6 reasons why I am more my mother's daughter than I am my dad's

Whose Mini-Me am I?

It is debatable which parent I really take after. Some people say I look like my father. Others say I look like my mother. But regardless of which parent I am a carbon copy of, I know I am more my mother's daughter than I am my Tatay's. And here are six reasons why:

1. I go to the derma. My hair is permed. My eyebrows are shaped.

If you had thought that my mother is the Average Plain Jane, you are terribly mistaken. The former Miss Ciceron was a  vain woman. She sported the hairstyles of the times - teased hair, flyaway or the beehive.

With that beehive hairstyle

She saved her hard-earned teacher's salary to buy facial creams, astringent and new beauty products in the market. But don't judge her for her so-called vanity. She was barely out of her teens when she started working; she was young.

I was in college when my mother took me to the salon to have my buhaghag hair rebonded. She didn't have much money so we went to one of those low-cost salons. For about three days after that salon session, my hair still smelled of the rebonding chemical which, suspiciously smelled of vinegar. It must have been vinegar!

For a recognition ceremony for Dean's Listers, my mother decided that my hair needed a cellophane treatment so off we went to another salon. I remember the cellophane costed Inay about 1,500 pesos. For a struggling working mother, that was a big sum of money to spend and it didn't seem commensurate to the daughter's three minutes of fame on stage to get a certificate and shake the hand of the Dean. But my mother had always been proud of my achievements since the time I joined my first spelling contest in grade school and she makes a big deal out of every one of them.

FAS Pinoy Idol 2011 Grand Finals: Inay wasn't feeling well that day. It was very painful for her to walk. Still, she came to see me perform on stage.

One Sunday afternoon while she was on one of her regular visits to my studio apartment in Makati, my mother dragged me to one of the salons in Washington Street (Please, 'Nay, not another hair rebonding again!).

"Magpaahit ka ng kilay," she said. 

So I sat in front of the beautician's dresser. The beautician dutifully shaped and shaved my man-brows, one of the features of my face that was, without a doubt, my father's. (My mother claims that I also got my nose from him.)

When eyebrow threading became the in-thing, my mother said that I should try it out. Oh, boy, was it painful! My eyes became pools of tears while the beautician plucked the hairs here and there to shape my unruly brows. "Vanity conquers pain," Inay wisely stated. Those were the same words that echoed in my head while the dermatologist extracted pimples from my acne-ridden face - those words and some of my own curse words for every person who had, at some point of my life, made me feel I was ugly. 

Before I had turned 25, around the time when I was doing graveyard shift at work, I had a terrible acne breakout - so terrible that my mother, who is practical in every aspect of spending, categorically stated, demanded even, that I should go to a skin doctor. Sessions with a derma are known to be expensive but my mother said I should spend for it because my face looked like I just had a bout with chicken pox. (I didn't have chicken pox until I was almost 27.) The obedient daughter obliged. Mothers do know best; my skin had greatly improved ever since.

These days, when I go to the derma, my mother vehemently reacts against it: "Bakit nagpapa-derma ka pa e wala ka na namang pimples? (Not true, Mother. I still get pimples before I have my monthly period.) Numinipis na yang balat mo, nagiging sensitive skin na." And when I go for my yearly digital perm at my favorite Korean salon, she complains: "Napakamahal namang pakulot n'yan!" But she doesn't say anything when she sees my nicely shaped eyebrows after a threading session. Hahaha.

Vanity conquers pain. Vanity transcends generation.

2. I'd rather be dead than be caught wearing something inappropriate.

"Clothes maketh the man" or in Miss Ciceron's case, the woman. That adage did not come from my mother but she certainly lived by it.

I guess it comes with the profession. Being a teacher, my mother had to be always respectably dressed. She didn't buy the expensive brands; she couldn't have afforded those with her salary. But the clothes she wore she carefully chose and she was one of those women who looked good in almost anything they wore. 

Like mother, like daughter

When she had kids of her own, my mother made sure we were always dressed appropriately - crisply pressed uniforms for school and Sunday best for church. For Christmas and New Year, we had to have something good to wear. My mother allocates budget specifically for that purpose. And she always seems to be shopping for socks, underwear and school shoes for my brother and me. Can't miss out on the littlest details, huh?  

To this day, whenever the three of us happen to be in the department store together, my brother would joke: "Ano, 'Nay, bibili ka na naman ba ng school shoes?" And we would be laughing so hard about it. She still does buy underwear, socks and hankies for her 28-year-old bunso every now and then.

As for me, many years after I have gained my freedom to choose the clothes that I wear, I still feel guilty about wearing shorts to church and about going out of the house shabbily dressed. I'm not complaining because I have come to believe that dressing appropriately is a sign of respect for the people you interact with. 

One glam habit that I didn't pick up from my mother, though, is wearing make-up. She's very basic about it, just powder and lipstick. But she had never really encouraged me to use make-up, except for mascara because she was frustrated that my eyelashes that, according to her, used to be long, are now short and didn't curl up naturally. I used to put on mascara but I've become too lazy to do it. Now, I wear make-up only when I attend formal events. Everyday, my face is au naturel. What you see is what you get.   

3. I hate going to the doctor. I don't like hospitals.

Coincidentally, my mother doesn't like going for check-ups herself. During a physical examination, her blood pressure would significantly rise such that the doctor would worry that something was not right. Well, she does suffer from chronic high blood pressure but for that particular instance, it was mostly because she was stressed over the check-up itself.

When she's actually sick, Inay doesn't want to be confined in a hospital. She's scared of being poked with needles or undergoing any medical procedure. She said that she'll be better off resting at home and that we should just pray for her healing. I bet even a man as prayerful as Pope Francis would be frustrated with her attitude towards professional medical care.

But when it comes to me, my brother or Tatay getting sick, she would insist that we go to the doctor immediately and that we follow doctor's advice religiously.

Ironic, right?

  

4. I'm a globetrotter.

It would probably appear that it is my father who had influenced my penchant for travel. He was the one who, as a young man, had voluntarily got himself drafted for the Philippine Navy and left his hometown in Bohol. As a Navy serviceman, he had worked and lived in a number of places in the Philippines. Their ship had docked in Singapore way back in the 70s when Singapore was not yet a very well-known country.

What I probably got from Tatay are the guts and the survival instincts that are necessary for any traveller but it is my mother who actually led me into being bitten by the travel bug. 

The year was 2003, our summer break in school. My mother planned out a Baguio trip for the family.

Mines View Park, Baguio City. 2003.

We were on a tight budget but I did enjoy that first time in Baguio. Except maybe for that part when we had to boil water in a pot because the guesthouse we stayed at did not have a water heater in the shower, the rest of the trip was fun. We walked around Burnham and Mines View Parks, enjoying the cool weather. My brother and I posed for our individual photos while sitting on a horse; mine was the one with a pink mane. We saw a St. Bernard dog, the biggest we've ever seen of that breed.

In another lifetime, my mother might have been friends with that person who had said that travel is the only thing one buys that makes one's self richer, because that was what my mother was doing when she took us for occasional trips out of town. So even if we didn't have much extra money then, she still chose to invest on experiences for us, her kids. She signed us up for a summer creative arts workshop, encouraged us to audition for singing contests and school musicals and pushed me to practice my piano lessons.

Ark Avilon, Pasig City. 2008.

I'm glad that even if she doesn't exactly like my travelling to this and that country (She's paranoid about all the kinds of dangers out there.), she doesn't stop me from doing it. I guess she knows that this is something that I really love doing.   

Hong Kong Disneyland. 2011.

Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur. 2011.

Macau. 2011.

5. I can't deny that I am a nerd. 

When she was younger, my mother would stay up late at night to finish a novel. That's how much my mother loved reading and she sparked that same interest for books in us. My brother and I had already finished reading Victor Hugo's Les Miserables and Gaston Leroux' Phantom of the Opera before we even finished high school. Inay had bought those books as pasalubong for us on one of her trips to Manila.

Inay and I enjoyed the same Nancy Drew books (And sometimes, we also read the same Sweet Valley novels. Hahaha.). I'd say that the passion for reading and learning was something that we really shared. My mother was my go-to person for anything from literature to history to science to mathematics. She would just know how to get the information that I needed for school. And this was before the advent of Google. In this era, she is one of the few senior citizens I know who has familiarized herself well with Google. The minute I tell her where my next travel destination is, I can be sure she would have already Googled about it the next minute. 

Her lessons on resourcefulness survived me through college when I had to write tons of papers for almost all subjects. Save for my first English paper which was given a D, all my other papers had good marks. I was always determined to submit well-researched, well-written papers. Math was my waterloo but even that I survived with passing marks not because my mother tutored me (She gave up on helping with math after she saw what we were studying in the first semester of my freshman year. LOL.) but because she taught me how to persist in my study.

My mother graduated magna cum laude. I graduated cum laude. Not many people know that because I don't talk about it, except during my first job interviews after college. 

I am proud of what I have achieved but I am more proud of what my mother has achieved in me and in us, her kids.

My high school graduation. 2000.

6. I am stubborn. I don't give up without a fight. I find it hard to move on.

A lot of students remember my mother as a terror physics teacher. She did not hesitate to give failing marks, although the terror of the Physics Faculty did tone down during her last few years of teaching in the university. That was around the time that I was in college myself. "Pag gusto kong pahirapan ang estudyante, naiisip kong nahihirapan ka din sa subjects mo, kaya hindi ko na lang pinahihirapan," she admitted with a smile.

Yet she remained known for being a strict disciplinarian. She was the infamous chair of the Student Discipline Committee. She reprimanded the noisy students, loitering the corridors. She pushed for the punishment of misbehaving students, especially students who cheat in exams.

Inay is a woman you definitely would not want to cross. If your argument is not sound, you better not argue with her. She can see through lies and illogical statements. She has an adamant sense of what was right and what was wrong. I grew up seeing and hearing my mother speak her mind about morality, justice, truthfulness and practicality, not only to us, her immediate family, but also to other people whenever the circumstance called for it.

That is why in this modern world of questionable priorities, she seems to be out of place. It is quite unfortunate for her that she also happens to be a strong-willed woman who would rarely accept things as they are; more so, if these things are not how she knows they ought to be, which is why she is often stressed out. She has to be constantly reminded that not everything is under her power and responsibility to change.

Up to this day, I think that she thinks other people are judging her for how her kids had turned out to be and yes, she is being judged. Unfairly, I must say. My brother and I have made, and continue to make, our own life choices. Whether they were good choices or otherwise, we are solely responsible for it as adults. Of course, you can't just convince my mother to subscribe to that idea. She's stubborn.

When I was still in my tween and teen years, self-absorbed with a "You-don't-understand-me. Nobody-understands-me" mindset, Inay and I had dozens of disagreements from something as petty as why I'm not allowed to commute by myself to attend a friend's birthday lunch at Jollibee to something as big as the content of my high school graduation speech. Her favorite concluding statement in an argument goes like this: "Pag sinabi kong hindi, hindi. Bakit ulit ka pa nang ulit ng tanong?" Bawal na bawal ang unli sa nanay ko 'no! Hahaha.

Over the years, I realized that I have pretty much developed the same personality as my mother's which is probably the reason why we had argued a lot in the past. The only difference is that the melancholic-choleric side of my personality has been tempered by my father's rather phlegmatic personality, such that I can sometimes go all-out on something but at the same time, know when to take a chill pill and when to just walk away.

After one of our more emotional arguments, emotional only because I always end up in tears while my mother always manages to either keep a straight face or stare me down with her version of the tiger look, I told myself I didn't want to be like her. Why would I want to be like her? For a long time, I had thought she was the Maleficent in my story.

But every villain has a story of her own, too. This is my mother's. And it is mine as well. After all, I am, proudly, her own.

#HappyMothersDay #YouAreTheBestMom