Adios, Maria Clara (Goodbye, Maria Clara)
by Patricia May Labitoria
Mothers have an idea of the lady they want their daughters to be. For my mom, it is being refined, graceful, and spotless clean; having a touch of make-up on the face, a dainty dress on, small purse, and walking on some doll shoes. But since I came to Seattle I have become nothing like the woman my mother expected me to be. Instead I strut on the streets mostly wearing a clunky, steel-toed work boots, muddy jeans that has not been washed for a week, and a bulky backpack which most of the times is smeared with mud too. As I go to work I do not remember if I brushed my hair.
Rugged and dirty, I know my mother will not be proud of the way I look but this has become my manner of dressing as I entered the environmental restoration world where we pull bulbous blackberry roots from the ground and scalp landscapes of intruding ivy vines all day, rain or shine. When I was in the Philippines she has time and again expressed her annoyance to this look telling me to confine my outdoorsy vibe to the mountains and look nice when I am in the lowland. But in Seattle where I work on hands-on environmental restoration, it cannot be helped: my life revolves around the dirt, earth and plants.
As I go through days of fighting with aggressive weeds that take over the land and dig holes for local plants, I learned the tools of our trade ranging from small pruners that can be kept inside a pocket to heavy and complicated power tools with engines that gurgles gas. Kept inside two sheds and a whole workshop these metal instruments gleam with sharp edges and a threat of serious and bloody injuries if improperly handled.
Dealing with menacing tools and doing heavy outdoor work is a realm unknown to most women. It is terra incognita because as ladies we grew up learning that these tasks are for men and are too dangerous for us. Yes, I was born and raised as a woman in a country where equality of men and women is celebrated but gender ideals and roles are still ingrained in our individual psyche and culture. We have women presidents, CEOs and female leaders of their trades and organizations but in a deeper look one can find that we still adhere-unconsciously- to a phantom female figure that we regard as a perfect Filipina.
The most iconic ideal of the dalagang Filipina in our culture is Maria Clara from Jose Rizal, Philippine National hero’s novel Noli Me Tangere (Touch me not) and El Filibusterismo (The Filibuster). She was drawn out of the book as a pretty lady clad in a heavy gown that conceals her body and with a face behind a fan- a gesture of being very mahinhin (gentle). Maria Clara sits meekly in a corner, and is merely seen more than heard- a quietness that alludes to being mabait (nice/ does not make any troubles).
As girls grow up, it will become noticeable that these traits associated with the fictional character are the same ones lauded upon by our mostly conservative society. Going against it, a girl will have the oral reprimand “kababae mong tao” loosely translated to “you are a woman and should not be doing that”- words that can echo all throughout her life delineating more the roles and boundaries she should not cross.
“Kababae mong tao” will usually be heard if a woman spends so much time outside and goes home late; if she hangs out and be friends with more guys than girls; if she is brass and loud; if she doesn’t sit with her legs crossed; if she doesn’t learn to do house chores. While not derogatory, the words put women inside a fence and becomes a code of conduct to how she is supposed to be.
Rizal never intended for Maria Clara to be the paragon of what the Filipina is, but alas, she seeped into popular culture and has become the epitome of perfection that most of us have to grapple with all our lives.
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The image of the ideal Filipino woman was what I was thinking the first time I handled hand tools at work, the first time I went inside the shed where a dizzying array of them hung like some scene from a horrific, serial-killer movie. The Maria Clara in me, nourished for years and years was threatened by all the shovels, saws of different size and shapes, rakes, axes, picks, and many others I don’t know the name of. Women in the Philippines just don’t dabble in this kind of work. This is the realm of men, only for men. What have I gotten myself into? Can I even lift those tools and work with them all day? How many fingers will I lose at the end of this?
We then walked to the other shed and was greeted by the brushcutters with their metal blades ready to cut whatever was on its way. I felt that maybe I made the wrong choice: restoration work is not for me. As I looked around my new environment there was only one thought: I was in a man’s world and I should not be here.
But then I remembered to look at the other people around: there were women here from all over the U.S and from all over the world. They don’t look scared. I don’t know what they were thinking, I don’t know if in their culture there are the same limitations that I feel I have but they look driven, ready to learn, ready to take on the tools and use them. There was nothing to do but follow the vive.
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Using a power tool, especially a brush cutter is a treat for most of us working in the field. You open the gas lid, pour the fuel, close the lid and turn the engine on. It takes a lot of effort to start it but once the engine roars and the blade starts rotating 7,000-10,000 RPMs, the day becomes an adrenaline filled adventure. Not only does the tool gives you power to clear more enemy bushes that grow up to 10 feet high, it also gets a lot of work done in a shorter amount of time.
Sure it was scary at first but as I sway my body to groove with the mechanical whirring of the tool- my tool, for it has become now an extension of my body- I feel myself destroying not the prickly blackberries bush, but finally, the boundaries, the fences and ideals that my culture put upon my gender generations after generations; the one that says certain jobs are for men, certain jobs are for women; the one that says I should not be outdoors because it is dangerous. They are being torn down and the one that is doing it is myself. I say goodbye to Maria Clara as a new way of thinking tells me to welcome new ideas and open my mind to the many ways of the world.
After the area is cleared and the blackberry canes that took over the land are reduced to small stalks it will be time to hand- pull the roots out. I used to favor the shovel but there are many times when I cannot get it in the soil so I switched to the pick-mattock, a tool that has a pick on one side and an adze on another. It is a heavy tool but the woman in me can lift it now. I pick it up, raise it, and let my hand glide on the wooden handle until the pick-side fall through, breaking the ground. I then reach for the root that I will pry and throw away in the compost pit together with all the fears and outdated ideals I used to have.
Looking at a field cleared of constricting blackberry bush and ivy is fulfilling after a hard day’s work: what used to be an area choking full of weeds is now a clean slate where we plant local flora such as maples, cedars, and ferns; in another area we just saved old trees from being completely covered by vines.
These trees and plants, the land- they are free now of those that heavily hinders their growth. Finally, free now to be the thriving forests they are always meant to become. And at the end of all the backbreaking work of environmental restoration, I felt that I, too, have grown with the land. I am a new person stripped of all that can hinder growth, a woman who can thrive in this world.
I do not have Maria Clara’s grip on me now- that phantom is in the compost.
About
Visit Pat's site at: http://www.greenwayfarer.com
A graduate of BS Environmental Planning and Management, Pat has been involved in cosmology research,environmental education, development of a Philippine Green Building Rating System, and wetlands conservation.
She was also a corps member and then a volunteer specialist in Earth Corps, a Seattle, WA non-profit where she did hands-on environmental restoration work.
She is the Communications Assistant for project NexCities.