organizations. She allowed her daughter to be independent, but only after stating that I could only have a boyfriend after I graduated. It didn’t mean that I could not go out with my friends, so I thought it was not an unreasonable demand. I would commute from Parañaque to UP Diliman either in a car pool or by public transportation, but in my senior year, when my class schedules and campus activities made it difficult for me to keep on commuting, Mama decided I could live on campus, in one of the boarding houses. That, to me, was her final sign of letting me go. I was really thankful that she had prepared me well to face the outside world. I eventually gradu- ated with a master’s degree in mass communication. I continued to live with my parents even after I got married. I watched Mama retire from public-school work and spend more time for her social and civic work, and for us, her family, because that was one value she always kept sacred. “No amount of success,” she would always say, “can ever make up for a broken family.” When I became busy with my career, she took care of my daugh- ter, who became her “teacher” in a reversal of roles as Monique, the preschooler, took to taking her school lessons home and teaching them to her lola . Mama received countless awards for her many involvements, but her Papal Award for her work in the Parañaque parish was what she cherished the most. More than that, she kept her name and her reputation untarnished and her family intact. Today as I look in the mirror, I realize I not only have her eyes, her cheeks, her fine hair, her fragile voice and possibly every physical condition I saw her go through, but I’ve also inherited her love of God and family, her resolute determination to
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