The wonderful world of ‘Bagyong Ruring’
A notification flashed on my phone. Rory Verayo—Mommy to me, my Manang, and a good number of cousins—sent a link to our group chat. It’s a slideshow of her volunteer group in togas doing a jump shot while throwing their caps in the air. She stood front and center.
I let out a giggle. Even at almost 68, Mommy would never just do a demure little hop. No, she flung herself up, spread her limbs out like a starfish in midair, and broke into a full catalog of delighted expressions that you could practically hear.
I wish I could’ve been with her.
It was the last day of Pedya Kamp, a summer camp where volunteers worked with children with disabilities. For 10 days, Mommy had to forgo warm showers, sleep on a sleeping bag with only a yoga mat to shield her from the cold Baguio floor, and refrain from using her phone every day until after 10 p.m. “Good thing there’s brewed coffee,” she messaged us.
Soon after she found out about my baby being on the autism spectrum disorder, Mommy threw herself into learning more about the condition and started sending us links, videos, and tidbits she deemed helpful. It wasn’t a surprise to hear that she had started going on seminars as well. After all, she may leave a trail of half-finished projects in her wake, but she doesn’t do things half-heartedly.
Mommy—all bright colors and unfettered feelings—lives in technicolor, in 5D, in surround sound. When she laughs, she laughs. When she sings, she sings. When she shouts, she shouts. And when she cries, she cries. She dances not like no one’s watching, but like she just can’t help herself.
It’s easy getting swept up in “Bagyong Ruring’s” cyclone of chaos, and, for better or worse, the constant stream of disruptions and surprises (even to herself) has certainly made life a lot less boring.
It is to her eccentricities and wanderlust’s credit that growing up felt like being in a road-trip-slash-sitcom. Wherever she wanted to go, Daddy would drive us. And if he couldn’t, she’d still go—sometimes with my sister and me, sometimes with any of her many siblings, sometimes with longtime friends, and sometimes with friends she just met along the way. And it’s always safe to expect some kind of misadventure.
That one time we got stuck in a sparsely inhabited island in Babuyan often comes to mind. Our group couldn’t get to our planned destination where we would’ve been able to buy supplies and food, and our dinner escaped while some of us slept and the rest got drunk (those clever crabs!). Ever so resourceful, Mommy went out and came back with some odd-looking eggs to eat, let’s just not say what kind and how.
Later, she followed a local literally over a mountain (a few trailed behind her). And, somehow, we got fed freshly speared scary-looking fish cooked over a small fire. It was fantastic and our tummies were happy. But as we were walking back, she hurt her foot and had to be carried in a hammock, all smiles, doña-style.
I didn’t know it back then, but people apparently wondered why I was with my mom (and family) all the time. A schoolmate told me, once we were adults, that I was known as the girl who was always with her parents. And one time when my mom visited me in college, I overheard another student make a snide remark about how I was much too old to still be hanging out with my mom.
But the thing is, there’s a reason so many of our photos together are of us laughing ourselves silly. She’s magic (well, maybe more like witchcraft), and she’s comedy. And who wants to miss a moment of that?
