Why I Love Watching My Mom Play Mahjong

For the record, I want to start by saying my mom is very much alive and well (and God willing for many, many more years to come). It’s just that I know how people get when they read something sentimental, especially about parents. She’s good, you guys. I’m writing this essay and love letter at the request of a good friend and a great editor, coming from a conversation on mothers and their lost identities and how we all miss out when we don’t make space for the woman who our mothers were, are, and will be—before they were ever mom.

To the moms, you are all so beautiful, all sides of you. And it’s our loss that we don't always get to see your full self beyond motherhood, and our deep joy when we do, even in the most unexpected glimpses.

It’s on us, daughters and sons, to try and get to know her, in her whole personhood. This love letter is a start, from a daughter just about getting to know her mom as a woman.

Having confirmed my mom’s joyful state of being, let me start again by saying I love watching her play mahjong.

I love watching her play mahjong because for a few hours I get to see the kindest person I know get really competitive. I love seeing the woman who painstakingly prepares meals for a vegetarian, a seafood hater, and a meat-lover in every family meal smirk and intentionally hold back a coveted tile to win a game. This nurturer is the same woman withholding an 8 of sticks tile from me!? Actually, it is. We just don’t see her very often.

I love seeing her want to win for the sheer joy of winning for herself. Because 90 percent of the time, I see her cheering everyone else on and putting everyone’s needs above her own. Mom, even when she tries to psych us out (even trash-talk us, dare I say!), I love seeing her as the cunning player she is at any mahjong table.

Speaking of tables, I love that she never sits at the breakfast table, no matter how early, without her trademark lipstick on. My gosh, I can only dream of that kind of discipline as a woman, as a person! While we know her as the mom who makes sure there’s breakfast available any time of the day, I’m in awe seeing this side of her. Deeper than a dedication to lipstick, it’s a kind of discipline, grace, and poise - a standard she holds for herself.

This lipstick discipline calls to mind another side of the woman who is also mom.

I love her commitment to doing the right thing no matter how tedious, small, or impossible it may seem. When I started getting into eco-advocacy work and greener habits, she listened and then carted her own glass bottles and refillables to the local palengke. More than that, she started mini-lectures for her sukis and whoever was close enough to marites! Lipstick, sun visor, and Skechers on, she looked like an eco Joan of Arc in a wet market.

She’s a woman of audacious hope despite naysayers, turning hope into daily action - a role model truly in a world that can be so bitter and obsessed with efficiency.

Actually, I see glimpses of a woman torn between the eternal maternal need to be practical and a yearning for design and aesthetics. I see the best of both sides when she hosts, though I see the clash too, and which side wins at times - a lush table setting with flowers and branches freshly picked from the (neighbor’s??) garden, but paper napkins because she just can’t with cloth ones right now. I wonder how many times she had to repress her inner table-scapist to be steadfastly practical instead. Was this part of a girlhood self before all the responsibilities?

Because I see that girlhood peek through, too. Watching a series with her is such a delight, discussing who we found cute, which scenes moved us, confused us, and why. And when our tastes diverge (as they often do), sometimes her bluntness surprises me in the funniest way. The most thoughtful soul I know is suddenly so quick to say Oscar Isaac is NOT her type right after I declared him my crush! Justice for Oscar Isaac’s eyebrows (mom, Oscar Isaac played Poe Dameron in Star Wars - I know you’ll ask who the heck I’m talking about).

RELATED READ: How Motherhood Made These Moms Better Individuals

The point is, it’s a delight to giggle like girls with her and see who she might have been in her teenage years. Or the now-years, even, because God willing, this ‘blushing like schoolgirls’ state never really leaves us. Life demands we get serious, especially her - as a mom. And then we miss out on all this fantastic girlhood.

And maybe that’s something I really should be asking her more about. To know which experiences shaped her as her, beyond the role of my mom in this lifetime. I wonder why lipstick became her anchor in self-maintenance. I wonder if she ever wanted to play sports - or hated it as I did. Was she choicefully competitive, finding it difficult with her kind heart?  I wonder where she got her determination and what that was like growing up with her own mom.

She was, is, after all, a daughter as well as a sister, a wife, an employee, a friend, a cousin, maybe an adversary, an advocate, and yes, now a mahjong enthusiast. And all these sides of her, and infinitely more, are all beautiful, and we’d be honored, joyful, and excited, really, to see all the sides she’d like us to get to know. I’ll meet her at the mahjong table - and anywhere else I can.

Motherhood has made these moms better, both in their creativity and entrepreneurship. Read their stories here.