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Storyline: Mother of 11 girls still dreams of college

abs-cbnNEWS.com | 12/08/2008 7:27 PM

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The father of her children is Edu Makabitas. They are not married, but they have been living together 24 years. They met in the disco pub where she was working. Ditas liked him because he was kind, not because of his money. He worked as security for the Intercontinental Hotel. He would take her out, until eventually he took her home with him.

At twenty, she was pregnant—and nearly every other year since then. There are eleven: Adrialita, Maria Andrea, Cecilia, Mary Lyn, Sarah Jane, Mara, Angel, Mujari, Angeline, and little Eggnog, baptized Editha.

They had wanted a son, and had gotten all daughters. They had never used a condom, never thought of it. She says it would be a good thing if people would use them now—it’s difficult having so many children. With so many children, some people are forced to do bad things—steal, kill, and the children will learn the same. She gave up at the eleventh, had a free ligation, because she was tired. Pregnancy, for her, is like always carrying a ball inside your body, and when it pushes itself out, it is like having one foot in the grave.

Edu is now in construction, after being laid off from Intercon. He takes any odd job he can. All the girls, with the exception of the three eldest who are married, still live with them. They are able to survive on money sent home by Adrialita, their twenty-three year old eldest daughter, who is a dancer in Japan. One of her grandchildren is of the same age as her youngest daughter.

None of the girls has gone past high school; only one has graduated. Mary Lyn wants desperately to go to college. Dita feels at least one of her children will go to college, will finish, but she doesn’t know how.

They are happy—there are giggling children who cling to Edu’s arms, Edu himself has a tiny grandson in the crook of his muscular arms. There are times when the children are so hungry that they cry. Sometimes it is Ditas, sometimes Edu, who walks out of their little clapboard home beside a basketball court to hunt for money to borrow or a little work on the side. They always find a way.

She doesn’t regret all her children. Sometimes, she’s calling one daughter and calls another accidentally. Ditas does not know if she is a good mother. It’s difficult to have many children, she says, difficult and happy. When they’re all there, she can’t help but be happy.

(From Chapter 3 of Storyline’s December 5, 2008 episode, Breathe, with Sculptor Peye Jimenez in “Iron Man,” and person with Pompe Disease, Dickoy Magdaraog.)