SUPERMOM By Ysabel Cacho 2011
It’s 6:32 on a Friday morning and the Tantuico household is silent but not for long. The doorbell rings, and rings, and rings. I can only assume that it is no other than my five-year-old cousin, Marco, who is consistently pressing his finger into the doorbell. As soon as the door is answered, he runs inside, still in his white pajamas. Cherry Tantuico, 42, emerges at the front door wearing an oversized orange hoodie, dark shorts and black flip-flops. Her shoulder-length black hair is not in its usual ponytail. She has just come from dropping off her two older daughters, Gaby, a 17-year-old senior and Timmy, a 14-year-old sophomore at the Assumption high school carpool terminal. Her youngest daughter, 2year-old Robby, runs inside the house and watches as her older brother Marco grabs onto his mother’s leg, which nearly causes her to trip over him. After my tita and I greet one another, she tells me that for the past week, she has been coming home at 11pm due to her velada practices. She settles down in her dining room for breakfast. There is a Lazy Susan on top of the table full of jars of different assortments of cereal such as Koko Krunch, Choco Frostees, Captain Crunch, Milo and K with Strawberries. Cherry looks over at Robby, who sits down next to her, and asks, “What would you like to have for breakfast, little one?” Robby replies, “You mean big one.” My tita raises an eyebrow at me. My cousin grabs a jar, opens it and pours in too much cereal, which prompts her mother to pick up a spoon and put some cereal back in the jar. As Cherry sips her glass of whole psyllium husk, she tells me about her velada practices. She talks about how her batchmates from all over the world are flying in just to be there and mimics a friend’s reaction upon finding out that she would be in the front and center. We eat our breakfast (K cereal with Strawberries for Cherry and Koko Krunch for me) to the sounds of Robby reciting the alphabet from her mattress (with the letters of the alphabet printed all over it) and Cherry humming Everybody Wants To Rule The World, a song that is from her velada. Robby hasn’t touched her cereal so Cherry picks up her spoon and starts feeding her. As Robby eats, she plays with her glass until it slips from her grasp and rolls of the edge of the table. When I catch it and hand it over to her, Cherry reminds Robby to say, “thank you”. Cherry watches me write down my observations and asks me what subject this is for. When I reply that it is for anthropology, she is suddenly reminded of her 23-year-old niece, Katie, who took up anthropology in college. “She flies to Cebu and digs up fossils,” she tells me. “One time, Katie’s Facebook status was ‘I’m in lab’ with a little heart at the end and I freaked out and wrote, ‘Katie! You have to make me kwento!’ It turns out that she really was in a lab.” While Cherry dines on her cereal, she reads the entertainment section of The Philippine Star. She doesn’t set the newspaper down on the table as she reads and she doesn’t rest it on her lap. Instead she prefers to read it at eyelevel and tilts her head as she does so. We start talking again about the velada. She tells me about meeting her baking teacher for the first time in several years during the velada lunch.
Despite her teacher suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s, she was still very happy to be part of that lunch and see most of her students. “And she remembered me!” Cherry exclaims. “As soon as I entered the room, I heard someone calling my name and I looked and she was there! I was so thrilled that she remembered me!” We also talk about the photos I took of her 12-year-old son’s birthday dinner a few weeks ago, especially the group photo of all 11 cousins. She says that she was so happy that all the cousins were present. As she talks, Robby climbs on top of the table and starts crawling before jumping down and running to her brother, who is watching TV in the living room. I notice that Cherry moves her hands similarly to the way I move my hands. When we mention something about ourselves, both of our hands (and all ten fingers) gesture towards us and while we talk about others, our hands and fingers move away from us. We rarely put our hands down when we talk; they have to move in time with our words. Robby runs up to her mother with a piece of gum in her hand, saying that it is too spicy to eat. Cherry puts the gum in her mouth, chews it for a few seconds, spits it out and then hands it back to Robby who takes it and eats it. My tita goes back to reading her paper and Marco comes in to pour himself a glass of water. His little sister follows him, shaking maracas. There is a used diaper left in her chair. The morning is full of sounds such as Bob the Builder’s theme song blasting from the TV, the drone of the electric fan hovering above us and their pet bird who suddenly shuts up as soon as I lean in closer to take its picture. I excuse myself from the table; go up to the Tantuico’s library to borrow Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and go back down to the breakfast table. As soon as Cherry sees me, she nearly jumps from her seat. “I thought you were Gaby!” She says. “I was just about to ask you what you were doing back at home so early! I almost had a heart attack!” We laugh at one another before we resume reading. Cherry starts humming the song Everybody Wants to Rule the World again. She starts making kwento again about everyone’s reactions upon finding out that Derick Ramsey, who is related to one of the batchmates, will be watching the velada. When Cherry imitates someone, her voice goes an octave or two higher. When she has to sate an opinion, she never says, “I was like,” she simply drops her high voice, goes back to her normal one and states her opinion with more force in her tone. After she goes to the bathroom, she helps Marco dress for school while he and Robby watch TV. She adjusts the cuffs of his pants and clips his fingernails. Her 12-year-old son, Angelo, walks in the dining room and from the other side of the room, Cherry reminds him to eat breakfast. I watch her shift from cutting Marco’s fingernails to his toenails. With her oversized hoodie and shoulder-length black hair draping her face, she doesn’t look like a mother of five children whose ages range from 17 to 2. She almost looks like a teenager. I assume that this is because I have never seen any mother wearing a hoodie, shorts and flip-flops at 7:20 in the morning.
She walks over to the dining table and asks Angelo is he’s ready to leave and if his papa is awake. She pulls up her sleeve to read her watch, which results in her telling her son to hurry up. She then starts singing again. When Cherry talks, she remembers a line from a song that somehow relates to the word that she had just said and immediately starts singing it. As soon as she hears Robby cough from the other side of the room, she’s back on her feet and is instantly at her daughter’s side. She already has a piece of tissue in her hand and instructs Robby to “cough it all out.” I hear the creaminess in phlegm as Robby does as she’s told. She goes to the bathroom to throw the tissue away and in that exact moment Angelo coughs. Her voice echoes out of the bathroom, “Kuy, was that you?!” I follow my tita upstairs and stop as soon as I see her enter the bathroom. While waiting for her, her husband and I compare camera notes. Waldo and his mostly-salt-than-pepper hair, is 46 and wears a white shirt and orange shorts. He and his wife match this morning, with their orange ensemble. Cherry emerges and shows me some of her dance moves for the velada as we walk down the stairs. “My section has the worst moves,” she declares while dancing. We all go out of the house and pile up in the Tantuico’s white pick-up truck with Waldo and Angelo in the front and Marco, Robby, Cherry and I in the back. “Hun,” Waldo says as he enters the car. “You parked the car the wrong way.” “What’s wrong with it?” Cherry asks him defensively. Apparently it has something to do with gas. On the way to the boys’ school, De La Salle Zobel, she encourages Robby to sing. The two of them start singing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, Row, Row, Row Your Boat and The Christmas Alphabet while her father sings an excerpt Party Rock Anthem. My tita and I look at one another and try to smother a giggle. We drive by a street and Cherry tells me that one day, as she was driving to Zobel, she noticed that a car didn’t follow the “Full Stop” sign and ended up bumping into a motorcycle. I make a mental note to follow the street signs more diligently. As we drive into the school, Waldo announces, “Prepare for disembarkation process!” When we arrive in front of the pre-school area, Cherry steps out of the car to help Marco gather his bag. A manong arrives and accompanies Marco to his classroom. “I’m taking a mental note of the manongs and manangs,” Cherry says as she climbs into the car. “For Christmas gifts.” It’s 8:00 am and we are back in the dining room. The plates are gone except for Waldo’s. Cherry checks her iPad for her final velada schedule and then hands it over to Robby, who watches Horton Hears a Who. When I come back from the bathroom, Cherry is in the middle of making kwento again. One can’t help but be automatically drawn in Cherry’s conversations because whenever she makes kwento, she doesn’t just talk about it, she dramatizes what she says, which makes it all the more interesting to listen to. Cherry heads downstairs, fresh from her shower. She wears a black shirt and jeans and her hair is slicked back into a ponytail. We say good-bye to my tito, who is busy setting up his new router. Cherry immediately gets into her white Starex with Robby in tow. Robby’s yaya, Manang Lita, sits in front with
the driver, Manong Frank. In the car, Cherry is on the phone, talking about the upcoming baseball game. As soon as she puts the phone down, she begins texting other baseball moms. While her fingers type away, she informs me of her family’s schedule on Saturday: “Timmy has interaction from 7-12 am tomorrow but she has to leave by 11 because she has a baseball game at 12:30 in San Agustin. After that she has to go to the velada and then to her batch’s Halloween party. I have velada practice at 2:00 and the velada starts at 4. Tito Walds has a baptism to attend—he’s ninong—in Makati and then he’ll go straight to the velada afterwards. Angelo has a double header game tomorrow from 8-10:30 and 11-12:30 in the country club. I’ll have Tito Walds drop him in Luie’s house so that they can go to their teammate’s birthday party later on.” When we arrive at the bank, Cherry fills out several forms to deposit some money for the family farm while Robby scampers around. She returns with two lollipops in her hands. Apparently the accountants “know them already because I bring them with me all the time,” explains my tita, still writing. Her grip of the pen is very firm and she holds it close to the tip. She holds the paper down, her fingers close to wherever her pen is. After she is done with the forms, she rummages through her bag. It is full of tissue paper, wipes, checkbooks, credit cards and a case for her glasses. We drop Robby and Manang Lita off at the front of Alabang Town Center for her Kumon. As we drive back to the village, she is texting the baseball moms once again to make sure that all 9 players will be present on Saturday “or else we’ll lose by default,” she explains. We pick up Marco at 11:30. While he continues to play with his friends, Cherry pulls out his homework notebook from his bag and browses through it. We drive through McDonald’s. Marco and I discover that our burgers were accidentally switched after biting into it and he tearfully whines that he wants to go back to get a new and unbitten burger despite his mother’s protests. “Ay, Marco, you’re too maarte for a boy!” After Marco orders a new burger, we head to National Bookstore to pick up some school materials for the kids. Cherry runs into an old friend, Malou, and stops for a quick chat. As she pays for the coloring materials, my tita absentmindedly runs her hand over her ponytail. Once we finished paying for the school materials, we take the elevator up to the third floor to drop Marco off at his Kumon class. As soon as the elevator doors open, Marco dashes into the center while my tita and I lag behind. We can hear his screams of glee as he runs inside the class and look at one another. The rest of the events that follow become a blur as Cherry had many errands to do as well as many stores to visit. She hands Manang Lita a Time Zone card, which will hopefully distract Robby for another hour or two. She visits Nike to look for a sports bra for one of her nieces and when she the store clerk announces that they are out of stock, she trails off to other stores such as Adidas and Planet Sports, with me sprinting behind her, trying to keep up with her fast pace. In the midst of running to different sports stores, she tries to look for a baptismal gift. “Everything’s on sale today!” She notes. Cherry checks Silverworks and Ding Valeyo, Inc. to buy a medallion for the godchild. She buys herself a pair of earrings so shiny that I can see my reflection on them from a foot away. She finally finds a sports bra at Marks
and Spencers and then runs back to Valeyo to check the items. She takes off her glasses to inspect the jewelries further. Since the store only accepts cash, she decides to go back later during the day. At 1:00, Cherry is on her way to buy lunch for Manang Lita and Manong Frank at Burger King when she spots her two children and their yaya making their way down the escalator. Robby instantly holds her arms up, indicating that she wants to be carried while Marco clings to his mother’s legs, almost making her trip. At Burger King, there is nothing short of chaos. While Cherry orders the take-out meals, Robby runs around the counter, trips, and then runs around again. The two children are hungry and fight over one another’s food. Marco accidentally spills someone’s iced tea. The two of them continue playing with one another until we reach the entrance and exit of Town Center. They run after one another and hide behind one of the signs perched outside the mall. Marco pushes Robby, who falls flat on her face and immediately starts crying. “Why did you have to push her, Marco?” Cherry asks when inside the car, clearly annoyed. “She wasn’t doing anything to you! Say sorry to Robby.” The countless “Sorry Robby’s” aren’t enough to calm the 2-year-old. Marco accidentally kicks a McDonald’s drink, which makes a large hole and it starts leaking. Cherry decides that some Starbucks will help calm everyone’s nerves. Both kids want chocolate but since both are sick, she says that no chocolate until everyone is feeling better. She asks what everyone wants and after she withdraws money from the bank, she purchases a tall, vanilla frap for Marco, a tall, strawberry frap for Robby and two honey glazed donuts. As soon as she enters the car, she hands the drinks over to her kids. Marco says that he didn’t ask for a vanilla frap although he really did. Cherry shrugs it off and says that it’ll go to Angelo, when he comes back from school. The car is full of the smell of hamburger and fries, the sound of chewing and babies giggling in the backseat. “Buhay ka ba?” Cherry jokingly asks Manang Lita and Manong Frank. She and the driver go through the list of groceries, making sure that each and every item on the list was covered. She made sure to bring along some of her S&R shopping bags in order to reduce the amount of plastic bags used and to recycle. Robby sneezes and Cherry immediately pulls out tissue paper and instructs Robby to blow her nose. As she folds the tissue paper to throw it away, we notice the large booger sticking to the tissue and make a face. Cherry gives Manong Frank instructions to drive back to Mercury Drugstore in order to pick up some more medicine for her kids. In the midst of her instructions, her kids cut in with cries of, “Mom, can I go to Dishy [Timmy]’s game?” “Me too?” Cherry and I head on over to the bank to withdraw money. As she patiently waits in line, her wallet is safely tucked in her folded arms. She tells me that Manong Frank usually comes to work on certain days, not every day. Whenever he’s in the house and she has errands to do, “I take full advantage of it. Can you imagine if I had to drive around today with the two babies?”I can’t and I doubt that even John Lennon himself would want to. We return to Valeyo (“I got a discount!” Cherry says happily) and pay for the baptismal
gift. We receive a small bag and instead of simply holding the bag, Cherry puts it inside her own bag. In Mercury Drug Store, she requests for the medicines so quickly that I don’t have time to jot down their names. While waiting, we look at our reflections and compare heights. It seems that I’m taller than her. “This is my karma,” she tells me. “I used to tease [my mom] that I’d be taller than her and now all my kids are starting to be taller than me!” When we retrieve the medicines, we exit and look around for the Starex. When we find it, we settle inside and Robby jumps into her mother’s lap and says in a highpitched, playful voice, “Mama! Marco’s gone!” It is already 3pm and after a tiring day of errands and such, Cherry still finds time to play with her babies. “What?” she pretends to be shocked. “Where did he go?” The giggling from the backseat of the car tells us exactly where the 5-year-old is. “Here I am!” He exclaims as he pokes his head from behind the seat. He scrambles to his mother’s lap and pulls out his new Star Wars coloring book. Throughout the rest of the car ride, we watch him flip through his coloring book, trying to answer some of the trivia questions with him. It is 3:30 when we get back to the house. I am the first one inside and I see that my tito has been successful in setting up his new router and is enjoying the Internet. As I head out the door, Marco and Robby race up the front steps and run inside their home. Cherry lags behind, her arms full of brown paper packages tied up with strings/these are a few of my favorite things. We exchange good-byes and as I’m leaving, I can hear her singing again, “Everybody wants to rule the world.” I look back at the last several hours that I spent with my tita and discovered that I not only did I gain lots of notes from observing a part of her daily routine but I also gained new realizations to the term “homemaker.” At one point, in between running to a bank, running to a jewelry store and running to Burger King, Tita Cherry turned around to face me and said, “It’s harder to be a homemaker.” I thought long and hard over that sentence and realized how true it was. I used to think that being a homemaker was less stressful than being a working mom simply because the homemaker was just at home most of the time and it seemed as though there were a lot less things to do at home. I realized that the only similarity between a working mom and a homemaker was that both are full-time moms. The difference is that the working mom has a 9-to-5 job while the homemaker has a full time job. In other words, the homemaker has two full-time jobs. Because the latter has more free time on her hands, people take advantage of it and give her errands to do. Another difference is that the homemaker has no salary at the end of the day. She does all of this for free because she loves what she does. To give up so much time and effort for something that has no payday or Christmas bonus and yet to feel so fulfilled gives me the chills. There should be more people like this in the world. When I asked Tita Cherry what made her decide to become a homemaker, she said that she really wanted to work with little kids. After she had her first child, she applied to be a kindergarten teacher at her Alma matter, Assumption College San Lorenzo, only to back out due to the work hours.
The hours required her to leave the house at 6 am only to arrive at 6 pm and Tita Cherry felt that it defeated the purpose of being a mother. For her to be closer to her children she had a tutorial center and a summer art class in her house for 12 years until her son, Angelo, was in grade 1. She stopped because she felt that she was spending more time with other children rather than her own. She takes care of 5 children, making sure that they are on top of their schoolwork and extra-curricular activities, she takes care of her husband, keeping their relationship healthy and fun and she takes care of the household, making sure that it runs smoothly. She juggles schoolbooks and balance accounts. She flies from one school to the next. She does all of this without a cape. It’s not a bird, it’s not a plane, and it’s Tita Cherry, Supermom extraordinaire. Glossary: Tita- Aunt Tito- Uncle Kuy- short for “Kuya”, which means older brother Yaya- Nanny Manang- Respectful title given to older female Manong- Respectful title given to older male Velada- High school reunion 25 years after graduating