By: Norberto Betita
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| Flordeliza Gasta Betita-Odtojan |
She was born on August 11, 1937 when our mother was only sixteen years old and christened as Flordeliza Gasta Betita. She is second to have been born out of thirteen siblings. In her younger years, she was the most beautiful and attractive of the women in the family. She was born when life was too difficult because of the global ‘great depression’ and only a little child when the greatest battle ever fought during World War II at the Surigao Strait was at its height during General McArthur’s Leyte landing. The most terrifying roars of American bomber planes, flying above their evacuation places, was such a dreaded part in her life’s experiences.
Although our parents are very supportive of our quest for learning, high school education was too difficult to attain because of its 12 kilometer distance from our place and the non-availability of public transport. Plus the fact that money was too hard to find.
However, despite all the difficulties she struggled to study high school at the Northeastern Mindanao Colleges until she was forced to stop due to an incident in which she collapsed and went on a coma one afternoon at school---4:00PM. She was thought to have been already dead, and was no longer brought to the hospital. But at about or past 10PM, she awakened as if just from being fast asleep.
Although our parents are very supportive of our quest for learning, high school education was too difficult to attain because of its 12 kilometer distance from our place and the non-availability of public transport. Plus the fact that money was too hard to find.
However, despite all the difficulties she struggled to study high school at the Northeastern Mindanao Colleges until she was forced to stop due to an incident in which she collapsed and went on a coma one afternoon at school---4:00PM. She was thought to have been already dead, and was no longer brought to the hospital. But at about or past 10PM, she awakened as if just from being fast asleep.
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| With husband Gerardo Odtojan |
Since then she stopped schooling and trained with our mother the skills in dressmaking. With innate intellectual gift, she’d easily learned the skills. Not long after she became the assistant of our mother in her dressmaking works. She had trained so well that she eventually became an expert dressmaker.
Then trying to find opportunities for work, even just as a house help, she went with our cousin Margie Japzon to the Province of Lanao. Returning home later, a distant relative---Bella Marquida Odtojan, discovered her dressmaking skills and invited her to stay with her family in Mangagoy to earn a living as a fulltime dressmaker. She obliged and went to stay with the Odtojan’s. Her expertise started to shine in the neighborhood and then into the community which in consequence earned for her the trusts of more clients.
Not long after, while more women were attracted to the glamour of her finished dresses, her beauty and personal prettiness also caught the searching eyes of a relative of her landlord. Gerardo Odtojan, a native of Bad-as, Placer, from the same province of Surigao del Norte, her home province, was an engineering graduate and was working at the lumber department of the Bislig Bay Lumber Company, Inc. (BBLCI), which later evolved to become the Paper Industries Corporation of the Philippines (PICOP). From attraction was formed a deep friendship which later developed into a profound desire for courtship. Finally, as was the culture of their times, a “yes I do” was given in answer to a very sincere pleadings, “will you marry me?”
I was only about eight years old and had just completed my first grade in elementary, but I still could vividly remember that day prior to the scheduled wedding day when a large truck came and parked in front of our house filled with oversized cooking utensils, food stuffs, live animals and others. There was also a band. While formal family courtesies was in process, hired cooks started slaughtering animals for the sumptuous wedding feast. The pre-nuptial party ended late while cooking continued uninterruptedly even as the church’s bells rang to signal the beginning of the wedding march and expressions of marital vows on that blessed day of May 6, 1960; until the wedding convoy with a band following arrived at home and the grandiose wedding reception was started to the delight of the guests and the entire neighborhood who had been invited to the celebrations. Such was one very expensive wedding preparations which probably was never duplicated in our hometown. But to my brother-in-law---Gerardo---it was and must have been worth the cost, for throughout their family life, my sister---Flordeliza---had always been a loyal and hardworking partner.
Then trying to find opportunities for work, even just as a house help, she went with our cousin Margie Japzon to the Province of Lanao. Returning home later, a distant relative---Bella Marquida Odtojan, discovered her dressmaking skills and invited her to stay with her family in Mangagoy to earn a living as a fulltime dressmaker. She obliged and went to stay with the Odtojan’s. Her expertise started to shine in the neighborhood and then into the community which in consequence earned for her the trusts of more clients.
Not long after, while more women were attracted to the glamour of her finished dresses, her beauty and personal prettiness also caught the searching eyes of a relative of her landlord. Gerardo Odtojan, a native of Bad-as, Placer, from the same province of Surigao del Norte, her home province, was an engineering graduate and was working at the lumber department of the Bislig Bay Lumber Company, Inc. (BBLCI), which later evolved to become the Paper Industries Corporation of the Philippines (PICOP). From attraction was formed a deep friendship which later developed into a profound desire for courtship. Finally, as was the culture of their times, a “yes I do” was given in answer to a very sincere pleadings, “will you marry me?”
I was only about eight years old and had just completed my first grade in elementary, but I still could vividly remember that day prior to the scheduled wedding day when a large truck came and parked in front of our house filled with oversized cooking utensils, food stuffs, live animals and others. There was also a band. While formal family courtesies was in process, hired cooks started slaughtering animals for the sumptuous wedding feast. The pre-nuptial party ended late while cooking continued uninterruptedly even as the church’s bells rang to signal the beginning of the wedding march and expressions of marital vows on that blessed day of May 6, 1960; until the wedding convoy with a band following arrived at home and the grandiose wedding reception was started to the delight of the guests and the entire neighborhood who had been invited to the celebrations. Such was one very expensive wedding preparations which probably was never duplicated in our hometown. But to my brother-in-law---Gerardo---it was and must have been worth the cost, for throughout their family life, my sister---Flordeliza---had always been a loyal and hardworking partner.
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| Relaxing at home with family pets |
I was privilege to live with them during the summer vacation of 1962. I was supposed to enroll for my fourth grade in the public school of Mangagoy, Bislig, Surigao del Sur. She was then pregnant of her first born son. It was there and during the time of her pregnancy that I witnessed the mounting pressures of the dressmaker’s night. From morning till night, she labored to make sure her commitments to her clients are met. When her husband was on a night shift duty in his work, she worked even till midnight. She healed her conception related nausea by smoking cigarette and filled her thirst with Coca Cola. The demands of her sewing expertise includes dresses, uniforms, curtains and others. Yet in her busiest moments as a dressmaker, she always took time to care for her husband when at home. Her husband, a very humble man, also understood that in their partnership, they are co-equal, hence when he recognized that his wife was too busy dressmaking while at the same time doing household chores, he did the woman’s chores as well, such as, but not limited to laundering and cooking.
Even at the heights of her pregnancy, at the time when the fetus in her womb was already 5 months, she still did sewing dresses. She did her daily routine in dress making and never complaint. She should have reasons to decline her customers or to limit her works to do, after all, they still have no children to provide. Yet she did what was necessary to prepare for the future and especially to make sure that her clients will remain faithful patron of her.
Sometime in 1971, I have again the opportunity to go on vacation at their home. Mangagoy was already flourishing as a barangay. I noticed that she had gotten more and more clients than before. By then she had already four children to care for and pregnant for her fifth child. Yet despite her mounting dressmaking work commitments, she never shook off nor faltered in her motherhood responsibilities to her children and her spousal duties to her husband. As a matter of fact, she should have established her own dress shop and hire other dressmakers, but she did not, knowing that it would seriously affect her motherhood duties. At least with her business at home she was sure that the family was first in her daily agenda before sitting in front of the sewing machine. Her family was central to her life. She had been very lucky to have a very understanding and kind husband who was always true to their spousal and parental partnership.
Even at the heights of her pregnancy, at the time when the fetus in her womb was already 5 months, she still did sewing dresses. She did her daily routine in dress making and never complaint. She should have reasons to decline her customers or to limit her works to do, after all, they still have no children to provide. Yet she did what was necessary to prepare for the future and especially to make sure that her clients will remain faithful patron of her.
Sometime in 1971, I have again the opportunity to go on vacation at their home. Mangagoy was already flourishing as a barangay. I noticed that she had gotten more and more clients than before. By then she had already four children to care for and pregnant for her fifth child. Yet despite her mounting dressmaking work commitments, she never shook off nor faltered in her motherhood responsibilities to her children and her spousal duties to her husband. As a matter of fact, she should have established her own dress shop and hire other dressmakers, but she did not, knowing that it would seriously affect her motherhood duties. At least with her business at home she was sure that the family was first in her daily agenda before sitting in front of the sewing machine. Her family was central to her life. She had been very lucky to have a very understanding and kind husband who was always true to their spousal and parental partnership.
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| With living siblings |
While the family was as ever paramount in her daily routine, sewing seemed to have become the way of recuperating her weary soul. Besides, she wanted to serve her clients with confidence and build a relationship of trust; keeping in balance family duties and earning opportunities. As children are asleep and her husband on his duty shift, the dressmaker’s night continue to echo the timbre of a mechanical sewing machine which to her had long become a sweet music to the ear. She knew then that there is no way that she can be a perfect mother, but throughout those many years of her mothering, she was provided the best opportunities to be such a good one.
Despite her husband’s adequate income as an executive of the Paper Industries Corporation of the Philippines, as Section Head of the Lumber Department, even eventually retiring as Senior Staff member, she continued to labor as a dressmaker. Beyond those weary nights of pedaling the sewing machine was her dreams to help her children attain the necessary education that they wanted to achieve which for her was denied because of poverty. She and her husband, provided all their children the opportunity to go to college. Although not all earned a degree, it was not out of financial incapacity and moral support, but of individual choice. Her unconditional love for her children reverberate the poem “A Mother’s Love” by an unknown author:
Despite her husband’s adequate income as an executive of the Paper Industries Corporation of the Philippines, as Section Head of the Lumber Department, even eventually retiring as Senior Staff member, she continued to labor as a dressmaker. Beyond those weary nights of pedaling the sewing machine was her dreams to help her children attain the necessary education that they wanted to achieve which for her was denied because of poverty. She and her husband, provided all their children the opportunity to go to college. Although not all earned a degree, it was not out of financial incapacity and moral support, but of individual choice. Her unconditional love for her children reverberate the poem “A Mother’s Love” by an unknown author:
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| Her seven children |
There are times when only a Mother’s love
Can share the joy we feel
When something we’ve dreamed about
Quite suddenly is real
There are times when only a Mother’s faith
Can help on life’s way
And inspire in us the confidence
We need from day to day
For a Mother’s heart and a Mother’s faith
And a Mother’s steadfast love
Were fashioned by the angels
And sent from God above
(Author Unknown)
There’s a saying that “Never underestimate the power of a woman with a sewing machine.” Indeed, as years are carried on to the ever changing fashions and styles, the dressmaker remains to be the best and most fitting partner of beauty and glamour. However, more than the fits and fads in the stylistic and enchanting world of trendiness and charm, the dressmaker’s night which was made part of my sister’s productive dynamism was always and ever pointedly attuned to an ever dominant and far more supreme creative power to shape and frame the beauty of her family life.
When her husband died in July 1, 1998, my sister Flordeliza continued to do her trade until she was advised by her children to stop at age 75. She may not have been blessed with material abundance, but she rejoiced with contentment while reflecting on those years of tremendous struggle to raise and rear and educate seven children.
She is now 81 and walking the lonesome pathway reserved for the feeble and weary travelers in their advanced and deteriorated years of life’s journey. Yet her countenance never displayed the common frustrations of the compounding and intensifying physical limitations resulting from old age. She enjoys her remaining years at home under the care of her two unmarried daughters.
On this her 81st birthday celebrations, I do wish for the best of benedictions which God has kept in reserve to be poured out for her from this day and all through the staying time of her mortal life.
HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY MANA FLONG!
Can share the joy we feel
When something we’ve dreamed about
Quite suddenly is real
There are times when only a Mother’s faith
Can help on life’s way
And inspire in us the confidence
We need from day to day
For a Mother’s heart and a Mother’s faith
And a Mother’s steadfast love
Were fashioned by the angels
And sent from God above
(Author Unknown)
There’s a saying that “Never underestimate the power of a woman with a sewing machine.” Indeed, as years are carried on to the ever changing fashions and styles, the dressmaker remains to be the best and most fitting partner of beauty and glamour. However, more than the fits and fads in the stylistic and enchanting world of trendiness and charm, the dressmaker’s night which was made part of my sister’s productive dynamism was always and ever pointedly attuned to an ever dominant and far more supreme creative power to shape and frame the beauty of her family life.
When her husband died in July 1, 1998, my sister Flordeliza continued to do her trade until she was advised by her children to stop at age 75. She may not have been blessed with material abundance, but she rejoiced with contentment while reflecting on those years of tremendous struggle to raise and rear and educate seven children.
She is now 81 and walking the lonesome pathway reserved for the feeble and weary travelers in their advanced and deteriorated years of life’s journey. Yet her countenance never displayed the common frustrations of the compounding and intensifying physical limitations resulting from old age. She enjoys her remaining years at home under the care of her two unmarried daughters.
On this her 81st birthday celebrations, I do wish for the best of benedictions which God has kept in reserve to be poured out for her from this day and all through the staying time of her mortal life.
HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY MANA FLONG!
well said...beautiful piece...
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