When my mother got ill with cervical cancer, I resigned from my job to be with her. Her body deteriorated slowly until finally, even putting her in a wheelchair could break her fragile bones. Staying long with her at home was not difficult, but I missed the stimulation of the city. Cooped up in our small apartment, I resorted to online translation and flourished.

Our small apartment was the last in five doors and the smallest in square meters. We could hear our neighbors all the time, even when their doors were closed. We had only a ‘right of way’ to our little gate being the last door in five, so I was a body visible to every neighbor as I walked in and out of our house. Ironically, this made me more protective of myself, that I hardly talked or mingled with a neighbor, unless it was Christmas or New Year, when everybody would be out to greet each other and make noise.

WRITING POETRY WITH INAY

Although weak and weary, my mother, Inay, maintained pots of bougainvilleas and San Francisco plants, and some fortune plants as well. She loved her plants, but when she couldn’t any more water them herself, it became another one of my chores.

Working as a translator at night and trying very hard to sleep by day, I always forgot to water those plants and was delinquent as well in cutting and trimming them.  But Inay wasn’t complaining. A time came when her periphery of vision was not going beyond the front door. Upon waking up, she would just get up and sit on the bed until she felt the need to relieve herself. She occupied a wooden papag downstairs, while my ‘office’ was upstairs. In the morning before breakfast, I would walk to the market to buy some tamales, or kalamay, or puto and the two of us would have that for breakfast with coffee. During those breakfast hours, she would tell me stories about her younger self, and I savored those moments. The two of us would be eating lunch together while watching Eat Bulaga, and supper together viewing some Teleserye.

When my mother was still able to move in her wheelchair, she prepared and cooked all our food. But when it was not possible anymore to get out of bed, she did not resist when I opted to take out fast food from the nearest restaurant. Sometimes, I tried to cook, however, I could not enjoy the food I cooked. I had always been underweight but with Inay always cooking the food I bought in the wet market, I happily gained weight.

Hopelessly, I went back to being thin again when she stopped cooking.

As my mother weakened, I felt helpless. All the poems I was writing at the time were about her. Whenever I felt too tired and lonely, I often left for a while, took the bus from Batangas City to Makiling in Laguna, and just stared at that lovely mountain for about two hours. Then I would ride the bus again back home. Once home, the only place to be when I was feeling exhausted was the terrace.

VIEW FROM THE TERRACE

copyright (c) Jophen Baui April 4, 2007

I tire myself over a book

Stocking insights for future verses

Otherwise, it is limited to the color and smell

Of spaced-out neighborhood

Devoid of will and yet full

Of natural excesses:

In the vicinity of pots

Creeping vines unnamed and unbecoming

Are as wanton as their dreams.

Indecisive bougainvillea devoid of a trellis

Hanging on to wash lines,

No wind touches a petal of their pink profusion.

Each stem of the neighbor fortune plant

Struggles to be free from juvenile entanglements

Of surreptitious vines clinging to posts

Blackened with secure grime.

Every will of greatness has been tampered.

Pools of mud from overflowing canals

Humid April dulled visions

Immune even to the noise

Of children’s nonsense

That can break through

This weary plainness.

RE-IMAGINING INAY’S POTTED PLANTS

Revising this poem made me re-imagine my mother’s potted plants. After she died, I left our house and went back to Manila. Back on the streets and commuting, I was now seeing the same kind of plants on the road. Some bougainvilleas were planted in some island parts along EDSA. Some plants crept under the overpasses, others fell on their vines from the highest brick of a walled subdivision. At first, I enjoyed the long ride to school when I lived in Cavite after thirteen years of staying in my mother’s house. I always brought a book to read on the bus when traffic stood still. I realized that my time slowed down so I had to speed up. But I somehow enjoyed the unhurried pace and often tried to retrieve images from my mother’s full life.

MULA SA TERIS

From HUGOS © Jophen Baui 2024

Basa nang basa ng libro

ipon nang ipon ng maisusulat

Kundi ay kulay lamang at amoy

ng naubos nang kapaligiran

Wala ng igtad wala ng malay

di na lumalabis ang kuwento sa karaniwan

Ayon sa mga masitera, gumagapang na halaman

anong pangalan, di maunawaan ang pakay,

Tulad ng bugombilyang naghahanap ng sampayan,

sumama na lamang sa mga damit

Nalumbay ang hangin na di man lang makahalik

sa rosas na binakuran ng mga sanga ng suwerte

Halamang sinungaling sa namamanhik ng pag-asa

na makatatakas sa panggagahasa ng usok

Natuyo nang lahat ang mga dahon na kapag nahulog

tutuloy sa baradong kanal

Sumisinip-sinip ang kanilang pananaginip

sa burak ng mga pinaagos na pawis