Mothers' Day

I woke up at 6 am. I had gone to sleep only three hours before. Being up at three am is not something unusual for me.

Anyway, I tiptoed out of of the house at that ridiculously early hour. I walked two blocks towards the bakeshop. Chocolate or ube or mocha. Chocolate, definitely. No contest. Carrying with me the cake in a box, i crossed the street and bought a bunch of white flowers.

Now here's the tricky part. When I got home, making the least noise as possible, I tried to place the flowers inside the usual container but the stems were too long so the whole thing kept tipping over. I considered just laying the flowers on the table in an artistic sort of manner (read: the lazy method) and just let my mom arrange them in the vase herself when she wakes up. But, no. I decided that I shouldn't let my mother worry about her own flowers. So I took a pair of scissors and cut about a third of the flowers' length, stuck it in the vase and poured some water inside.

When my mother woke up, my brother (who conveniently took a passive role in all this thing) and I greeted her a happy mothers' day and told her that we got her flowers and cake. She was obviously touched by the gesture but was more shocked to know that I got up early to get them. She even asked me three times if I really was the one who bought them. She couldn't get over the thought that I was up before noon.

My mom's great. She's loving, warm, funny, upbeat, and she screams a lot when watching boxing games (Sorry, people, I'm still nursing some residue of the Pacquiao-Marquez draw). God knows that she deserves a whole lot more than cake and flowers with trimmed stems stuck inside an old vase. I just hope she knows that we love her a lot.