Her Quiet Strength

HER QUIET STRENGTH

I was in second grade. For our homework, our teacher made us collect pictures of the different occupations – nurse, teacher, postman, police officer, fireman. I was able to find pictures of everything but that of a police officer.  I clipped them from magazines we had at home. However, I could not find one of a police officer. I was in a panic. I couldn’t give an incomplete homework to my teacher. I cried as I asked my mother what I would do.  She offered to draw a picture of a police officer. I thought that was an excellent solution. After dinner and she had done her chores, she sat down at the table and started drawing. It was taking her so long, so I decided to go to bed.  When I got up the following morning, my mother’s drawing was among the rest of the pictures I had clipped. It looked like a very stiff police officer and was not a very good picture. I could see where there were many erasures and redrawing of lines. I could only hope that my teacher would recognize it as a police officer. It was not a perfect picture; in fact, it was not even a good picture. But I was proud of it. More than this, in my young mind, I recognized that my mother was not an artist by any stretch of the imagination, but she worked hard, well into the late, late night, to give me this picture.

Like many of her generation, she was a stay at home mom. Before her marriage to my father, she had taught school, but that was cut short by marriage. She seemed to be always in the kitchen cooking. She made all our dresses and was a meticulous dressmaker. There were four of us girls, so she did plenty of sewing. She was active in our community.  She was a Red Cross volunteer, and a member of the Fleet Reserve Association, an organization of retired members and the wives of those who have served in the US Navy. She was a Chaplain of the Eastern Star Branch in our city. She served as the treasurer of the PTA of the elementary school all her children attended. She kept this office long after her youngest was already in college!

I didn’t get to know my mother’s parents at all. They’d passed on before I came on the scene. But the story is that my great grandfather was a Portuguese ship captain, and my great grandmother was Chinese from Macao. She died young. For one of his journeys, my great grandfather had to put my grandmother in the care of Catholic sisters in Victoria, Hong Kong temporarily. However, by mistake, the Catholic sisters adopted her out to a wealthy Spanish couple from the Philippines. When my great grandfather came back to Hong Kong to get his daughter back, her adoptive parents had taken her to the Philippines.  He went after her, but when he found out that she was very well taken care of, he thought she was better off with her adoptive parents. This was my Lola Maria, my Eurasian grandmother. She married my grandfather, who was the company doctor of the corporation, headed and partially owned by her adoptive parents.

There was an aura of dignity about my mother, but along with it was a somewhat cold, stand-offish air. She was a reserved, quiet woman with strong values. Day in and day out, she did the responsibilities that were supposed to be those of a wife and mother. There were very few times she was ever sick, as far as my young mind could remember. She took care of our needs faithfully, diligently, and was strong support to whatever venture my father was involved in.

My father served in the US Navy during the olden days when families could not join the servicemen in their foreign assignments. Most of the time my mother raised us all by herself because my father was on an overseas base or onboard ship serving with the US Navy. 
My mother was not given to small talk.  She was reserved and exuded a quiet strength. Unlike my father, who always gave us rules of conduct, my mother showed us by modeling the kind of person she wanted us to be.  My mother was not a demonstratively affectionate woman, not given to a lot of loving words nor many warm hugs, but her love ran deep. At 19, I left home to teach in a school in Mindanao, which is as far from my home as California is from NY. I remember her words to me.  “People will treat you the way you treat yourself.  If you respect yourself, they will respect you.”
Yesterday, February 6, 2020, was her 119th birthday. She died many years ago. I hope I’m able to pass on to my children and grandchildren her legacy of exceptional character and quiet strength.