Papam

Papam, my parent's housekeeper and my sister's and my nanny, is a hard worker woman, who treated us like her own children, with love and respect, and at the same time discipline, and was there for us when we needed her.

Papam, whose name is Amparo, started working with us before my sister was born, around 1986. She has two daugthers of her own, older than my sister and me by a few years. Her girls were her life, and she had two jobs in order to support her girls through school, and offer them the opportunities denied to her in her youth.

Despite of her efforts, life played a trick on her, and both girls became teenie mothers, leaving Papam with the feeling of being a failure: How could it be, she wondered, that both girls got pregnant at the same time, when the older one was 18 and the younger one 14, and gave birth with a week difference? How could it be that the girls had not learnt in their childhood that a child is no guarantee to "tie" a man, when they had grown up without a father?

When I look back I see two ungrateful girls (now grown up women), who never appreciated the education they were getting, nor did they appreciate the guft God had given them in their mother.

Today is Papam's birthday. She is turning 55, and is a grandmother of 4 or 5 children. She has been in charge of raising one of them, as her youngest daugther left home, and her son behind, when she moved in with a new boyfriend. Papam has worked over the last 16 years to raise this boy, now a teenager, who seems to be a good student and will graduate high school soon. Her daugthers are no longer there for her, and of her grandchildren, only the one she has raised is there. I called her to congratulate her, and her voice told me how happy she was of hearing my voice, how it filled her to see that both my sister (who also called) and I remember her and her birthday.

It has been around 12 years since she stopped working for us, but we haven't been able to break the contact: she is part of our life, she took an active role in raising us and helping us become who we are, and I like to think that it wasn't her fault the path her daugthers chose, as I cannot imagine how she could be such a good influence for my sister and for me, and not for her own kids.