Sampaguita and YIang-Ylang Garland

Flowers of Mum

Some people see sunshine and birds chirping and trees leafing out and think of May.

Some people see tiny green shoots pushing their way through the cold, hard ground and think of May.

Me?

The sign of May I always look for?

Mum's sampaguita and ylang-ylang garland.

Sampaguita, also known as the 'Philippine jasmine,' is often strung with ylang-ylang leaves into a necklace and worn by women.

I remember how Mum would buy a strand from an ambulant vendor in front of the Quiapo church after our Saturday market shopping.

It's usually hung over car rear-view mirrors or altars and religious icons, but since we didn't have any santos, Mum put her garland under her pillow instead.

At night, lying by her before moving to my designated spot on the woven mat, I'd get a whiff of her newly-washed hair smelling of extracted gugo tonic with hints of orange blossom and the wonderful, gentle, and sweet custard-apple and jasmine of the garland. Nestled in my Mum's embrace, I felt how she seemed to have been created to radiate warmth. 

I recall how she would remind me in a whisper, Deaconness Afrie would be picking you up for VBS tomorrow. And murmuring, would say a soft-spoken plea for me to not "accidentally" extend a leg when spoiled Youngest Brother passed by (she knew that I did it on purpose to trip him).

As she spoke, her words echoing in the next few minutes made me feel like everything was happening in slow motion. Looking at her half-closed eyes, I could see a light that often turned inward, as if thoughts were moving across them like passing clouds. Dreamily, she would then gently pull my hair off my face and say, Hala, go to bed already.

Time has slipped by like a leaf dropping from a tree since then, but my memory of Mum and her flowers will always hang like a fragrant necklace of sampaguita and ylang-ylang around the years to come.

Never to be forgotten like the blue florets on my ears.

Everlasting like her straw garland.

A precious gift of waling-waling love.