Lim: The rules 2

My maternal grandmother was born in the Philippines but brought to China by her father when she was a child. Unknown to her then, her parents had separated.

She returned to the country as a young bride. She had lost touch with her mother and sisters. So, when her husband died, she was all alone. A widow in her 30s with six children to raise.

She could not read or write but she was not unintelligent. She survived and thrived and was known to lecture even bank presidents. She was clearly an alpha female, if not by birth, certainly by circumstance.

My mother was not quite like her mother. Or so I thought. She didn’t overtly display any signs of being an alpha female. But as she married an alpha male, I have to wonder — did she subvert the alpha in her for marital bliss?

I found my mother rather submissive. And yet, from the stories I heard from her childhood best friend, she was clearly an alpha as a young girl and woman. To this day, I believe my mother was an alpha female who chose never to come out of the closet because of custom, culture and social convention.

In so many ways, my lifelong pursuit for gender parity is fueled by the way my mother lived. She was devoted to my father yet I knew she found his domineering personality untenable.

She never openly complained but I always felt her angst — the angst of unrealized dreams. I could tell she wanted more in life for herself and I knew she could have had it — if only she had the courage to “change the rules.”

But my mother always put herself last. And in the end, I think she felt it was too late to put herself first. She loved my father too much to go against “his rules.” Nine pregnancies and six children probably took all the fight out of her, too.

And while my father loved my mother very much and still does to this day, I think he will always be the alpha that he is.

My mother was often aghast at my choices but she vicariously lived through my rebellions and celebrated my triumphs. She shared many of my progressive ideas though she told me to keep them to myself.

Obedience, however, is not one of my virtues.

I’d like to believe that while my mother lived, I succeeded in opening her mind. That there is no one, uniform path we must all take in life to find joy, significance and light. That we can all be all we want to be. That we must stop waiting for someone to come and save us because in fact, we are fully capable of saving ourselves.

We don’t have to wait for anyone to change the rules. We can change the rules ourselves. But I guess my mother felt it was too late to change the rules for herself so she did the next best thing — she let her daughters change the rules for themselves.

This, Ma, without doubt, is your greatest legacy.

*Excerpts from a speech given at the 49th Anniversary of Federacion Internacional de Abogadas Cebu Inc. (Fida Cebu)