Mae asked me to define love without using cliche versions. It’s not even valentines day…but hey, I’m in the mood for it. Not because I am currently so into it, wala lang feel ko lang to discuss it in a general sense sans the cliche / quotes / slumbook versions.

Indeed it’s hard to define the word when all the love quotes from books and movies are stored in your mind. So I guess I’ll just have to define it based on what I am currently doing right now while writing this.

Love, I think, for me, is like something you want to do creatively. It equates design. Your output will depend on your skills set and creativity but there also some who finds happiness with just a happy accident design.

Same with designing, the process of it will struck your head for it will take you days and overnights of brainstorming just to come up with a good relationship out of it. You colorize it in accordance to your taste and preferences, beautify every element, nourishing and simply enjoying the feeling.

You will be in awe the first time you’ll see it until you start to adore and parade every moments, every details – until everyone else is starting to sigh, get inspired and live in wishes that they are the one who designed it.

Just like designs, there are some whom you consider good, fair and satisfactory. Some stayed in the front page for a season until it bores you. Some are in the archive, by categories or random while some are shift-deleted to oblivion.

There are also some that started as wrong drafts with minor to major flaws, not liking it initially – but not trashing it just because it possesses an essential element ; so you hold on to a believe that maybe a beautiful design will come out of it. However, after several revisions you realize that there is still something wrong, You’re not comfortable. You’re not yet proud. So you decided it’s better to let go of the draft, you press Ctrl N and try once more to design from scratch.

And then in the end after several drafts and trashing myriad of concepts – you will eventually find the design that is worth keeping, the one that kick ass and makes you love more; that will be the time when you will finally decide to frame it and hang it on your wall.

That I guess is love.

I miss talking about life already… you know, sans the poetry and whatnot. I’m tired of hiding behind the words. So, today I’m fulfilling a promise I made to Joni – that on Mother’s day, I’ll talk about my Mama.

So this is how the story will start.

There was a family financial crisis when I was born and my Mom was suffering from a heart disease. The hospital was her second home. I remember hearing a story that a certain doctor advised my Mom to abort me when I was just 3 months in her womb or else she / both of us might die.

I do not have moments with her taking good care of me, teaching me to comb my hair, preparing my clothes or watching me learn how to write — but she gave me a gift of blessed and beautiful life. The fact that she chose to suffer and face death just to let me live is really more than enough to thank her.

Growing up without her makes me become a Papa’s girl but I have always believed that she is my angel who is continuously guiding me until now; someone who is always there to bring me back to reality everytime I found myself lost in the dreamland.

Unlike everyone else who participated at Joni’s I heart my Mom meme, my Mama and I didn’t have a chance to have a picture together. In fact, I don’t even have baby pictures but my eldest kuyas and ate has. I’ve only got two or three I guess.

I used to think maybe because there’s a World War during my childhood days that’s why I don’t have childhood pictures := it was only during the teenage years when I realized how the crisis caused so much sadness to our family.

What I have here instead are Mama’s pictures before she died. Look how beautiful she is.

The picture on the right side are during her University beauty queen days; below is my parents’ vintage 1966 wedding invitation and a copy of University newspaper which says: “Then a muse, now a bride…”

Her death has brought a lot of realization to me that – indeed, nobody’s really perfect in this world.

My Mama seems to have everything – kindness, beauty, graduated Magna Cum Laude, became a literature professor, a poet and fiction writer. Everything was good and right except for one thing – her congenital heart disease.

Sigh. I guess that’s how the game of irony is played.

If she’s here right now, she’s probably blogging and I am so sure she’ll be picking on some of my sentence structures and grammar issues.

Happy mother’s day Mama. I am sorry if bearing me has caused you to suffer. Don’t worry, I am still keeping my promise to take good care of this opportunity to live.

Aside from love of literature, peronism, poetry and feminism — what does Robert Browning, Evita Peron and me have in common?

We first saw the light on this day. Happy birthday self.

Looking back and looking forward. Below are random words/ phrases which describes past and the upcoming future. Every little thing is essential.