I am a child of many mothers.

My mothers come in many forms, in various shapes and personalities. They all sprung to my life when they were most needed. True to form, mothers recognize and nurture a hurting child even without hearing him or her cry.

You may recognize some of them as your own: the mother hens in our group of friends, the flamboyant mudra, the wiser (not necessarily older) best friend, even a former college professor and, of course, our very own, who delivered us into this world.

Thelma

My mother, Thelma, taught me resilience. She always sees the proverbial silver lining in the dark clouds. Not one to give up, she always tells me to be optimistic that I have what it takes to make it, even if I don’t believe in myself.

If I knew what love and loving is, it is because she taught me these things.

Once, on a beach outing, I overheard one of my uncles ask my other relatives why mom wouldn’t just leave my dad.

My dad at that time has suffered a stroke that made walking very difficult for him. To them, my dad was too much of a physical burden for my mom. My mom happens to be younger than my dad by about a decade. Perhaps, my relatives thought that she deserved a younger man. It didn’t help that there were tumultuous events in my parents’ relationship that time (mostly brought about by the issue of discipline and taking responsibility of my younger brother).

In the distance, I saw my mom hold my dad’s hand as they walk on the beach – laughing, reliving perhaps their younger years, unmindful of the criticism.

There were a few rough times between them, as all other couples have – so rough that the only way to stop them was to get out of them, and the marriage. But my mom knew better. She stuck it out with dad through bad times, becoming his metaphorical cane in his old age.

My dad passed away on February 14, 2004, in his sleep – with my Mom beside him. I knew it was what he wanted, to pass on beside a person who loved him all these years. My mom has, after all, served as a bridge between a prodigal son (me) and a stoic father. But aren’t all mothers like that?

Once in college, my mom told me that dad wrote her a letter about me. Like me, perhaps, he didn’t have the courage to tell me things in person.

As I see myself now, I see my Mom in me, sometimes. But I am only too happy to be her in some ways. As I grew older, I noticed that I tend to gravitate towards friends who have the same quality as my mom: strong-willed, tenacious, loving, and, yes, a spoiler.

D.B.

A professor is the farthest person I think would become a friend. D.B. was my professor in Journalism 102 (Basic Newswriting). I remember her to be a slave driver – almost taking most of our time away from our other subjects. She would send us to beats, to police stations, and do things journalists do. During our final exams, she gave us a Sandiganbayan decision on Imelda Marcos and told us to write a story.

The final exam proved to be a foreboding of things to come as I would eventually be assigned as a courts reporter. Reading and writing stories about very thick court decisions in a very short time was a good training for me.

Years later, my former teacher and I would find ourselves in the same coverage, sharing notes – the former professor and the former student asking questions from the same source, doing our own stories. I hope that she is proud that she has made me a journalist.

But it wasn’t only about newswriting that she taught me. I don’t know how it happened, but I found myself confiding about personal things to her, and she to me. She was one of the few people I turned to when a relationship failed.

Like a mother to a child, she showed me what I couldn’t see in those dark hours – that beyond the dark road is a path waiting to be explored. She had been there, and she is too willing to share the wisdom.

Recently, after another failed relationship, I turned to her again. And she never failed me.

“This is the year we make our dreams come true,” she said, focusing on the benefit of sorrow. She had enrolled at a law school while I got myself into a second degree in painting.

As she seems to suggest, we overcome failures by overcoming ourselves.

Was it in the movie “The Brave One” where Jodi Foster’s character asked the question: “How do you survive a tragic incident as having your partner killed?” She said: “You don’t. You become a different person.”

True, we become different persons after the long hours and days of tragedy. We become better.

T.P.

T.P. is our barkada’s appointed mother hen. She is seen as the saner one in the group. She is married, with two kids, and her real-life mother role provides us some real-time mother’s wisdom.

She would shock me into reality when I’m down in the dumps, hopeless. It’s cariño-brutal at its finest. If you wanted to know the real deal about a situation, she would tell you how it is over cigarettes.

I remember her inviting me to her house one New Year’s Eve. And it was a start of a friendship. To all our other friends – R.C., N.C., K.D., and A.C. – she is the one to turn to for serious advice. She is our reality-checker.

N.C.

N.C., is the mudra of the group. I sometimes see myself in him. Our experiences are similar, so I turn to him sometimes for advice, serious or not.

Because of our circumstances – he leads the life that I know I would lead somehow – I ask him, someone who is a few steps away, for guidance. And he is generous with it, never mind that sometimes he needs T.P.’s cariño-brutal, too.

Once, he saved me from a rather traumatic (in a funny way, if there is one) blind (emphasis on the blind to warn that one should never really do it hehehe) date.

Trivial as it may seem, I know that as friends we always have our backs covered.

R.C.

R.C. is a different matter. She is more of a sister than a mother, mainly because she will object to the suggestion of her being older than me. Of course she.

Like D.B., R.C has figuratively held my hands in my days of darkness. She has been with me in the worst days of my life, and when these are over – she is one to share bottles of ice-cold beer until we’re blind drunk.

There was a period in our lives when we saw ourselves drinking almost every other night – over sisig, tokwa’t baboy and beer (lots of ‘em). We empty ourselves of our frustrations and fill ourselves with dreams. Then we wake up the next day groggy but ready to take on the world again.

Like a mother to a child, she has walked with me in this journey of ups and downs.

Living away from my mom, it was instinctive to stitch my own social fabric. It is like that with them, my other mothers, my friends. My Mom is dearly missed of course, but she would be delighted to discover that her son is being taken care of.

We are born into the world not once but many times. We are born amidst the darkness of pain, the misery of sorrow, and the trials that test our spirit. But we are born glorious and triumphant because each time there is a mother who ushers us into a new phase, a new beginning.

Behind every strong person is a great mother.