THANKS TO MY PARENTS, I AM WHAT I AM Written by: Elizabeth Zamora Damacion

December 2013 Page 1 of 4

It has come to my understanding, so late in my life, at nearly 54, that it takes decades, if not a lifetime, to gain some inkling of our individual purpose in life and the role we have in our universe. And, with the recent passing of my mother, Luz Zamora Damacion, on December 2, 2013, at 1:53 am, I have come to force myself to grasp that life is for the living and life must goes on regardless of my sorrow of losing my mother and that I must continue in building and nurturing the relationships I have with those family, friends and strangers alike that I have now and who come into my life in the present and future. I also realize that all life occurrences and lessons that happened to my mother are, now, happening to me and will, also, happen to you when your time comes to learn the same or similar lessons. I am what I am because of my parents and I explained my philosophy of thanks to my parents as well as thanked my mother, verbally and specifically, during one of my last visits with her prior to her death. FIRST, SOME BACKGROUND My father, Mamerto Fernandez Damacion, was born in the Philippines on May 11, 1912. He had several siblings, but it is my understanding that his parents died at a young age, leaving him an orphan. My father, also, if I remember correctly, only completed either up to the 5th or 8th grade of formal schooling in the Philippines. My mother, on the other hand, was born on August 3, 1926, also in the Philippines, and completed and graduated from post-secondary school with 2 years of college. My parents were not the type to be loving, smooching or talkative. They were demonstrative parents who served as fabulous role models in the values they exhibited to us as children and in the priorities, choices and methodologies they used to raise me and my siblings. What I remember the most about my father is that he worked very, very hard to support us, helped cook meals, demanded a clean kitchenespecially the kitchen sink and the washing of all dirty dishesand always made sure his children had food on our plates, at dinner time, before he allowed food, besides white rice, on his plate, at the head of our long dining table. This meant, on a daily basis, a family of 9 sharing a single whole chicken, chuck roast steak or whole cooked crab, prepared fresh daily, whether my mother worked in the fields with our father that day in addition to caring for 7 children spanning an age difference of 11 years from the eldest to youngest child. And, even though I do remember many times of being hungry, food was available but never wasted. My parents did not participate in any type of public assistance until I was allowed to apply for and receive free lunches in 5th grade. At approximately that same timearound 6th grade, I also began managing my own money that I earned working mandatory summer hours at the local fruit dry yard cutting fruit or picking pears at the fruit orchard my father worked at during the hot summer months of July and August. [However, please keep in mind my mother allowed me to wield a paring knife as early as age 5 and it was around this time, in my own personal history, that I remember my mandatory work expectations began.] However, it was the summer prior to 6th grade when I became responsible for buying my own school clothes and school lunches. It was, also, about this time that my little brother, Carlos, and I pooled some of our earnings together, with the help of our mother, to buy our first Schwinn bike. MEMORIES OF MY FATHER Being the youngest of 3 daughters and the 6th of 7 children, I was born when my father was 46 and my mother was 32. Most of my early memories are very faded but I do recall being a favorite of my father, in

THANKS TO MY PARENTS, I AM WHAT I AM Written by: Elizabeth Zamora Damacion

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some sense, when I was very young between 4-8 years old. Sometimes after a long, hard day working out in the field of a farm or orchard, or after gardening for money for someone he knew, my father would call me and my little brother into his room, just to have us talk to him, to play the balancing and tossing us seesawlike on his one bent legmaking us laugh and giggle very hard--or having us scratch his back with our tiny little hands or his wooden back scratcher as we told him stories of our day. I love my father. He was a wonderful man who went out of his way to take me to the park, in town or Vallejo, as well as take me and my little brother trick or treating on Halloween night no matter how tired or hungry he was. My father was a great man. I wish I had known him more intimately but he died when I was only 22, as I was just barely delving into adulthood myself. Other memories of my father, included my mother, in their daily morning ritual of making coffee and sitting together and making small talk or observing how they cooperatively and efficiently made their bed as a husband and wife team. Demonstration. Love and order through demonstrative acts by my father and mother. No kisses, or hugs or thank yous or random or deliberate I love yous with words but more so I love you very much in their actions and the enforcement, to the best of their abilities, of sound moral values in their children. And, to the relief of my mother, later on in life, and through the blessings of God, none of her children have ever intentionally harmed another human being or ended up in jail for a crime they purposely committed. We, as our Moms children, have always been helpers, not destroyers of sound, responsible values and choices. Echoing in the backs of our minds are the harsh words of an expression our father used often when he saw any of kids lazily loafing and found the house dirty or untidy in any manner: Good for nothing is what we used to hear him say angrily. MY LOVE FOR MY MOTHER My love for my mother is incredible. Without my mothers love and help throughout all these more than 5 decades of my life, I would be dead. She always took care of me no matter how bad, disrespectful or neglectful I was toward her. In fact, my mother always had my back and she was always my greatest ally in this life. She saw me through 3 failed suicide attempts by the time I was 21 and 2 failed and destructive intimate personal relationships that I had by the time I was 30. Even during our last phone conversation before she died, my mother again broached the topic of how I almost died from pneumonia as a baby as she admonished me to not come to her house that day to do yard work. She knew I had been sick, previously, for 2 weeks, and recently caught, yet, another cold. A SPECIAL PLACE IN MY HEART My mother used to read to me when I was little around 4, 5 and 6 years old. I remember Dr. Seus and nursery rhyme books that we had, reciting answers to math flash cards held by my mother and writing and drawing on a white-chalk blackboard we had hung in our living room next to the closet door. I also remember, quite proudly, I could write my numbers up to 100 before I started kindergarten, thanks to my extremely smart, insightful and committed mother.

THANKS TO MY PARENTS, I AM WHAT I AM Written by: Elizabeth Zamora Damacion

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You see, my mother was quite competent in this regardshe went to college in her country, the Philippines, prior to coming to the U.S., as a young 21-year-old ESL bride, and was trained as a kindergarten teacher. Her insight was amazing. She made sure her eldest 3 children not only completed their religious schooling through 8th grade but also involved them in learning how to read music and play a musical instrument by participating in our school band. And.she was simply just a farm-hands wife! In addition, many, many hours of our family time involved our mother playing board or card games with us. We played games like Scrabble, The Game of Life, Trouble, Jeopardy, regular and Chinese checkers, War and Kings Corners. And, it was through these fun, educational learning rituals, our mother taught us about how to understand and play by rules, strategy, resourcefulness, efficiency, patience and good sportsmanship. We were a very, very poor family. We did not get Christmas or birthday presents. But, we learned and prospered, and flourished through the educational games and toys our mother bought for us. My favorite of all the items my mother bought for her kids, to benefit us kids, that I enjoyed the most, was our World Book Encyclopedia set. Both my father and I would like to take a book, out of this set, to read for simple educational pleasure. I loved to read as a child and read from our Encyclopedia all the time. I remember looking forward to the traveling library book mobile bus, when I was small, that would come to our elementary school. Books were fun, entertaining, liberating and very educational. WHEN WE CELEBRATED As a very, very poor family, we, as kids, never had birthday or Christmas presents. It was sad but not horrible. Christmas was always still joyous and a lot of fun. We still had a Christmas tree with lights, lovely Christmas music and the watching, as a family, of all the classic, religious Christmas movies on the day and evening of our scrumptious Christmas dinner. As we all got older, we later incorporated playing a family board game, like The Game of Life, after Christmas dinner while we wolfed down a large box of chocolates everybody shared. On birthdays, we always had a fancy bakery chocolate or champagne cake, from our local downtown bakery, along with a carton of ice cream and a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. My mother had an ingenious way of dividing our ice cream into 9 equal portions. Back in the day, when ice cream only came in the half-gallon boxed size, my mother would unzip and unfold the box surrounding the ice cream. She would then use a large knife to cut 9 equal rectangles of ice cream by cutting into the ice cream cube both vertically and horizontally. This ensured everyone got the same amount of ice cream and there was no reason to fight or argue that someone else got more ice cream than you. The other celebration I re-call, was Easter. As with Christmas, Easter involved going to church, watching classic religious movies and having a nice family meal together followed by a board game for anyone wishing to play. The only horrible thing I can remember about Easter was Lent and the giving up of ice cream during one Lent and being insidiously taunted by my older sister, Virginia, about not getting to eat any ice cream when I wanted some so badly.

THANKS TO MY PARENTS, I AM WHAT I AM Written by: Elizabeth Zamora Damacion

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ORGANIZED AS A CREW Our house, growing up, was never messy or untidy, despite housing 9 people in 4 bedrooms with 7 kids and 2 adults. There was no reason for our house to be messy. My parents had a built-in crew of 7 kids that had to work outside the home as well as participate in daily maintenance of our home. One example was our evening meal. For the most part, my mother did the majority of cooking each evening meal, whether she worked in the home solely as mother and homemaker or outside out in the field, during the day, alongside my father. The general breakdown of dinner responsibilities was as follows: Dad - Worked outside the home to make money to buy food Mom - Bought food and prepared dinner Danny - Dishwasher Carol Cleaned stove top Kenny Cleared and cleaned dining table Virginia Scraped plates of food and fed cats Jim Swept kitchen floor I moved dinner chairs out of the way for the floor sweeper Another orchestrated chore I remember, as a kid, was forming a single line, alongside my siblings, on one side of our back or front yards. We would crouch single-file and moving side-by-side, along the ground, we pulled crab grass, from our lawn as we moved across the grass, to the other side of our yard. And, yes, back then we also had a clothes line, so that meant a lot of hanging up and taking down of laundry using clothes pins. Again, it was team work. Everyone in the family had a personal responsibility and expectation to pitch in to help the household run efficiently and normally. SO, BACK TO THANKING MY MOTHER As a high-school drop-out and teen-age mother, I had many obstacles to endure including the suffering of severe depression that resulted in 3 suicide attempts, severe ADD and OCD, severe lack of self-esteem and self-worth as well as a psychologically and emotionally abusive first husband. And, despite all these setbacks, I managed to secure a place in this world, with Gods blessings, where I was financially independent and secure; and, I later realized, with the help of others, that I was also smart, beautiful and talented. In reassuring my mother, over the phone, in one of my last conversations with her, that I was going to be okay despite being jobless and losing my 27-year career with Solano Community College, she remarked I was the best which I think meant that I was the best because I managed to be financially independent and to fully pay for my own house all by myself. I also turned out to be helpful and kind to her in her old age as well as become a good human being from the inside out. When I specifically thanked my mother, I thanked her for 3 things: Having the foresight and pioneer spirit to come to America to start a new life For her and Dads combined genetics which I attributed to where my smartness comes from For the methodologies, systems and tools my parents used to prepare me for responsible adulthood THANKS TO MY MOM AND DAD, I AM WHAT I AM AND I LOVE AND MISS THEM VERY MUCH!