Danilova's posts with tag: motherhood
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The best thing about this, is that, while it's not original, l received it on the mail from my aunt...ibig sabihin, I'm a phenomenal woman in her eyes. Hehehe. So here -- something light naman: .............................................................................. WHY I LOVE MOM Mom and Dad were watching TV when Mom said, "I'm tired, and it's getting late. I think I'll go to bed"
She went to the kitchen to make sandwiches for the next day's lunches.
Rinsed out the popcorn bowls, took meat out of the freezer for supper the following evening, checked the cereal box levels, filled the sugar container, put spoons and bowls on the table and started the coffee pot for brewing the next morning. She then put some wet clothes in the dryer, put a load of clothes into the washer, ironed a shirt and secured a loose button She picked up the game pieces left on the table, put the phone back on the charger and put the telephone book into the drawer. She watered the plants, emptied a wastebasket and hung up a towel to dry.
She yawned and stretched and headed for the bedroom. She stopped by the desk and wrote a note to the teacher, counted out some cash for the field trip, and pulled a text book out from hiding under the chair.
She signed a birthday card for a friend, addressed and stamped the envelope and wrote a quick note for the grocery store. She put both near her purse.
Mom then washed her face with 3 in 1 cleanser, put on her Night solution & age fighting moisturizer, brushed and flossed her teeth and filed her nails.
Dad called out, "I thought you were going to bed."
"I'm on my way," she said.
She put some water into the dog's dish and put the cat outside, then made sure the doors were locked and the patio light was on.
She looked in on each of the kids and turned out their bedside lamps and TV's, hung up a shirt, threw some dirty socks into the hamper, and had a brief conversation with the one up still doing homework. In her own room, she set the alarm; laid out clothing for the next day, straightened up the shoe rack. She added three things to her 6 most important things to do list She said her prayers, and visualized the accomplishment of her goals.
About that time, Dad turned off the TV and announced to no one in particular. "I'm going to bed."
And he did...without another thought.
Anything extraordinary here? Wonder why women live longer...?
CAUSE WE ARE MADE FOR THE LONG HAUL..... (and we can't die sooner, we still have things to do!!!!)
Send this to five phenomenal women today...they'll love you for it! I just did.
THEN, GO TO BED!
By Vinia Datinguinoo
Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism
July 1998 Photo by Luis Liwanag http://luisliwanag.multiply.com/photos/album/53/Happy_land_Ulingan#4  Bonglo, Bordon, Cebu—JOSEFINA Flores is only 40 years old, but she looks at least a decade older. Thin and gaunt, the mother of six seems in no condition to do even the least of her daily chores at her farm here in this mountain barangay, about 80 kilometers from Cebu City.
But she does them all, and beginning at the crack of dawn until late evening, Josefina is in constant motion. She starts the day with a two-kilometer trek to fetch water, and continues on to cooking meals, gathering and selling firewood, making charcoal, cleaning the house, looking after the children and her husband, and seeing to it that everyone in the family has something to eat. Of all her chores, it is the last that Josefina is finding hardest to do these days. Hunger is a familiar feeling in Bongdo-a community of nearly 400 families-as it is in many other poor farming communities elsewhere. But in this prolonged season of El Niño, the situation has gone from bad to worse, and there has been even less food here to go around. And the mothers, as usual, are having it toughest. "Life has been hard," says Josefina in Cebuano. "But there must be something that my husband and children could eat. If there's any left, then that's what I eat."
Every year, the National Nutrition Council declares July as 'Nutrition Month' in the hope that some attention, however short-term, would be given to the kind of diet Filipinos should have. But the annual event seems to have become a mockery in places like Bongdo, where there is almost no food to be had, and where the women are especially unlikely to ever be in good health because of malnutrition, if not sheer hunger. To be sure, health workers would be hard pressed in finding any Bongdo resident-male or female-in sound health today. After all, Bongdo is among the areas that have been declared to be in a state of calamity by the Cebu Sangguniang Panglungsod because of the drought, and people here now count themselves lucky if they had at least corn lugaw to eat. But it is the mothers who have it worst, because, say nutrition experts, "culture" dictates that they eat last-and often risk eating nothing at all. This is a practice not unique to Bongdo. "Kung isda ang ulam, yung pinaghimayan niyan na halos tinik na lang, yun ang sa nanay (If the viand is fish, then the mother usually gets to eat whatever is left clinging on the bones)," says nutrition anthropologist Catherine Castañeda, who did a 1994 study on how food is distributed in Filipino dining tables.
The explanation goes something like this: The father should have something, because he's the "breadwinner." And the children should have something, too, because they are children. As for the mother, Castañeda notes: "She's the one that is expected to make the sacrifice." But such a sacrifice exacts a heavy toll on the women's health, making them weaker in the long term. Women menstruate, get pregnant, lactate, and give birth-activities that take so much out of them that there is need for the women to slow down, space births and eat well in order to regain their lost energy. But before they can even recover from giving birth, women in poor communities often get pregnant all too soon. There is also no slowing down because there is simply too much they have to do. And eating well is out of the question for most of these women. The result is that anemia, for example, remains a very pronounced health problem among women. The 1993 National Nutrition Survey found that 43 percent of pregnant Filipino women were anemic. This is higher than the 40 percent cut-off set by the World Health Organization for mild and moderate anemia in that population group.
Other nutrient shortfalls among women are being found survey after survey, among them deficiencies in iodine, protein-energy, vitamin A, thiamin, and riboflavin. Goiter, which manifests iodine deficiency, is most prevalent among women than in men, in all age groups. Experts have said malnutrition makes women susceptible to disease, exacerbates fatigue, and reduces their capacity in the workplace and at home. It is also particularly dangerous for pregnant women. The irony is that these same women are made almost solely responsible for the health and nutrition of the rest of the family. Says Castañeda, who is with the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI), which monitors malnutrition in the country: "When you talk of a nutrition program the priority is always the mother and the child. And when you talk of the mother, you talk of the needs of the mother and how they relate to the nutrition of the family." Always, she says, the state of nutrition of children is dependent on the mothers. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has also said that women are key to guarding children's nutrition, and that ill health in women often translates to not being able to take care of the children properly. There is even a term nutrition experts use: "maternal time allocation," which measures the time a mother spends on her duties that include work, child care and child feeding. As for the fathers, Castañeda says, "walang pakialam iyan (they couldn't care less)."
She does say, though, that fathers are now attending government-sponsored "mother's classes," where they are lectured on their role in caring for their children. That's why, she says, there are now fathers sharing the burden of monitoring the children's nutrition and general well being, though still "the exception more than the rule." Such lectures may also be lacking in listeners today in places like this farmingcommunity, where people would much rather spend their time looking for food than discussing balanced diets. What had been a three-month dry season has stretched drastically to the current nine-and still counting-and people can now see clear across fields where rows and rows of corn stalks had once obstructed their view. "Dakong kausaban (There's a very big difference)," says Pelagia Olivares, 45, when asked if life has been the same after El Niño. And she does not just speak of the springs drying up, making them hike longer trails to find other sources of water. Before El Niño struck, her family could afford a ganta of corn for every meal, says Minda Arnado of Bili, also here in Borbon. But these days, they are down to five gantas per week. "Wala na mamunga," she says, "walay lubi, kamote, saging." The lowly corn lugaw has become the staple for families here. On very bad days, they make do with malunggay, boiled in water with salt. On worse days, there is only salt. Mothers have also taken to making coffee out of corn grits to replace milk for the infants. "It's pitiful if it goes on," comments Castañeda. "Making infants take coffee made of corn grits could be tantamount to neglect." She also says a prolonged lugaw diet can have disastrous results, quipping, "Kung puro lugaw ang kinakain, magiging utak-lugaw yan (If all they have is porridge, they'll have porridge for brains)." White corn, which Bongdo residents use for their lugaw, is an energy-giving food. It does not contain vitamin A, which the yellow corn variety has, but it does have carbohydrates. A balanced, proper diet, however, requires much more than carbohydrates almost every meal. Other nutrients are needed to keep the body functioning normally. (The FNRI has drawn up the recommended dietary allowances for these nutrients; the RDA is different for different age groups.) Especially for growing children under seven and pregnant and lactating women, the effects of inadequate diet could be long-term and irreversible. Malnourished pregnant women give birth to underweight infants. Iodine-deficient mothers, in particular, suffer frequent miscarriages, still births and early infant deaths. For their babies who do survive, the chances are high that they will be born deformed, mentally retarded or even complete cretins. Read the second part at:
http://www.pcij.org/stories/1998/women2.html
DONATELA is a lyrical Italian name, and when I reach past the pain and bitterness of my childhood, I can see how perfectly it fits my beautiful mother. For many women, beauty begins fading quickly almost as soon as the first flush of youth ends. But my mother, who just turned 70 this year, has been lucky, because there are still more than traces of the physical radiance and attractiveness she once possessed, most of her well-chiseled features on a Castilaloy face defying time and a past filled with heartaches. None of us among her six daughters inherited her looks. As children, we used to resent her beauty, not in envy, but because, as her beauty did begin show signs of wear, she became bitter and cruel and distant -- as if her beauty was the final thing she had to give up for us her eight children (I have two brothers), in exchange for which she got a roller-coaster relationship with an abusive, alcoholic husband and friendlessness in the backwaters of Benguet province. It was a life that was not fully of her choice. And it is a life I sometimes reflect on as I bring up my young daughter, as I try to see what kind of future awaits her, as I try to look for lessons that she can use once she starts making her own way into the world. My mother would often tell us, as we watched news on channel 9 in the 70s, how the newscaster Harry Gasser had been one of her suitors, how there were many other swains vying for her attention, and how ill-fated she was to have married my father. Yet on other nights she would tell us of how she actually planned to enter the convent (the Pink Sisters) but then my father had run after her and tore up her papers, and forced her to marry him. In this, and in many other ways, my mother was a walking contradiction, on one hand hating the life she had, but on the other enticed and flattered by my father’s passionate jealousy, which was a sure sign of his madness and clearly the very thing that imprisoned her in the life she so despised. Perhaps it was this lack of clarity, more than anything else, that in the end doomed her. But I suppose any other Filipina raised in a saradong Katoliko family in the 40s and 50s, and then confronted with such sudden and horrifying twists of fate, would have been, at the very least, befuddled. Twenty or so years after, when I almost took the same path as my mother (as some of my sisters eventually did), and found myself in an abusive relationship, I realized how confused one turns out to be when repeatedly abused. Like a rope thrown to someone falling off a cliff, someone had lent me a book, The Community Secret, which chronicled the lives of women who were able to escape abusive relationships—and detailed the confusion and lethargy that they had to work through to survive and escape. That book brought me clarity and led me toward the path to safety. Surely, domestic violence still exists, but at least today, there are places where one can go for help. And while there is so much yet to do to fully end domestic abuse and all other forms of violence against women, today these issues are recognized. In my mother’s time, it was taboo to even speak of them; women who insisted on doing so were not only ignored, but also soon became subjected to public humiliation and even further victimization. Secrecy was the order of the day, but keeping quiet about the abuse was a separate, excruciating torture all on its own—and those who did were eventually consumed by its toxicity. As time passed and my mother was forced by family and society to keep her situation a secret, she eventually weakened and turned her anger and bitterness against us. Today six years after I made the final journey away from the town of my daughter’s father, where I was told by his family that while they were aware of his abuse, they still believed it was my gasat – the Igorot term for fate—to live with it, I still cannot fully grasp how horrible and how spirit-shattering it must have been for my mother to make that same journey, again and again, back to her parents, with more and more kids in tow each time, only to be told repeatedly to turn back and return to her marriage, because this was sacred and which no man could rend asunder. As time passed, my mother stopped even trying to escape. Married at 21, she had 14 pregnancies, among them three miscarriages and two that resulted in infants who died shortly after childbirth, and in another child who died of convulsions as a baby. All these happened almost in succession as she approached her 40s and until her overworked uterus could no longer carry any babies. Throughout it all, there were also my father’s alcoholism and the grinding poverty brought about by his inability to keep a job or rise through the ranks, despite his great intelligence, plus the bitterness of my politically famous and celebrated grandparents, who refused to make amends with their only son who had chosen to marry outside of the tribe. Somewhere in between my mother lost clarity about who she really was and what she once wanted to be, although there were a few times I would see little glimpses of these. One of the fondest memories I have of my mother is of a time, when I was around five, and I was watching her, the early morning light streaming behind her back from the windows, as she sat cross-legged on the bed, at age 39, cutting and pasting photos, making a scrapbook of pictures of places she would never see and things she would never have. I was then the youngest and my older siblings were in school; with both of us left in relative peace at home, that was surely one of the few peaceful times that my mother ever had, and her love of fine things and a finer life shone through. “The Sound of Music” was, after all, my mother’s favorite musical, which she made us children watch together with all the others. And while both our parents had chosen to teach us English—and the love for reading bequeathed by my father who was a smart and well-read man (when not drunk)—it was my mother who handed down to all of us children a taste for the arts. She used to dance, too. Among her prized possessions—which went up in smoke when the house eventually burned down last year—was a clipping, lovingly covered with plastic, of her as a cover girl of Women’s Magazine, circa 1954 or 1955. I don’t remember the exact date. But I do remember that in the photo she was wearing a black sequined sleeveless satin top (daring for her time), a white tutu that correctly, for that era, reached well to her knees, and toe shoes! Of course the photograph was in sepia, so I can’t be sure of the colors, but the image still shines through my memory as everything that my mother once was: full of hope and promise. For a long time, broken dreams were what I believed to be the only heritage of my family, not for lack of intelligence or talent, or even artistic sensitivity or sensibilities, which are among the things children raised in such a house of extremes are sure to develop. Big dreams are what my five sisters and I all had: three wanted to be performers, one went so far as to gain a bit of local renown as a folk singer, only to end up in one bad relationship after the other; another got to log a few hours as the pilot she had dreamed she would be (despite the odds). Now most of my sisters are in their 40s and none of them is any less courageous for choosing to give up their dreams to become steadfast and caring mothers, some of them surviving through their own separate difficult circumstances. But I often think that what my mother and sisters lacked was the inner and outer resources to make their dreams come true. And I cannot but point an accusing finger to society, because society contributed to these shattered dreams: By not giving my mother the safe space to run away to. Or, by judging one of my sisters for separating from her husband, thus pushing her to jump into the very first relationship that would legitimize her situation. Or, by not nurturing the gifts of those who did not quite fit the norm, especially because they were women. Even today, as I struggle to raise my daughter on my own, I am forced to confront society’s lack of accommodation, and sometimes even ire. There are days that are really a challenge, as I try to stretch the budget, my patience, my stamina to near-breaking points. Often, the physical demands alone are tremendous, especially in cases so Western like mine where one does not have a supportive extended family to fall back on, but without the first-world amenities like tax breaks and daycare systems put in place specifically for single moms. On top of all, I still get a lot of raised eyebrows, sudden silences, somewhat incredulous queries, comments (many well-meaning but biased) from teachers or others who believe a child raised without a father automatically lacks love and will surely grow up crooked, and often harassment from men. Sometimes my being a single mother is even used by the mean-minded as an issue to score below the belt in conflicts that have absolutely nothing to do with my life choices. But the worst my young daughter and I have had to face each day is the sheer vulnerability, the constant, lingering threat of violence against two females who have only each other to count on. Yet time has passed by me as well, just as it has my mother. For me, time does heal, and I have come to believe that it is by no coincidence that I carry with me, always, the mistaken honor of being named after my mother’s dream. My name is Danilova—after Alexandra Danilova, the Russian ballerina—and I was named really as an afterthought, as my mother started running out of female names beginning with the letter D (Daphne, Dawn, Donatela, Dominique, Denise). In turn, I named my daughter Isis, also instinctively, also as an afterthought, as throughout pregnancy, I had thought I was going to have a son, being unable to acquire an ultrasound to determine the sex of the hyperactive fetus. Isis is the Egyptian goddess who brought her brother Osiris back to life.
Today I am very awa re that in more ways than one, the future for my daughter is quite bleak: the economy is worsening, we are at the brink of an environmental disaster, poverty is far more widespread and worse than it ever was before, our political institutions have not matured in the past decades. Yet there remains the hope that years from now, life as a woman, as a Filipina, will be less of living in times of war (to paraphrase the poet Joi Barrios). In 2015, when my daughter will be at the threshold of womanhood, I am certain of one thing: she will have more chances in life than her grandmother, or mother, or aunts, ever had. At the very least, her right to dream–and to make those dreams come true—will be respected.
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