Play With Your Food

Filipino-American lessons I learned from my mom.

There are some lessons I learned from my mother’s repetitious phrases, some I learned by her living example, and still some I learned as a result of being her daughter. Here is a list of a few that were simply top of mind, by all means not all-encompassing, and most certainly not the only important lessons I have learned from her. This is both for laughs and for light-hearted recognition of my stellar mother on Mother’s Day.

1. If you don’t have an allowance for candy. Sell concessions to your friends and eat your profit.
2. Watch the crabs play before you cook them. It never gets old.
3. Always be generous with your food to others
4. Learn skincare before you learn makeup
5. You can never learn anything by doing all the talking
6. My hair looks like a real bird’s nest
7. Always bring your rice-cooker (I said what I said.)
8. If it were a snake it would have bit me by now
9. Incredible 5-ingredient dishes are possible because garlic, onions, soy sauce, ginger, salt, white pepper, annatto, kalamansi, kalamay and vinegar don’t count as ingredients
10. There is no such thing as “being ahead” because you are still alive and there is more to learn
11. Burning bread in the oven is something some people never grow out of
12. Find ways to not spend money
13. If your family eats like kings, you soften the sting of poverty
14. Learning new skills to put food on the table is what a savvy mom does
15. Laugh from happiness, not just jokes
16. Embrace the culture of others till you are celebrating it with them
17. Learn at least a little bit of someone’s language to show them they are important to you
18. There is more than one way to boil an egg
19. There is more than one way to slice a mango
20. Owning a designer purse, but washing to reuse plastic zip bags is called “balance”
21. Words have power, so be careful with them
22. On mom guilt: Even if you play on the ground with your children from the moment they wake up, you will always find a thought that will tell you that you could have done better. Go where you are most needed in each moment and that will be doing the best for your children.
23. Difficult people are like the catfish to the cod, they are not a nuisance, they keep us alert and alive
24. Nurturing friendships and connections is food for the soul
25. Confidence isn’t fearless, it is being familiar with sensations of nerves
26. The world will always ask more from you, but you are also enough just as you are
27. There is no place like home and “home” can exist in two countries

Here’s to my mom and the many others who mother the world in their own way. There are a great many women I know who raise the future whether or not those children are their own offspring. I see you. Happy “mother’s” day to all of you who make the world go round through the skillful work of mothering.