My mother, the swordsmith

Now that the scorch marks on the kitchen wall and ceiling are gone after several decades of seeing them daily, I am breathing easier and feeling so very relieved.

I never realized just how much those scorch marks stressed me out. It may have been because I had to shove down my shock and distress over seeing smoke pouring out the windows and seeing the pots glowing red through the smoke so I would be able to speak sensibly to the people of the Makati fire department. You can panic and let the house burn, or keep your wits about you and get the fire station personnel to your house ASAP, but you cannot panic and still save whatever remains unburnt. I chose not to panic.

Mamaw, bless her, did her best to cook for her family. But if she forgot an ingredient that was meant to go into the nilaga or sinigang she was cooking and had to go to the community store to buy the missing ingredient, she would invariably wind up in a long and happy conversation with the storekeep. Until she’d completely forget what she was cooking and the liquid in the pot would dry up and the food solids would burn into angry charcoal embers and the pots literally glowed through the black smoke like ominous beacons.

While my mother was an excellent cook, she did not have a very good memory, or much focus for cooking. She was, however, one of the most gifted teachers I had the privilege of knowing. Heck, she got me to memorize the fire department’s number, learn how to keep my cool under (literal) fire, how to carry on with life as if one had not just been severely traumatized with the potential loss of one’s abode to fire, and how to recite the Lord’s Prayer really fast while using a rotary dial phone to call the firemen in. Thank goodness our little second-floor apartment in Makati Bliss is mostly concrete, so the fire was, mainly, localized to the kitchen. Thank goodness there was never an instance where the fire that raced up the kitchen wall to the ceiling detonated the LPG tank.

Over the years, I’d buried my horror under competence, and filed my distress under the label “it’s already over, so don’t cry over it.” I actually found tears running down my face while Kuya Buboy and Regan rolled water-based white primer paint over those scorch marks. In those moments, I simultaneously missed my mother and felt the remembered helplessness, rage, and panic all over again. I felt such love for my mother, who would always be horrified and remoseful over the mishap she’d inadvertently caused. I still miss the tight hugs and praise she gave me as both apology and reward for keeping my head, for not fighting with her over the fires, and for just getting the firefighters here without screaming and crying.

Yes, my mother tempered me with fire. Repeatedly, the way a master swordsmith tempers the finest blades.