Things my mother was right about
The moon was still awake at 1:47 a.m.
Unfortunately, so was I.
Somewhere in heaven, my late mother was probably shaking her head. She believed healthy people slept before midnight. I am now approximately 7,842 nights behind schedule.
Still, a small miracle happened recently: I finally rearranged my bedroom into less clutter. More breathing space.
Beside it, my spacious terrace balcony now hosts a modest garden—small pots, fragile leaves, ridiculous hope. The soil smells like forgiveness.
Improvement, I am learning, rarely arrives like lightning. Usually it comes quietly: one drawer cleaned, one bad habit surrendered, one small act of discipline at a time.
My mother never lectured us about healthy living. She simply practiced it.
She drank warm water, avoided iced drinks, loved green tea, ate healthy, slept early, prayed daily, walked often, and believed moderation was better than medicine.
As a stubborn youth, I had ignored most of that wisdom.
Now I drink warm water voluntarily—a sentence my younger self would consider evidence of middle age or defeat.
Years ago in 2012 in Beijing, over tea with Jaime FlorCruz, I finally understood why my mother loved green tea so much. Some truths do not arrive when they are taught.
They arrive when we are finally ready to hear them.
I still drink iced chocolate or iced coffee occasionally—usually. My stomach continues its long protest movement.
My mother also loved music. She played the piano beautifully and arranged for my sister Marilou and I to take lessons.
We were terrible.
Not mildly disappointing—truly terrible. Even the dog occasionally left the room during practice.
But through music, I learned something more important than performance: I learned how to listen.
Today my playlists wander from youthful OPM songs to light rock to Chopin and even timeless old Chinese melodies my mother once played at home.
Sometimes memory itself feels like music—returning softly when the world finally grows quiet.
She also taught me to write by hand and to admire beautiful penmanship. Her calligraphy writings in English and Chinese were art.
I still carry a small notebook in my pocket. She believed thoughts deserved to be written down before they escaped forever.
She also believed in frugality.
“Modest wealth comes from saving,” she would say. “Great wealth comes from heaven.”
When my father died when I was age seven, our comfortable life collapsed almost overnight. The large house disappeared. Security vanished. My mother, a lifelong educator, quietly began again in a small rented home with little more than courage and faith.
Then she taught herself to cook.
Adobo, roasted chicken, fresh lumpia, noodles, soups—foods so good they could briefly heal sadness. Yet she never called herself a great cook.
That was another quiet truth she lived by: genuine excellence comes with humility and rarely introduces itself loudly.
Her faith was steady and undramatic. Sunday church. Daily prayer. Kindness without announcement.
I remain a wandering believer, sometimes distracted by deadlines, ambitions, worries, and the endless noise of modern life. But whenever I remember her kneeling in prayer, I feel the strange desire to kneel, too.
One November years ago, while visiting her late brother’s grave, she encountered a neglected young niece from his third wife struggling through life. My mother quietly took her in, helped send her to school, and changed her future.
Years later, when I needed someone trustworthy for my real estate business, I met that same cousin again—now an accountant. She became one of the best people I ever hired.
My mother, even in absence, still arranges things.
Even my younger sister met her future husband through one of those strange coincidences surrounding my late mother’s hospital confinement—as if love itself had quietly entered the room beside her bedside.
Mom often reminded us: “One inch of gold is worth one inch of time, but one inch of gold can never buy back one inch of time once it has passed.”
Only now do I fully understand what she meant.
Time is the one wealth we spend without knowing how much remains.
I have not yet mastered balance, discipline, or the Taoist wisdom of flowing gently with life instead of wrestling constantly against it.
I still sleep too late sometimes. I still order iced drinks against medical and maternal advice.
But now there is a small garden on my balcony, beside my decluttered bedroom.
Warm tea beside my books.
A notebook in my pocket.
And every day, in ways both ordinary and invisible, my mother continues teaching me how to live.
