married either, and by then I'd be old enough just to be his live-in girlfriend without killing my parents.

Three months later he proposed. I don't know who was more surprised by the words that came out of his mouth, me or him. Or by the fact that I actually said yes.

A year later I found myself married, but at least we both agreed that we didn't want to have kids. At least not right away.

After a year of marriage we decided that we would "casually" try to have children, thinking to ourselves: "how hard could it be?". A year later we found out just how hard.

Nothing makes you want children more than finding out that you can't have any. At least not in the easy, normal way that other people could.

So we got on the 3 year roller coaster ride that was our (well, more like "my" really) life on fertility medication. First we tried the oral drugs, but those only caused more cysts on my ovaries --- none of which resulted in a viable egg. We switched doctors. And then again. Until we finally met Greg. Then the shots in ass started. And oh what fun they were. But at the end of it all, I finally developed 5 eggs. Which promptly started dying. One by one. By the end of our cycle we only had 1 left. And Greg was doubtful that it would get fertilized. He recommended that we do artificial insemination, just to increase our chances of fertilization. So I got the turkey baster up the wazoo --- and when we got home from the clinic that night, we did it the old fashioned way. Just in case.

2 weeks later they said the words we never thought we'd ever hear: you're pregnant. Followed by: now you have to go on bed rest. For the next 9 months.

The next 35 weeks were the most beautiful, harrowing, nerve wracking, fantastic 35 weeks of my life. I was hospitalized twice. Once when I started bleeding for no reason and almost expelled the little embryo that was growing inside me. Another when the placenta partially detached itself from my uterus and almost caused us to bleed out again. On my 35th week check-up Greg saw that my placenta had started shriveling and was threatening the baby, so he delivered me via c-section the next day.

On November 13, 2004, I met the person who changed my life. Forever.

Pilar Zita T. Medina, 10:54 a.m. November 13, 2004. 6 lbs. 4 oz. 18 in.

Changed it so much that 3 years after she was born I quit the job I loved so that I could be with her all the time.

I am now Mother. And I can't imagine not having wanted to be this person. Because I am a better person now for having had her, for knowing her, and for helping her grow. I am now the person that I know God has always wanted me to be. Far from perfect, but always struggling to be better --- so that I can help her be the best person that she can be, whoever that is 15-20 years from now.

She has shown me how much love there is to be found in the tight embrace of arms that can barely enfold you. In hands so small they fit in your palm. In the sweet breath that blows against your face at night when someone snuggles up close.

So much love. So much that I found myself wanting more. Willing to go through the shots in the ass, the turkey baster, the petri-dish, the catheter.

I was blessed to hear those magical words: you are pregnant, 3 more times. Never losing hope, even when two of those magical times ended so abruptly, with so much pain and loss.

Soon we will be meeting the next person who will change our lives. Forever.

And I will tell her, "you know, I never wanted to become a mother. But may be that's only because we've never met. Not until today. But today I know I have always wanted to be yours."