became a Cabinet lady during the time of President Macapagal; Juanito, an engineer who was appointed secretary of Public Works during Cory’s presidency; and Simeon, a lawyer and judge and later dean of the Ateneo College of Law. Not bad for children who lost their mother early. I can’t recall how she ended up completing her college educa- tion at the Philippine Normal College, but immediately after graduation, Mama started teaching at the young age of 18 or 19 so she could escape the hardships at home. She married my father, Maximo, a maritime officer, at the age of 25, a little late for marriage during that time.
Know what your talents are, and develop them in every possible way.
With her meager earnings as an elementary-school teacher in San Mateo, Rizal, her greatest luxury was to watch movies in downtown Manila, armed with a bag of peanuts, with her sister Paz. The two single sisters often watched double-program movies in the theaters in Quiapo and Santa Cruz, which they could only afford at that time. Mama passed on that passion for movies to me; even now, when younger people prefer to download movies from the Internet or watch pirated DVDs, I still maintain my regular movie-watching with my husband to catch at least one movie a week. I was only six or seven years old then, when my mother would treat me to movies in downtown Santa Cruz and Quiapo (there was no Makati yet), and it was such a thrill for me to buy either
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