Oh Mommy!

Guess How Much I Love You by Sam Bratney. My favorite children's story.

I write this because I am scared.

To my future kids:

Before I even begin, I want to say I love you. When I was a kid myself, I cringe whenever I had to say these words to my nanay and tatay and I feel the awkwardness my parents might have felt too when required to say them. Back then, we were never really the affectionate family who are demonstrative and showy of our feelings. We just stood by each other’s side. And that was enough. That was our silent “I love you’s”.

It may seem impossible to fall in love with somebody whom you haven’t met yet but when I imagine myself having kids I feel protective of them already. I feel that there is nothing that I will want most in the world but to see them happy and make the most out of their lives. I just know that I will do everything within my power and even beyond to give them what they need and what they want. Being a mother requires so much but as in with all mommy stories, they say it is worth it. The heart automatically expands a hundredfold and it accommodates all the required “mommy love”.

And while I look forward to this “mommy life” full of “mommy love”, will you forgive me, if I say that I am not ready to have you? Will it diminish your love for me if your experience to living gets delayed a bit because of my current state of selfishness?

Sweetheart, I want to share with you my dreams and I’ll do it with utmost giddiness similar to having seen Piolo Pascual and Xian Lim in person. For your information, Piolo and Xian are the hottest actors in the Philippines today (year 2012) that even with rumours on their being gay, their hotness are well preserved like the wax remains of President Marcos – him (Marcos), you will be taught in your history subject.

I dream of teaching or taking part in an organization with an advocacy. I dream of embracing a vocation far from what I am doing at the present. I dream of spending a year in a foreign land – for a short term work or a scholarship about art and literature, or about how private enterprise can contribute to a far bigger cause than its ballooning profits. I dream of spending a year travelling, backpacking, and waking up each day with the sole agenda of exploring and breathing in different cultures. I dream of going to Tibet, Myanmar and Nepal. I dream of riding in the European trains. I dream of being rich and being able to lift the burden of responsibility off your grandparents’ shoulders. I dream of bringing your tita’s (they are all still very young now) to Disneyland and hell, even just to the Mind Museum at the Fort in Taguig without getting broke. I dream of having enough resources to afford a little luxury for your lolo and lola and my siblings. I dream of still being able to fulfil my responsibilities as one of the eldest without necessarily giving up so much of my personal goals. I dream about things far different from my present surroundings because, though it’s an admission of weakness and I feel ungrateful that I am even putting these into words, I feel some emptiness and heaviness in my heart – that gnawing discontent that I want and need something more than what I have today. I do not want you to find me in this state, love, and neither do I want you to feel what I am feeling now, ever. Life is beautiful and all the things that you see are gifts from the Universe – there are no other rightful feelings but gratitude and awe of all the wonders in the world. I feel ashamed of what I just wrote and I feel tempted to erase the words – but I wish to be honest.

No, love, please do not mistake it as me seeing you as a hindrance towards achieving all of my dreams. I hope that when you are in my arms, you have 100% of me. You have a complete mommy – a mommy ready to share herself with God’s greatest gifts in the entire world – children. I want to be prepared for you, for your future and more than being prepared with your needs, I want to be able to give you the best there is in the world. Because, sweetheart, you deserve nothing less than that.

I wish to be able to offer all that I am capable of giving similar to what my mother is doing for me. I am tremendously fortunate for having your lola as my mother. She never basked in the corniness of quarter life drama the same way I shamefully did because she willingly and successfully embraced motherhood even at a young age of nineteen. My mother is a happy person and light to be with – well, her age has made her a little more sensitive and clingy of her children but that is understandable considering that she is a mother of seven kids, all almost-grown up and are away from her. If you want to know the definition of selflessness, you do not need to look it up in the dictionary. All you have to do is hear/listen to her stories. I love her so. Always and forever.

And I love you too, my little one, but please wait.
Mommy is not yet ready.
But when I am, I will make sure that I will love you in the same way my mother loves me.
And that, my child, is the most beautiful and most magical feeling in the world – my nanay yayang’s love.

Your Sexy Momma,
Tina


Note to self this May 2012: I cannot believe I am calling myself a mommy! Darn, Mother's Day!