'Third world queen' works hard for lazy sons

Hello, thanks for the space you allocated for us OFWs. Regards, Alice "To whom much is given, much is expected." I don’t know who said this first, but Bill Gates, quoting his late mother, incorporated it in the speech he delivered during Harvard’s commencement exercises a few months ago. The line struck a chord in me, as over the past few weeks I’ve been wondering whether I have become selfish. My story is similar to hundreds of thousands of Filipinas working overseas. But perhaps what makes my story different from most is that I left the Philippines more in search of adventure rather than pressing poverty, and luckily too, I am able to practice my career as a journalist. I’ve been living overseas for the past 12 years, but even before I went abroad I have been augmenting my parents’ earnings as government workers. Since their retirement years ago, I have become their main source of ‘income.’ Even as I got married two years ago, their monthly allowance remained, thanks to my loving husband who understands. I have provided them a comfortable life, giving them more than the basics: I bought them a brand new car, they have air-conditioned rooms at home, a landscaped garden, and even afforded them to occasionally play mahjong with neighbors. My mother, who’s always held the family’s purse, knows that the money I send is for her and my dad. “Whether you want to support my two brothers, it is up to you as that money is yours once it’s out of my hands," I remember telling her once. My brothers, able-bodied men of 40 and 35, have never found steady employment, as they did not really try. At the time my parents had the money to send them to university, they dropped out and chose to become bums. They have been my constant source of frustration, as I believe this age should be the most productive time of their lives. Instead, they live with our parents and live off the allowance I intend for my mother and father. Indeed, why should they work when they live comfortable lives without having to lift a finger? That’s me being sarcastic. My mother has coddled my brothers, who, between them have produced two kids out of wedlock. “What hardship do you want me to let them experience?" mother would say when I bring up my frustration about these two men not having the initiative to find work because they do not experience any hardship. As always, the conversation goes nowhere and I hang up with a heavy feeling in my heart. Maids in the USA A few months ago my parents rode the plane for the first time in their lives. After 24 years, mother’s petition to migrate to the US (via her sister) was approved. As far as I am concerned, they need not go to the US. What would they do there at their age of 67? Also, neither of them drives - a skill much needed in a place like the US. Mother says it was a chance to file a petition for my two brothers. There was no stopping them so I just made sure they had enough money and were comfortable during their flight. I flew them business class on Cathay Pacific to San Francisco. I flew to Manila just to join them on the flight at least up to Hong Kong, to keep them company and make sure they’d know what to do at the airport and to constantly reassure them that flying is safe. My mother downed a number of tranquilizers from the time they left the house. She braved flying just for her sons. I waved goodbye to them at the Hong Kong airport feeling confident that as business class passengers, they’d be taken care of. You see, in everything, I want them to be comfortable. Imagine my aggravation when they told me just a few weeks later that they have been working as caregivers. I found it unbelievable that my mother, whom my husband fondly refers to as a “third-world queen" because of the comfortable lifestyle I afforded her and my father, and who is “madirihin" now washes old people’s butts --all for her able-bodied sons. They knew that if they choose to work their allowance from me would stop. They also knew that if they go back to the Philippines - -which I’ve urged them to do several times -- they will enjoy the same “income" from me. But I know why they chose to work: again, all for their able-bodied sons, plus, recently, a live-in girlfriend and a new baby for one of them. You perhaps noticed the number of times I described them as “able-bodied." They are. They are definitely not frail; both have big guts as a result of their beer-guzzling ways and lack of strenuous physical activity. Yes, the norm in other households, that is, the children working to support ageing parents, has reversed in theirs: the ageing parents are working to support their sons. As I write this, they are considering looking either after a three-month old baby of California couple, or two toddlers, sons of a Filipino couple. Amazing, when mother couldn’t even stand the cry of a baby --all for the sake her able-bodied sons. “When you are a mother you would understand," my foreigner husband tells me. Would I? Wouldn’t I avoid what I perceive to be my mother’s mistake of making her sons so dependent on her? As recent as two weeks ago she sent them money. Because of the depreciation of the US dollar, the two only got so much, “what a pity," she told me. It took me considerable effort not to tell her off. “A pity that they got only that much when there you are in the US working basically as a maid at your age???" I wanted to yell her. If they were younger, there’s nothing wrong with it for it is a noble job, but at 67, and both with a heart condition? “Give them fish and you feed them for a day, teach them how to fish and you feed them for life," another saying goes. I have tried to teach them how to fish. But again, since the money that sent one of them to a computer school was not from his own blood, sweat and tears, that brother did not bother finishing his course. They’ve had it too easy growing up, that they’ve never really grown up. My mother was like the man in “the butterfly" story, who after seeing a butterfly struggle to get out of a cocoon, he cut open the cocoon -- out of pity -- to give the butterfly an easy way out. The butterfly then emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. What the man, in his kindness and haste, did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were God's way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon. Because of misplaced “pity," the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It never was able to fly. You and I can guess what will happen to these butterflies -- once my parents pass on from this world. And where is my father amidst all these? Unfortunately, he couldn’t even lecture them for as a youngster he was once like them. During a recent phone call he was crying. He couldn’t believe that his third-world queen is washing old people’s butts. Then he told me how he regrets dropping out of university against the wishes of his father --a regret that came, sadly, 50 years too late. Alice R.