W e n d y's D o m a i n

Magandang gabi po sa inyong lahat.

My husband, June Palomo, is supposed to be your speaker for tonight. But he suggested that I take the honor instead. I welcomed the idea. More so when he proposed that I could talk about the topic closest to my heart, Motherhood. That concluded the discussion. I was up to the challenge and it is with enthusiasm that I am here.

Tonight, I stand before you as a woman. I speak before you as a mother.

I will have to submit though, that my experience on motherhood may not be as extensive or as profound as most of you have. I have only been a wife to June for two years (we celebrated our second wedding anniversary last December 4) and I have only been a mother for close to fourteen months (our son, LeRuof, was born on November1, 2006). But I have taken to motherhood as seriously as if my whole life, my whole existence, depends on it. So, allow me to share with you my thoughts on womanhood and particularly, motherhood as I know it, in the spirit of Christmas.

Way before I got married to June, he was already my boyfriend for eight years. That would mean that June and I have been into each other since we were twenty years old. We matured together and alongside each other but we independently faced our own challenges and fears. I am forever grateful to my husband for during those eight years, he allowed me to be my own person, to b e my own woman.

As with every woman, I had issues to deal with so I had to push the boundaries of what I know and what I feel. The most nagging and most pressing of which was, for my own self-fulfillment, do I pursue the legal profession, the profession I vowed to excel in? After all, I have to be my own woman, my own person. My feeling of self-fulfillment rests on my own sense of personal achievement.

I went to law school, went through my own set of frustrations, risen above some challenges and at one point made it to the honor’s list.

My passion for law was overshadowed when marriage beckoned. My husband was off to Seoul. He accepted his company’s offer to work in the LG CNS headquarters. It was for me to decide whether I stay behind, continue with the life I know and bask in the comfort of life here in the Philippines or be with him in Seoul. It was time for me to look within me. I found myself challenged by: how was I to balance my strength as a woman and as a wife?

In any way I look, I end with the same decision. I had to be with my husband.

Marriage was a mutual decision which we eagerly awaited and prepared for. When we both decided to get married, it was made so because we were ready to be husband and wife for each other.

I may not have climbed the corporate ladder. I still am not a lawyer. But I lived my life as a single woman fully. I look back not with any hint of regret.

Merry Christmas especially to all the single women here tonight. Early on, I had some realization which I would like to share with you. I learned to: Love yourself. Love who you are and the person you will become. I t is only by loving yourself that you will be able to love another person with the same passion and wholeness.

The beauty of loving yourself and living your life fully lies in the realization of the kind of life you want. When you live the life you want, you glow with happiness. You don’t look at life with anger and bitterness for the what ifs that have not been realized. You would welcome with open mind and heart the next stages of your life as they naturally unfold before you.

I am now a housewife and a mother. I calmly settled in the domesticity of the life of a housewife ever since I followed my husband. But that calmness is nothing compared to what motherhood has done to me. Motherhood has not just tamed my strong persona, motherhood makes me laugh at the slightest giggle coming from my son. Motherhood makes me cry seeing the smallest scratch on his skin. Motherhood makes me beam with pride with the most basic skill he learns and displays. Motherhood makes me appreciate life’s simple pleasures. Who would not? When you look at my son, you will wonder not how he makes us so happy and so fulfilled.

We are happy and lucky to be able to spend Christmas here in the Philippines. We don’t know where we will be in the coming years to come. We submit our fate to Him for we know we are in good hands. Wherever we will be, June and I will always aspire and work to spend our Christmas holidays here in the Philippines for our son. It is our earnest wish that he grow up appreciating not just the lively colors and music of Christmas but most importantly, he would know the reason why we have Christmas in the first place. The most particular lesson we would like to impart is that the spirit of giving was started by the gift of life from Jesus. Tomorrow, we know our son will receive Christmas gifts. It is our wish that we will be able to make him see the gift as well as the giver. Which brings me to the importance of saying “thank you”. No gift or gesture is too small not to deserve a thank you. The appreciation for the gift, big or small, is an appreciation of the person giving the gift. This sense of gratitude is very important, very basic and one which bridges relationships based on mutual respect. That is why, “thank you” does not start and end during the Christmas season.

It would be good to see our son secured in the knowledge that he has family back home. When he comes home, whether in Iloilo (my family is from Iloilo) or here in Cabanatuan, he is emotionally secured that he has a family to call who loves him and whom he can shower with love and affection in return. For us who are far away, the importance of family is even more emphasized as we only get to be together on occasions such as Christmas. It would be good to see and to know that the peaceful but festive spirit of Christmas would be felt throughout the year among families we see and leave behind.

As I am already talking about family, let me share with you how the absence of family has impacted my life as a mother. As most of you well know, household help is hard to come by in Seoul unless you are a millionaire who can afford to hire one. Just like the fast-paced life in the US, the people there have to independent and self-sufficient. We have to do things on our own at our own pace and our own time. I have no family to say to, “My, alagaan mo muna si baby, pahinga lang ako”. I do not have that luxury but I could honestly tell you that I feel lucky and proud to be doing what I do for my husband and my baby. Far away from here, I am an expert multi tasker.

As a mom, you could see me vacuuming the floor with one hand while carrying LeRuof with another hand while I check on the food whether it is already cooked or not. Other times, I would check on my emails while breastfeeding LeRuof while eating a sandwich while talking to my husband on the cell phone softly or else our baby will be awake. There is no exaggeration here. What I am saying is we learn to live. We learn to survive. You might think that I have a hard time being an all-alone Mom. No. As I have said, I feel lucky and I feel proud doing what I do.

There are bad times, of course. I cry because I am physically tired. Sometimes, it would affect me psychologically and emotionally. But I would not wish to alter the situation after the leanings and the maturing that I got from it. Bad times come and go as with everyone else. In fact, even those with a harem of yayas and household help are not spared from bad times. Through it all, far from the easy comfort provided by home, I would like to believe that I managed to take care of my husband, my baby and most importantly myself. I have managed to manage my time. I think I got the trick. The trick is to enjoy TIME. And above it all, I love my life. I love being with my husband. I love being with my son. I have no what ifs.

Let me share with you a very beautiful piece by the highly-esteemed poet and writer Khalil Gibran about parenting and children:

Your children are not your children

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not  

even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like tem, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which the living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with his might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;

For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Beautiful, beautiful piece. I try to subscribe to its wisdom.

Gibran says that parents are the bows and the children are the living arrows. As bows, we have to be stretched and bended so that the arrows can go far and swift. Alam nyo po ang bow and arrow? Kailangan i-stretch and i-bend ang bow para malayo ang mararating ng arrow. As parents, we have to be stretched and bended. Ibig sabihin, we have to do everything that we can, the most that we can so our children can go far and secured.  I am only a young mother. I only try to live by this wisdom. Pero para po sa karamihan sa inyo ditto, you have lived, you are living this. When this is just an ideal for me now, this is a reality to you. You are being stretched and bended to the point that it sometimes hurt already. But you are doing that for your children. This is a reality to most of you. This is a reality to my own parents. This is a reality to my parents-in-law. Even when the bending and the stretching hurt, what matters is, we, your children become the best person that we can ever be.

As a new mom, as new parents, June and I would ask ourselves, “How bended are we going to get?” we don’t know. Nobody knows. But June and I vowed that we will let “our bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness”. I am sure our parents, all the parents here tonight are only too happy to be doing what they do or what they did for their children. As new parents, it is for us to pay it forward – to our own children.

The gift of life from Jesus did not end during his birth or his death. Jesus is a continuous gift into our lives.  So are our children. We try to mold our children according to his teachings as our responsibility and, at the same time, our gift to them. More than this, this is our way of paying forward, in the best way we can, the gift of life from Him – as parents.

I look forward to the day when my baby spreads his wings and fly on his own. When that time comes, I will not contain him. I will not control him. He is, he will be, his own person. Just as Christmas is about sharing, it would be our honor to share our baby to our family, to our friends and to our community as a God-fearing and worthy member of the society.  Until that day comes, I will gladly keep on nurturing him with love.

While doing so, I try to savor the everydayness of the everyday. I cherish every moment spent with my husband and my baby. Everyday may seem like an ordinary day. But what is ordinary when in your heart, you try to elevate the ordinary to the extraordinary this holiday and everyday?

Maligayang pasko po sa inyong lahat.