I rememember crying for hours, rolling on the floor as part of my act. I would make heart-rending sobs, and chant-like wails and pitiful sighs all in the effort to get what I wanted at the time. How old was I? Maybe, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11? And oh yes, mine were all crocodile acts.

My mother "favored" me the most, I, being the youngest - her baby, the family's pet. However, she never really picked me up and soothed me during those croc acts. I guess she knew I was just "crock-ing".

My mom - she was an admirable woman. She was widowed at age 27 and left with three very young children, 6, 4 and barely 2. She could have married again but, no, that was never an option. She never looked at another man after my father died. My mother became the willing ward of her parents. Listen, this was not unusual. In the eastern hemisphere, most single, unmarried or widowed women are "protected" by parents throughout the rest of their womanhood. And it was so for my mom.

A house, our home, was thus constructed for her and annexed to the ancestral home. (It still is, to this day). That gave me a wide place to roll over when I did those croc acts which I tended to do very often in those days. It was a safe, secure, warm place to grow up in with my grandfather ("Tatay" as everybody called him) as sole male authority and protector for all of us. He was a loving, tender, soft-spoken authority figure --- too advanced in years at the time to be truly an active, influential force in my young life.

My mother, though a ward herself, had her own rightful place in our small family. She provided for us with her income as a public school teacher. And my grandfather provided for her and her own. And he died when I was 11.

It was Mama who came next in rank. And she did very well, naturally. Mother passed way a while back. Will the natural cycle of life follow?