One Day with My Mother

     I was in the state of rewiring the circuits of my brain and guarding my thoughts was my game as my mother was having litany for the second time on her ill feelings towards some cousins, some members of my family including me and some years back.  

     I returned home for good and with the reason to be near to my mother whom I thought was lonely with our eldest brother who is sometimes hard to please. I used up some of my hard earned savings to build myself a tiny house adjacent to the main house and to make the backyard look more decent.

   I was inside when I heard sounds of scrap and irons and woods threw from somewhere to somewhere and then my mother was murmuring about a mess in the back yard (our backyard has full of junks actually).  This the second time. When things like this happens I have learned to keep cool otherwise chaos would loom.  I was listening to her murmurs. She got upset over the bundles of firewood my brother has just ordered. And when I peeped out I could see them filed up indeed. I decided to go out and enter to the main house. And the house was dirty as usual and in the front yard near the gate was another pile of bundles of fire wood. It looks like it was just being delivered.   I could not see my brother inside the house and no idea where he was. My mother kept on murmuring on so many things and I only reacted to one thing but that was all. I kept my silence again as there was no use arguing with an angry person.  She was cleaning up, throw the bundles to the side.  I did not stop her nor help her rearranged if that was her intention, I just let her be. Then we were both in the front yard and I noticed another set of firewood bundles piled up, she went past ahead of me open banging the gate and made some murmurs then she threw some firewood bundles towards me while I stood outside the front door unmoved. I can sense that she found me unusual at that instant because I just stood there without word, not a retort as she has been used to my retorts and arguments and the talking back. So what do you want me to say more? She said as she passed by me back inside I said, pray.  I followed her inside and she still continued her litany in different topics for different persons and so on and so forth.

    It must have been my success as I just sat down and listened. “Respect thy father and mother” flashed.  I fiddled my fingers to call for the househelp to come immediately to help clean up the mess around. I just couldn’t lift a finger. Inside me struggled not to be bothered anymore with hard labor. We grew up cleaning up the house under the strict supervision of my father me and my elder sister then. We used to scrub the floor and the walls most especially when town fiesta is approaching and it was really a pain growing up with that thing which we used to call as discipline but we now call it child labor.  We had no water system in the house then, we just fetch water from a next door cousin who occupied the big ancestral house. I grew up fetching water for the family and when water was scarce I went to another neighborhood to fetch water. Maybe my elder brothers also experienced the same. I also had this tingling moments as a child when there is no food for breakfast I have to run errands to a family friend’s mini grocery down the next corner and before reaching there, three boys in the neighborhood one was about my age 2 of them were younger would round me up and bully me. That bullying thing was kept without the knowledge of my family.

I sat in the living room listening to my mother’s unusual behavior the throwing of things and some litanies over past hatred on relatives and me and my brother not helpful enough in the house. The oncall house help came at last I gave some instructions, for a while only to be sent away by my mother after few minutes of sweeping. At this instance I can sensed that mother wanted me to do the cleaning, do the hard labor thing. I sat there unfazed. The helper wanted to go home so I paid her as she took her toddler and we went outside together and when  I looked behind I saw my mother by the gate watching us as we thread down to the busy street.

 I was in the mall sitting alone and congratulated myself for not retorting back at a 92 year old strong woman who was the sole instrument of my being fifty years ago. I could not be ungrateful to her, she has her own struggles, she has her own stories to tell. 
The intervals of doubt of the real reason why I decided to come home and live beside them must have been a mistake or it has to be so I can redefine the real me, a bit tired and still bruised.