Larger-than-life

I had the scare when I learned that my mother was hospitalized last week. Her fever had been going on for weeks, and as a medical student, I knew that wasn't a good sign. She was still awaiting her X-ray when I phoned her, and a day after, I would learn she had bronchitis, and antibiotics would do just the trick. When I called her two days ago, she sounded a lot better.

As I write this, I remember that it was during times when I was sick that I've seen much of my mother's tenderness. She had to leave many of her patients to accompany me to the lab to have me tested after Sean's wretched dog David bit me in the heel. There was something, too, in her voice that reassured me when I was suffering from high, recurring fever.

Over the years, I've realized how bad a son I am, and how tender, gracious, and loving my mother has been to me. I like to joke around that I'm the prodigal son, the proverbial black sheep, because, when I think about it, I have received more reprimands, more corrections, more tongue-lashings from my parents than any of my brothers.

Because I was too unruly, my mother described me as "incorrigible"—my mother's exact words, believe me, and because my seven-year-old vocabulary wasn't vast enough, I had to ask her what it meant. "Beyond correction," she said. A lot of the big words I know today I learned from Nanay.

If I had another woman for a mother, I wouldn't have turned out this way. I would have been a lot more proud, bursting with self-adoration, deceived with illusions of self-sufficiency. My mother knew the right time to burst my bubble, to help me see myself for who I am. And yet, in her own weird way, she also gave me the sweetest pat in the back for a job well done.

My mother has never been one of those who aspired to have over-achieving children. What she desired was for my brothers and I to grow in the love and fear of the Lord.

It has become a tradition for me to write about my mother during February 24. There are, after all, so many things to tell, for my mother was, and still is, a character that stands larger-than-life, for much of what I am and will be, I owe to her. Here's to praising the Lord for another year He has added to your life, Nay.