Everyday women

We need not go through the nominees for outstanding women of certain organizations and award-giving bodies to find a great female creature and know what she had done to make a difference. Each day of our lives, we meet them and oftentimes these meetings are punctuated by a shy hello, a nod or a smile as each of us rushes somewhere to do things.

These women are those carrying a basin, full of soiled clothes to the nearby river or the middle-aged woman peddling sugar-coated bananas and sweet potato on the streets. These are the very same woman who wake up at the break of dawn, preparing food not only for her family but for other families as well-- as after the children had gone to school, she \"opens\" her tiny store in front of her hut to sell two or three types of viands to those who don't have time to cook. They're not always the women who went to prestigious universities and became doctors, lawyers, CEOs or politicians. They may also be those who barely finished high school but was able to raise a family and have a better by sheer hardwork and dilligence. These women heroes can be the woman who makes rice cakes out of the harvest from their small rice paddy or the one who creates beautiful bags from abaca fibers, all because of the desire to provide well for her family. And while men, or husbands are the ones spending hours in the sea, it is the wife who masterfully divides the catch, saving some for the family while the rest is sold around the village.

To me, this could be my mother who have seemed to master the art of managing her time and have learned to command her body for a faster REM that by just a quick eye-shut, she'll emerge more energetic and ready to take the tasks of the day. These tasks, apart from her obsessive compulsive arrangement and re-arrangement of home furnitures and other superb domestic skills, also includes taking care of my 53-year old father who suffered a stroke ten years ago. On top of that is her job at the health department.

Needless to say, these everyday women are as deserving of our respect as those who has been recognized and rewarded by agencies and organizations for their contribution to the society. After all, they're the strength that keeps together the basic foundation of the society-the family.