Life wasn’t good, but it was better. She still struggled with money and her emotions, but slowly she was finding her footing. She had a home for her girls, family to rely on, friends who buoyed her confidence. Sitting around the mahjong table, she could gossip and laugh, acting out the fantasy of recapturing the teenage years she never had. These women and their families became extended families. My mom had found her own little slice of The Philippines.

Her basic honesty and commitment to honest work for an honest dollar was recognized by her employer and she was rewarded with raises and small promotions. It wasn’t a job where she was ever going to make a lot of money, but she could make enough. And enough was just that. One of her proudest moments came when she stopped receiving state aid.

After all the years of pain and heartache, a childhood unfit for a child, a marriage made in the ruins of her home, disintegrating in the same way. She discovered the youth she never had. Weekends were for her friends, her fun, her life. During those weekends, she was a single woman having fun in the way single women did. In her 30’s, she was finally living a life where anguish was not the first thing on her mind. She was making enough money to support her kids and experience freedom.

That freedom extended to her girls, as well. Or from, rather. They had a home, and she always made sure there was food to eat. They were being taken care, albeit distantly. She knew from experience that if there was family around, anything was doable. That even the harshest of situations could be gotten through as long everyone held up everyone else. If you could stand, then you held up those who couldn’t. Her girls were together, and they had each other. They would be okay. They would always be okay.

It wasn’t like she discovered how to have fun and never looked back. She didn’t know how not to experience life to its fullest. From the time she lost her father, her existence was moving between of joy and despair, with the latter often winning out. There had to be a more moments in time for joy. Her joy in her life. And while her kids did bring her joy, it was a joy mangled with pain. She needed to not feel the pain. To continue to be, she needed to be pain free, at least for a time.

But her pain was only one triggered memory away. Her memories would always be a part of her, of who she was. Seeing a toddler boy could bring her little brother back to her consciousness, back into the core of her heart, unearthed and vibrant in what was lost. Then the moment would pass and she would tuck those memories back into their safe place. Images from Vietnam would bring haunting images of her time of war. Her heart would beat with anxiety and fear until she willed it into a living rhythm.

She met a man about two years after her divorce was final. A banker. He was captivated by the exotic Filipina. She was self made woman who had proven to everyone, except herself, that she didn’t really need a man. He didn’t want to be needed. That was too heavy a lift for him. But everything changed when she got pregnant.

They had been seeing each other for almost a year. They were both ecstatic. She had already given birth six times, and although the last time was nearly eight years prior, she had no reason to be concerned. Until the night she went into labor. She knew as they were leaving for the hospital that something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. This full term pregnancy resulted in the birth of a still born child.

That single event was the most singly devastating event in a life well marked by devastation. There was no coming back from that. She had internalized everything that had happened to her. All of it had to come back to some failing in her. The war wasn’t her fault, but surviving it when so many others didn’t was something of a shame. Her divorce was, in large part, due to her failure as a wife, the church had said. This was her payment due for all the wrongs she had committed.

But she knew she had committed no wrongs. This was the mighty hand of fate taking its toll for no other reason than it could. Something in her snapped and life became all about carelessness and abandon. She would leave no stone unturned in her search for a different path to the future. She did continue to work. She swore to never have another hungry day, to never miss another meal because there was no food to eat. But she ceased to be any kind of mother to her girls. They were truly on their own. As she was.

She found she was pregnant again at about the same time she learned her second oldest son had joined the Navy. She knew that meant he would be in the waters off of Vietnam, but her experience also told her that the Navy was the safest place for him to serve. And she still carried a large, very soft spot for the American military. She was proud to have a son don a uniform. As a sailor in the Pacific fleet, he would spend sometime in The Philippines. She would make sure he visited family while there.

She gave birth to a very healthy son. Redemption would be found in the birth of this child. All that she thought she lost was found in his beating heart. All the love she thought she would never feel again was awakened in his first cry. All that she ever was came back to life through him. Life was brighter, her heart stronger, her mind clearer than ever. A quiet joy she hadn’t heard since her childhood in Carigara.