There were talks of a major promotion for one of the vice-presidents of Chinabank*. Throughout her 19 years of working there, she had slowly worked her way to the top; drawing approval and encouragement from almost every board member (there were nay-sayers, but that was par for the course). Magnetic trinkets were covering every available surface of our refrigerator door; tokens she had collected from her nearly-monthly travels all over the country on those kinds of business trips the company pays everything for. She was a powerful woman in her field, a mere 4 months away from becoming the company president, when, at the age of 48, my mother decided to retire.
Contrary to popular belief, my mother did not retire because she was tired of 9 to 5 office hours. She was not a white person who, in the face of a midlife crisis, suddenly drops their job and feels the need to compensate all those years of overwork with vacations and cars not suited to their tastes anymore. Being born in a middle-class Filipino family with the mindset that hard work = money, she was determined to stay in that bank until her youngest child, a 9-year-old, had graduated from college. She also did not retire because of the new regulation the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) had set out that would put the bank in trouble. If anyone could fight and grit their teeth through that trial, it would have been my mother. Besides, that job was her life. When I was younger there were times when the bank took precedence over my childhood. A board meeting over my third-grade recognition ceremony, an overtime shift on my birthday. The abandonment (in the loosest sense of the word) was the very foundation of my preteen angst. But I’ve grown out of that, and this is not about me. It is impossible to believe that my mother would have given up on the employees she treated like family (who referred to her as Mama Bear, she would tell me on nights the withdrawal feels the strongest, her eyes wistful).
Continue reading The Housewife