The  photo at left is from the memoirs of our Sister and board member Mrs. Leonora L. Sprenger (standing in the middle) of Canada. She is pictured here with her Mom, Auntie Toning (standing at left) and our President, Atty Romeo J. Somera (standing at right) and two Lolas.  The reason why I am posting this photograph here was prompted by Nora mentioning something about a memorial scholarship in the name of her late loving Mom, Mrs. Antonina Leal Lucero.

I thought for a moment; it is mother's day. How fitting it would be to remember our mothers and to thank them for all that they have done for us. I remember my mother's sacrifices for us her kids very well. I am sure that most - if not all of us do. My mother and Nora's Mom, Auntie Toning are first cousins. Nora and I grew up from the same place. We played in the same span of the South China Sea shoreline. I know her Mom and Nora knows mine.

The one thing that I do remember very well were the Sundays when we all went to Church all dressed up in our Sunday best. We would all see each other in the plaza, in the open market, even rode the same calesas and horse drawn conveyances. We ate the same puto that was baked and vended in the plaza by the merchants. Life just seemed to go on leisurely forever. There was peace all over, the last World War just having been resolved and the Korean conflict was being prosecuted. We all attended school at St Augustine, albeit segregated by gender at the time. Our mothers worked hard each day so that we may continue attending school and to someday finish.

Nora was one of the more fortunate students who boarded with the Nuns in the convent during the school week. I walked to and from school daily sometimes cutting across the rough hewn fields with my shoes tied over my shoulders to save them from the mud and muck. Those were the days... funny how those memories come fleeting by. But it's mother's day and it is a special day. We say our prayers in the stillness of our hearts... as we fondly remember.