I grew up in a third-class town, and the concept of education as a factor to break the cycle of poverty was unknown to me. Completing high school and working as a maid or saleslady were the only destination in my limited imagination, as inculcated in me by my unlearned parents. They often reminded us, their children, to finish high school so we could work and be able to help them. Only days after my graduation, I was able to fulfill that dream. I worked as a housemaid in Baguio, tending to five college students. Because of that experience, the unknown became known. I realized why my parents did not introduce college education to us. How could they send us to college when they couldn’t even provide for our basic needs?
My misfortune led me to a great and exciting opportunity. My vision was widened and my dormant mind became active and alive. It started with a question I asked myself while doing my routine tasks: “Why are they studying and I’m not?” Right there and then, I made a lasting decision that I would not be a housemaid forever. How could I help my parents and my two siblings if my salary is barely enough to last for a week?
Attaining that impossible success that has changed my life is comparable to my experience in scaling the highest mountain in Luzon. As you start the trek, the peak seems too far to reach. The dangers—falling from a high cliff, the rocky and slippery rocks that can break your bones with a single mistake, and the darkness—are endless. People who hike by day can easily give up in the middle of the journey or when they’re almost there, because they have seen enough (but not all). People who hike at midnight so they can witness the sunrise can’t afford to give up, for doing so can mean failure and disgrace to your group, and worse, denying yourself the majestic beauty of the mountain peak.
After four years of hiking my mountain, I found myself rejoicing. The impossible has become possible at last. I climbed slowly but not backward, and my rejoicing was so sweet. I did not give up no matter how difficult it was to work as a janitress in my school. I did not dread doing laundry, being a yaya, tutoring for different households and performing errands even until midnight just so I could earn extra money. I fought loneliness and hardship with a firm determination to achieve the result of that decision I made when I was yet a maid. Had I not endured, I could have remained a slave.
But as in climbing a mountain, you can’t stay at the peak forever as the sunrise will fade and the sea of clouds will disappear. Just before my college graduation my father stopped working. I became the sole breadwinner, with five people dependent on me. I became not only a mother to my son but the father and mother of my parents and my sisters as well.
Just when I was starting to enjoy the fruits of my sacrifices, my father descended into acute depression. He shut himself off from the world and created his own imaginary world. He is 58 now and needs more attention and care than a year-old child. He is incontinent. His food needs to be prepared. He has to be urged to brush his teeth and take a bath. In short, he is in a pitiful state—no longer the energetic, industrious, sociable and groomed father. He can change if he only decides to help himself, but he chooses to be insane and a burden.
His insanity is partly our fault. We were not understanding of his emotional burden, especially now that all the respect that was once accorded him is gone. We would shout at him, we wouldn’t eat with him, we wouldn’t include him in family discussions, as if he didn’t exist. The people from whom he expected acceptance and love became his enemies. But who wouldn’t hate someone who is making himself insane? My mother, whom I have begun to hate because of her drinking and smoking, has totally turned her back on her responsibilities as a wife to my father. I can’t totally blame her, but what I hate most is the additional burden she’s putting on me. I have done everything I could to stop her from living her vices, but all my efforts were futile. She almost died from drunkenness, but it did not stop her.
During my college years I would always shout for joy every time I had the chance to go home. I missed my family’s embrace and everything else. How I wished I could go home any time I wanted just to be with my responsible parents! But now that I’m with them every day, it’s a veritable hell. Serving as the parent of my parents is the hardest of all. I keep asking: What has happened to them, and is there a miracle that will change them?.
I wonder how undisciplined we were as children that made our parents become what they are now. But if I go down memory lane with my older and younger sisters, we could not link anything to our family’s condition, apart from our oldest sister, who was stricken with polio and died when she was 14. We also recall that our father was abusive to our mother; that’s one great reason she has little pity for him now. Our father never knew his real father, and the one who raised him was abusive, too.
Our parents have suffered a lot in life, and they probably won’t change in their lifetime. That means I have to change, to have more serenity to accept what cannot be changed and to bear lightly what needs to be.
I have a big mole on my right shoulder, and when I was young the old folks told me that the mole represents burden, that someday I would carry the burden of my family. I do agree with them now. Being the parent of my parents is just too difficult to bear; I am so unlike other daughters who are still being supported up to their married life, and even their children. I’m putting my younger sister through college, and my older sister lives with me along with my two uncles who are widowers. Like my parents, they did not give up on us during the most crucial time of our growth. They did not desert us in the depths of poverty, so who am I to desert them, now that I am able to take care of them? No matter how deep the hatred is, love still conquers all.
Now, every time I gaze at the beautiful mountains, I’m reminded of how brave I was in climbing the highest of them. I survived, and so the representation of the mole on my shoulder I will survive, too.
Jacquelyn B. Lejano, 29, is a high school teacher at Mariano Marcos State University Laoag.