“how could i not loved you”
Georgia (Jane Fonda) replied
when her daughter asked if she ever loved her.
Georgia Rule (2007)
Today is March 8.
Happy International Women’s Day!
I am my mother’s daughter
To read reread and reflect on writings of women authors is a dangerous pastime. It can build a lot of thoughts to a woman that may change her perspective to herself and to her environment.
I always aspire to be my mother’s’ daughter. My culture told me. My heart says so. My mind wants to be by her side most especially now that she no longer have a company in my father. I saw her cry only ones during the wake of my father. It was brief. I gave her the space that I always perceive she wanted. She would not talk to me about how she feels. She just takes good care of household chores, and that for her is enough. She spends most of her time praying. Sometimes she goes out in the company of other senior citizens to administer prayer meetings. I guess this activity perfects her definition of life.
My mother’s grace and wisdom only grows as she ages, along with her beauty. She has not been able to live her life though. One most important thing she could have accomplished for herself. She lives her life for others, denying her own. She possesses such an indomitable strength. I envy her or should I.
Gloria Steinem in her book Revolution from Within, A Book of Self-esteem recalls “ the day she began to look at her aging mother with different eyes. She saw her mother not as a parent but a person with her own unfulfilled dreams. When she asked her mother why she choose not to pursue her life, she was told “ If I had left, you never would have been born.” Steinem, in her essay, writes the response she would have given: “But you might have been born instead.”
I am not an avowed feminist, but like Steinem I am a woman and so is my mother, my two sisters, numerous aunts and cousins, nieces and friends who I deeply love. I would absolutely not choose not to have been born, but I would definitely have coached my mother to make choices if only I could.
Effects of a sad childhood subdues the potential greatness of a person. She and her mother and her brother grew up in the command of a man not her husband neither her father but my grandmother’s brother. My mother have not told me any physical cruelty he inflicted against her but have repeatedly shared that of her brother : He would command him to kneel atop of mongo seeds with books in his spread arms underneath the scourging heat of the sun for hours. Her mother just watched helplessly her son until he was able to serve the penalty imposed. It was a cardinal sin if one of them would not be home before six pm to attend the angelus. It was prohibited to utter any word during meal time. A young mind in her could only embrace the events of her fragile life as disciplinary measures. She had to submit to the commands of circumstances. She never saw her father neither were they able to accord him a decent burial. He died during the war and his mortal remains lies nowhere.
As a young girl I still saw this deeply religious man who acted as my mother’s father. Already old and weak my mother instructed me to pay respect to him before doing anything after arrival. I must hold his right hand towards my forehead. Obedient child as I was the feeling of indignation was never entertained. Years later, sociology supported by catechism taught me that such politeness is part of being a Filipino, a renowned trademark the world over which we are so proud of… (which i will save for another story.)
My reason is defeated each time I thought of my mother. There must really be a magic in the umbilical cord between mothers and daughters. She always forgives me for my mistakes in her person during impulsive moments. The whole world may despise my personhood but I can comfortably assure myself that there is always a mother to go home to, the first to embrace me during down moments, always the pillar to stand with during disastrous encounters with the world. She cooks the best food I have ever tasted.
Many times I reflect about my mother’s influences in the way I was raised during moments of self assessment. American Psychologist Dr. Robin L. Smith stated that “the untreated flaws of mothers during their childhood is carried over to their descendants especially female who, in one way or the other will battle the same struggle and will ask the same questions and search the same endless answers all throughout their lives. It will remain the unfinished business”.
Randolf S. David, in his book Nation, Self and Citizenship book mentioned Adrienne Rich’s study on “matrophobia – - the fear of becoming one’s own mother. . . the painful struggle of daughters not to be like them because they associate their mothers with the victim they do not want to become . . . any attempt of daughters to exorcise their mothers from their system is self-destructive . .
The same author may have marked the formula when he wrote that “the solution cannot be found in the rhetoric of mother blaming or in erecting walls between mothers and daughters, but only in the persistent “truth telling” that should characterize all mother-daughter interactions.”
I’ve never really been down there with mamang. It’s an ongoing process for me that may perhaps take me a lifetime to defeat.
There are so many questions in the world that is so difficult to answer. There are boundaries that are more convenient if left undone. There are many spaces which words cannot invade. Different lives, different circumstances.
One thing is certain… I will always be my mother’s daughter.
(re dated for a reason)
Icons of womanhood in my list
“Only she who attempts the absurd can achieve the impossible” is a feminist proverb of indeterminate origin that perhaps may have been quietly adopted by women achievers.
Barely less than a hundred years ago, women were classified as imbeciles, irrational, incapable of managing their own affairs, denied education, employment and professions and excluded from juries and public offices. Defying the odds of times and circumstances, these women in my list absolutely contributed to the development of a rational being.
These are the women at whose side I want to stand.
Mary Magdalene
She, “the woman with many names . . . Sophia, Magdala, Marinha…”
She “with a reputation as a tearful penitent….”
“A Woman Who Showed Her Gratitude….
“A woman of substance, brave and smart and devoted, who plays a crucial — perhaps irreplaceable — role in Christianity’s defining moment.”
“The first to see the risen Lord — those with more power have sought to marginalize her. Yet she is faithful. She remains. She cannot be silenced.”
I adore this woman… I love this woman …
Benazir Bhutto – The First Muslim woman to lead a Muslim Nation…
“I do what I have to do and am determined to fulfill my pledge to the people of Pakistan to stand by them in their democratic aspirations. I take the risk for all the children of Pakistan. The children of Pakistan are as dear to me as my own children” were her famous last words.
Benazir, meaning “without parallel” during her term as Prime Minister of Pakistan expressed the hope that one day Moslems would soon be able to pray at the holy site in the Israeli controlled Jerusalem.
Norma Jean Baker
“I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else. ”
Overhauled for her almost perfect portrait of the ‘goddess’ Marilyn Monroe. Abandoned, deprived, single handedly reached the epitome of fame, allured and glorified in life yet scorned, “murdered” and cheaply wrapped in death.
Indira Gandhi
‘Even if I die in the service of the nation, I will be proud of it. Every drop of my blood, I am sure, I will contribute to the growth of this nation and will make it strong and dynamic” Prime Minister Indira Gandhi said in a speech in the East Indian State of Orissa a day before she was killed by her own security guards in October 1984. The only child of Prime Minister Jewaharlal Nehru, she was dubbed as the “Mother of India” or “Indira means India. The first Indian woman Prime Minister, she spent her childhood in an atmosphere of intense political activity with her parents. She was barely three years old when Mahatma Gandhi launched his first civil disobedience movement.
Dian Fosey
“The Kabara groups taught me much regarding gorilla behavior. From them I learned to accept the animals on their own terms and never to push them beyond the varying levels of tolerance they were willing to give. Any observer is an intruder in the domain of a wild animal and must remember that the rights of that animal supersede human interests. When you realize the value of all life, you dwell less on what is past and concentrate on the preservation of the future.”
One of the world’s leading female scientists, Dr. Dian Fossey had a remarkable career, highlighted by many challenges and successes. Her life was cut short when she was murdered in 1985, yet legacy has continued and grown in multiple ways. Most importantly, the work she devoted her life to – protecting and studying the mountain gorillas of Africa – has proved highly effective and has resulted in the stabilization and growth of this most endangered of the great apes, and in many other related conservation efforts, as well as programs for people who live in areas near the gorillas.
Margareth Thatcher
“Change cannot be painless. But much of what we are going through today is the result of past folly and neglect. After any major operation, you feel worse before convalesce. But you don’t refuse the operation when you know that without it, you won’t survive.”
Golda Meir
“Like my generation, this generation will strive to struggle, make mistakes and achieve. Like us, they are totally committed to the development and security of the State of Israel and to the dream of a just society here. Like us, they know that there be a Jewish people to remain a people, it is essential that there be a Jewish nation where Jews can live as Jews, not on suffering and not as minority. I am grateful that I live in a country whose people have learned how to go on living in a sea of hatred without hating those who want to destroy them and without abandoning their own vision of peace. To have learned this is a great art, the prescription for which is not written down anywhere. It is a part of our way of life in Israel”
References:
Sisterhood is Global
Great Women of Our Time
Woman of Destiny
Gorillas in the Mist
The Woman Who Showed Gratitude
International Women’s Day
“we begin to love each other
when we begin to make the connection
between your empowerment and my
disempowerment,
We are sisters when we recognize and touch each other’s pains
Like touching the glow of the moon
when it seems so distant and impossible,
when we cry because another woman cries,
when we hold a grieving sister
even when we feel the depths of our own wounding,
when we laugh as the tears dry laughing with the going of sorrows,
when we break our silences
even when it is difficult to find the words
that will describe the growing grief of loves lost and lost hopes…”
Today, MARCH 8, 2008 is
INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY
tribute to all women genuinely happy or not.
Cheers..
Some Selected Quotations by Gloria Steinem
I just love to share some of the best words i have kept, worth pondering as I look inward more often and come to terms with age…..
the one in italics is my favorite…
We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons… but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters…
• I have met brave women who are exploring the outer edge of human possibility, with no history to guide them, and with a courage to make themselves vulnerable that I find moving beyond words.
• The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.
• If the shoe doesn’t fit, must we change the foot?
• The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off.
• The authority of any governing institution must stop at its citizen’s skin.
• Power can be taken, but not given. The process of the taking is empowerment in itself.
• A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
• Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.
• If women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn’t it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long?
• This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. Sex and race because they are easy and visible differences have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labour in which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned. We are really talking about humanism.
• Law and justice are not always the same. When they aren’t, destroying the law may be the first step toward changing it.
• Most women’s magazines simply try to mold women into bigger and better consumers.
• We know that we can do what men can do, but we still don’t know that men can do what women can do. That’s absolutely crucial. We can’t go on doing two jobs.
• We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs.
• Most American children suffer too much mother and too little father.
• I don’t breed well in captivity.
• Childbirth is more admirable than conquest, more amazing than self-defense, and as courageous as either one.
• But the problem is that when I go around and speak on campuses, I still don’t get young men standing up and saying, ‘How can I combine career and family?’
• Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.
• Most women are one man away from welfare.
• Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age.
• Someone asked me why women don’t gamble as much as men do, and I gave the commonsensical reply that we don’t have as much money. That was a true and incomplete answer. In fact, women’s total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage.
The family is the basic cell of government: it is where we are trained to believe that we are human beings or that we are chattel, it is where we are trained to see the sex and race divisions and become callous to injustice even if it is done to ourselves, to accept as biological a full system of authoritarian government.
• Happy or unhappy, families are all mysterious. We have only to imagine how differently we would be described — and will be, after our deaths — by each of the family members who believe they know us.
• Planning ahead is a measure of class. The rich and even the middle class plan for future generations, but the poor can plan ahead only a few weeks or days.
• Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.
• From pacifist to terrorist, each person condemns violence — and then adds one cherished case in which it may be justified.
• No man can call himself liberal, or radical, or even a conservative advocate of fair play, if his work depends in any way on the unpaid or underpaid labor of women at home, or in the office.
• The only thing I can’t stand is discomfort.
• For much of the female half of the world, food is the first signal of our inferiority. It lets us know that our own families may consider female bodies to be less deserving, less needy, less valuable.
• Evil is obvious only in retrospect.
