From Good Guys to Great Moms

Some of them do it full-time. By full-time, we mean round-the-clock, 24/7, rain or shine, no holidays, sometimes without a lunch break. But they do it always, with love. And they will do it again, over and over.

SMDC, in partnership with Balloons and Blooms, turned its May 8 and 9 Weekend Markets at Trees Residences in Fairview, MPlace Residences in South Triangle, Grace Residences in Taguig and Field Residences in Sucat, into a special day for moms. What started out as a simple Mother’s Day tribute became heartwarming stories.

Harriet and mom Jessa

“Mom, you give me all the needs in my life – food, water and love. I love you!” That short and sweet letter from 9-year-old Harriet Goldfine to her mom Jessa, sums up the very definition of a mother.

The past year and a half had been a very challenging time for the sunny and playful Harriet, who has had to contend with a new-normal restrictive lifestyle and the absence of her dad, who could not come home due to flight restrictions. Now it is just her and mom doing everything together and providing comfort to each other in these times.

Nothing pains Jessa more than seeing the loneliness and longing of her daughter for her father and their pre-pandemic bonding moments. Harriet loves the outdoors and looks forward to her and her dad’s mall visits and play times. Jessa has had to play both father and mother to Harriet during the last year and a half, devoting all of her time to her daughter – helping her with her daily school assignments, arranging meet-ups with her friends from the other units, cooking her favorite sinigang and enjoying afternoon strolls together inside their Trees Residences community. Jessa spends her day taking care of Harriet; in the evenings she works as an online teacher.

 A mother will give – and give up – everything for her children, to see them happy and healthy and to give them a sense of normalcy in the midst of a hard-to-grasp, life-altering situation. In their search for a good life for their children, some mothers have to endure being away from them. Other members of the family then become mother figures to them.

Such is the case with 5-year-old Angeline Supeña.

Angeline and Lola Natalia

On Mother’s Day at Grace Residences, she wrote: “Happy Mother’s Day to my lola. Thank you for taking care of me and Kuya Gelo. Promise ‘di na ako iihi sa bed. We love you. Stay healthy.”

Lola is 71-year-old Natalia Untalan who has lovingly taken on the task of being ‘the other mother’ to them. Angeline and her older brother Angelo stay in Cabanatauan with their parents, but it is Lola who looks after them as both parents are at work full-time. The siblings are so devoted to their grandmother that they still sleep beside her (and lola has to endure the occasional bedwetting!).

Summer vacations are usually spent at uncle Michael Untalan’s Grace Residences home. Pre-pandemic, Michael and the children loved spending time swimming in the condo’s pool, which would be capped by a food binge at Grace Mall. This year they spent more time at Grace Residences because their online classes enabled them to attend school remotely.

Some children are not as lucky as Angeline who has the company and love not only of her mother but also those of her grandmother.

Precious Ann Guevarra, 8, lost her mother three years ago. 

Precious Ann and her ‘Mimi’

The past five years had been most challenging for Precious Ann and her two siblings. At age 3, she had to witness her mother battling cancer. At 5, she lost her. Adjusting to a motherless life, with a grieving father, had been very difficult for her and her siblings. To help them cope, the children’s extended families welcomed them into their homes on the weekends and during school breaks. Precious Ann’s favorite was weekends at Field Residences with Aunt Ellen dela Cruz, her mom’s older sister. 

On Mother’s Day weekend, Precious Ann wrote her mom: “Happy Mother’s Day in heaven. Don’t worry about me, Mimi and Dada are taking care of me. I wish you were here. I love you.”

Precious Ann may have lost her mother at such a young age, but she has found a mother in her ‘Mimi’, her term of endearment for Ellen, and ‘Dada’, Ellen’s husband Jimmy. True to her name, Precious Ann has been the precious gift Ellen and Jimmy had been praying for. They have been married for 15 years without a child of their own. Last year, they took Precious Ann permanently into their home.

Ellen is thankful that she is working from home as she gets to spend most of her time with Precious Ann, helping her with her homework, designing pancakes and reading the Bible together. Ellen admits though that Precious Ann is more of a Dada’s girl. They would oftentimes spend afternoons by the oval, the park at Field Residences, where he teaches her karate. They can hardly wait for the re-opening of the pool so Dada can teach her swimming, too. Precious Ann loves her new home’s balcony where she gets to delight in the sight of a rainbow after a rain or a shooting star at night, things that busy adults took for granted in pre-pandemic times. For Ellen, nothing can replace the precious times she gets to spend with Precious Ann.

They can be the biological mothers, adoptive mothers, surrogate mothers or mother figures. Each one of them deserves as much gratitude and appreciation as the love they give to their children. They never stop working at their full-time jobs, hoping to receive the best remuneration: a good life and a good upbringing to mold their children into The Good Guys, not only of their homes, but also of the rest of their communities.

ADVT.