Managers of chaos

Let me start by saying I’m not one for Hallmark holidays. There, I’ve probably betrayed my age. Soon I’ll be flashing a senior citizen ID for a 20-percent discount on that burger steak from J-bee, the one with the mushroom gravy that washes down best with Coke.

I don’t need a calendar — digital or ink-stained — to remind me to appreciate the women who shaped me: my mom, my grandmothers, my sisters, the mother of my children, and the many women who mothered me in ways subtle and loud over the years.

But, alas, my inbox is choking on flower promos, buffet brunch offers, and discount codes from Shopee, Lazada and — heaven help us all — Temu. So here we are, obliged, not by guilt, but by recognition. Mother’s Day is that fleeting moment in May when society briefly pretends not to take mothers for granted, then forgets again by Monday.

As all proper tributes should, this one starts with my mother, Angge — whom I just picked up from SanFo, jet-lagged but still carrying that air of quiet command. A force of nature, not because she storms into a room, but because she never needs to.

While others shout, she holds silence like a scalpel. Where people rush with impertinent impatience, she pauses, assesses and recalibrates.

She’s the kind who’d knock on your classroom door at lunchtime not because you were starving — there were canteens — but because she could. She taught at the same public elementary school I attended. She had rank.

She raised me and my three sisters — Melanie, Sheila and Patricia — with more patience than we probably deserved. My father William was the overt disciplinarian. My mother?

She was the gentle shadow behind the iron wall. She didn’t lecture. Sometimes there was the kaserola treatment—but that was rare, and always deserved.

She didn’t dramatize mistakes. She didn’t even really correct you in the traditional sense. She’d just look at the mess, look at you, and ask, “So, what now?” Which meant: You’re not off the hook, but I’m giving you a chance to show up.

And now I see flashes of her in Marivic, the woman raising our two daughters, Kylie and Phoebe. Different generations, same hardware. Mavie is a different kind of operator, but she runs the same tight ship — just with more strategic silences.

She doesn’t demand control. She doesn’t need to. She reads moods like spreadsheets. She notices the small changes — the shift in a kid’s tone when they were still kids, the sudden silence, the I’m fine that clearly means not fine. She sees what I miss, which is a lot.

And she does it without applause. That’s the stealth magic of most mothers — they get it done: again and again, without medals, without hashtags, and even without a full night’s sleep.

They’re the real backend operations. Managers of chaos, healers of scraped knees and egos, negotiators, dishwashers and breadwinners.

They’re the fixers of broken things and broken spirits. Sometimes they are the hostages of little tyrants who think chocolate for breakfast is a constitutional right.

It’s easy — too easy — to forget how extraordinary this is. So today, I’m remembering. I’m remembering Angge, who showed me that stillness can be louder than shouting.

I’m thanking Mavie, who co-anchors our domestic storm with a glance and a sigh. And I’m giving overdue credit to the other matriarchs of my story: Lola Nena and Lola Naty, who survived wars and wartime husbands. To my sisters, who are mothers in their own right, and to my mother-in-law, Sandy, who gave me her daughter.

To all mothers: the quiet bosses, the last to eat, the first to take the blame, the ones who make the whole thing work without a manual — Happy Mother’s Day. We don’t say it enough. But without you, nothing holds together.

And, yes, to the women whose nurturing finds its way into every corner of our lives, especially in the quiet care of the partners they walk through life with.