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Keys to your Love

After the Clipper loss last Friday i switched to TFC (Filipino Channel) and watch the Wowowee marathon until 4 am. With my ailing hamstring i planned to sleep plenty, have lunch around 2 pm, then get ready for my back to back ballgames at 4 pm. And since my sister and i work on Sunday, i figured, i'd kiss my mom, greet her a happy mothers day and send my parents to a nice brunch somewhere. Impersonal i know, but it seemed a nice gesture, i thought. But unexpectedly my sister came Saturday morning so her and i together could do something for mom. I suppose that makes her a better child than i, or at least a better strategist haha. Our Mothers are the ultimate nutriment, and for one day, on Mothers day, it is incumbent upon us to return the favor of nourishment. For some seedy reason it never occured that Saturday was even an option. But thanks to my sister she saved me from this reprehensible behavior...

Lunch was the order of the day... Buca De Beppo was my mom's choice even with my repeated rebuke. Lunch on Saturdays for this Gabay family is usually uneventful and solitary. My father plays tennis and i basketball so lunch doesn't occur til late afternoon. Mom usually prances around in her modest botanical garden or spends her day at the mall while Foxy & Toby frolic in the yard. So traditionally Saturdays are spent doing our own thang, making this unannounced lunch date quite the disruption. But if i was unlucky and my basketball game was not fortuitously scheduled for the last game (5 pm and 6pm) and instead sometime around lunch, what do you suppose i'd do then? That's easy... i break tradition. You have one day and one day only to celebrate Mothers Day and for any reason you're unable on the actual day, you celebrate it the day mom so chooses, even if that means breaking tradition.

Being the bunso (youngest sibling) with a cool sister who let's me have my way most of the time, i continued to lobby for an alternate venue. Considering i had a ballgame to prepare for, the prospect of a four course meal seemed abundantly sate... My mother scowled at my reprehension, a vulgar reminder of the pecking order. Perhaps being awakened from deep sleep, urged by my sister to hurry, missed coffee and being asked to drive somehow compelled bravado to demand my choice of venue, even on such a day.

There's no need to remind her you love her daily, buy her extravagant gifts or take her on a trip around the world, or tell her she's the greatest MOM ever. We all know our mothers well (as she does us). What i have to do and all i have to do is quite simple really, to be my mothers son. To be the same kid who gives her a hard time about her choice of car, the same kid who inquires about dinner when he's hungry, rent drama movies, fetch her groceries from the car, fix the TV remote because even though she's had the same one for 10 years she still confuses the buttons etc etc etc...

This day the keys to my mothers love was food. As all mothers, it's an innate nature to nourish us, her offsprings. I mean, that's what families do best, eat together... Well on her day, my mother wanted my sister and i to nourish her. To break bread as a family and all i did was complain about the venue hahaha... i am my mothers son.

Posted by: Marc Gabay
Monday, May 15, 2006