Nancy Cudis talks about Her mother's unusual breakfast time tales

I believe there is no greater compliment than a child writing praises to a parent, so when I read Nancy Cudis post about her Mom, I felt her Mom is the most lucky Mom in the world.

 

My mother and her unusual breakfast time tales

By Nancy Cudis

My mother is a born storyteller, very verbose and quite animated. Just like her own mother, she remembers many stories from long ago, even from the time when she started first grade. Mind you, not all of these are happy bedtime stories that make you smile before you sleep. These are tragic tales of the Japanese occupation, of unrequited love, of regrets, and of what-could-have-beens and what-ifs, pretty much balanced off with stories of climbing the neighbor’s mango tree (and harvesting some fruits without permission), of harvesting cacao at her family’s own backyard, and of endless talking over laundry by the riverside.

Unsurprisingly, my mother being my mother—a maddening petite package of bluntness and gentleness, of friendliness and sarcasm—would hover at me at breakfast time, and I would get this foreboding that something creepy is going to happen in the next 30 seconds. Almost always, that something would: my mother would sit down on one side of the table and ask a subtle question about life in general, and then before I know it, she would be telling me stories of bloody suicide attempts that happened close to home during the war while I would attempt to finish my breakfast plate of ham and bacon and gulp down as much as I could a bowl of her utan bisaya.

I really don’t mind hearing these stories. In fact, I like listening to my mother, just like I sat as a rapt young listener to my late paternal grandfather’s stories of dealing with guerrillas and to my late maternal mother’s tales of fleeing from her war-threatened neighborhood to the mountains fresh from giving birth to her first child. Since these are things one does not get to hear everyday, I would say I am privileged to be a holder of some true stories of courage, sacrifice, and love that happened within my family, which I could pass on to the next line.

Each year we celebrate Mother’s Day, I always remember my mother and her unusual breakfast time stories. Some days, there are stories told before and repeated. Other days, there are new tales that are either too fantastic to believe or too horrendous to imagine (but either way, my melodramatic mother has achieved her goal of capturing my attention and her childish desire to have an audience).

My mother would tell me how her father, a gentle carpenter, would walk all day long with a cabinet on his head needed to be sold for a few pesos to feed his seven children; how she and her siblings would walk so far to go to school; how they have to make several rounds everyday to the well to gather water enough to feed and bath 10 members of the family; how a well not far off from where they fetched water has become a tragic scene of a pretty female neighbor who committed suicide to escape an abusive father (the well has to be closed off and abandoned); how family scandals in town are “contained”; and how cruel war was to a simple family and neighborhood like her own (and here I thought flogging only happened in Voltaire’s “Candide”).

Allow me to share with you my appreciation of my own mother and how she has kept our family alive with stories passed from her mother and her mother’s mother to her daughters (who are both still wrestling with how to deal with them in these digital times and Korean culture frenzy) and stories that happened to her and to her family, forcing us to deal with realities and teaching us by way of true events that courage, love, hard work, and understanding are way better than cowardice, hatred, and discord.

Go give your mother a hug. And listen to her stories. Really listen. Don’t worry too much if some of them are too hard to believe. She is your mother after all. (And if you are a female reading this post, you might become one soon with your own set of stories to tell.)

(Originally posted by Nancy Cudis on The Memoriter Blogs on May 10, 2013 as her tribute to her mother on Mother’s Day)

Nancy Cudis is an award-winning blogger/writer and is the CEO of The Memoriter Writing Service based in Cebu City, Philippines; a very good friend and an amazing daughter.  Thanks Nancy!