An Essay About Mom

I was nervous. I waited patiently for her to arrive while I sat beside my grandmother. I was staring at my picture in a frame when I was just a baby placed on top of the television rack when a tall, voluptuous, and 48-year old woman with a fair complexion and light-brown colored wavy hair came inside the house. She was wearing a blue razor-back top, a fitted jeans, two-inch stiletto, and a black pair of sunglass on top of her head.I wasn’t convinced that she was my mother. You see, I haven’t seen her since I was a baby until that day, June 18, 2006 and until then, I was totally clueless on how she looked like. Aside from that fact, I looked exactly her opposite. I’m not tall, I’m chubby, and I never had the guts to wear what she was wearing.As far as I knew, she went away and she never came back to see me. Since then, I planned to look for her when time comes that I would be able to do so. And I started doing it when I was 14.I searched for her and just when I was a fresh sophomore at the University of the Philippines Baguio, my blocmate, who was from Nueva Ecija, told me that her mother was my mother’s sister’s friend. My blocmate gave my cellphone number to them, they texted me, and we planned how my mother and I would meet. My father did not know anything about it then.Actually, I was the one who went to Nueva Ecija from Baguio to see her—just to take a look at this Melicia del Rosario Leonardo whose name I got from my birth certificate. I always wanted to know how the woman who gave birth to me looked like, or if I looked like her.She hugged me and we spent the rest of the day at the mall with my new-found cousins. She left us later in the afternoon because she needed to do, which she said, something important. So that night, I waited for her to arrive while I lay down on her bed. She arrived at around 3 o’clock in the morning.She lay down beside me and started talking to me about her past life as Mrs. Melicia Camacho—how she and my father met, how their life was when they were still together, and why they got separated. I listened to her even though I was really sleepy at the time. I wanted to hear from her.I fell asleep as she was caressing my hair for the first time. It felt so good to feel a mother’s touch. I felt complete and contented for the first time.The next day, I had to go back to Baguio. Before I left, she promised to be on my birthday. She gave me P2, 500 and accompanied me and my cousin, who was also studying in Baguio, to the van terminal.I didn’t feel sad as I left my birthplace because I was assured that my mother would be with me on my birthday. Then I reached Baguio and waited for my birthday to come.I was happy when I woke up on June 22 because I was expecting my mother to be with me on that special day. But the day ended without her, and without even a text message.Days went by and I didn’t hear anything from her again. She never came to visit me in Baguio. I felt hopeless. I wished I didn’t spend the money she gave me so that I could have a remembrance of her.The day I left Nueva Ecija was the last time I laid my eyes on her. I never wanted to go back to Baguio then, but I needed to. If only I was given more time to be with her, maybe I would be able to know her more.Until now I’m still hoping that she would at least visit me. I never had her love and I know I will never have it ever. She already has the chance to show and give it to me if she really wants to but I guess she just don’t want to be my mother anymore, or she just don’t want me to be her daughter.I didn’t feel any hatred or anger for her before, but now, I already do. No one can blame me. I tried not to feel it but she made me feel it.Forever, I will be this child who’s always ignorant about a mother’s love and what a family really is. I never had a complete one. I will never have.

-kacie-