Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers in the world and I want to especially greet my wife Evelyn for being such a wonderful mother to our kids and you could say, me and the children could not ask for anything more. With the chicken barbecues she got with that special secret spices, there’d always be smiles and laughters in our home.

Of course, my greetings also goes to my Mom Darwisa who becomes stronger as each day comes (and goes), after my father had passed last year and remains a strength behind me and to all her children. To my mother-in-law Nanay who at 89 is the strongest mom that my wife could ever had, and probably the best she could ever have.

To my sister Rimaisa who had a grand wedding last January and would soon be a mom in the coming months (we hope) and to my cousins Rose and Fharrah who are great mothers to their kids also, as well as to their mom Auntie Nene, who is always there for her children.

To my aunt Naifiesa who remains a guiding light to her husband who is now running for mayor in our hometown down south in Tawi-Tawi. I hope she could be the driving and winning force this coming Monday and win it all.

To our helper and good neighbor Manang Mercy, who cooked the best so far among all helpers we ever had. And to our good neighbor Auntie Rose who has two beauteous and wonderful daughters.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of them.

Of course, I would not dare forget to greet all the wonderful moms online like Bing, Toe, Ipanema, Bambit, Teacher Sol, Ayesha, Nicehaert, Nao, Liza, Ms. Luchie, Ladybug, Ms. B., Evi, BokBok, Rhodora, and Jayred.

I hope I am not forgetting anyone. Happy Mother’s Day na rin to the wonderful single girls like Atticus,Curacha, Verns and Daphne.

What would this world be without the good mothers we all had? And how could we men imagine a world without the women in our lives.

It must be unthinkable.

I remember that in my college days in Ateneo de Zamboanga, I once had joined this exteporanoues speaking contest with the the subject of women as the main discussion point. I remember that when in the first stages of my speech, the crowd roared in approval and I had gotten the most rambuncticous audience response for my startling exposition of how women deserves to have equal rights as that with men. I forgot how exactly I had spoken in that speech, or the words I had uttered but the crowd did applauded me so well that even my English subject moderator was so up in toe watching me from the back of the hall.

But what I forgot to remember is that there is a major rule in that speech contest, where there was a time limit for every contestant and I was a bit unkindly to have wanted to go on and on with my dialogue and had wanted to tell the crowd about the story of Joan of Arc, about how she was merely a young women who had pretended to be a male indivdual, to lead the French soldiers towards a deafening victory against the invading English marauders.

When I started saying “Let me tell you a story….”, the bell suddenly rang and I was startled and so surprised that I could not believe my ears that very moment and the crowd went “aahhhhhh’, like they were very disappointed too. And I was there standing so shaken and couldn’t move, like a frozen cavemen, suddenly realizing that I had just disqualified myself. So I lost that contest.

But I think, I should have gone on telling the Joan of Arc story despite that I knew already then that there was no more possibility for me of winning.

The story of Joan of Arc is just too good and I believe in the story so well.