MANILA, Philippines - The way my father told the story, he was curious why a woman like my mom was not hedged in by the men at the dinner dance where he first saw her. She was striking, moved well on the dance floor and was quite attractive. When he finally got introduced, he realized she intimidated men. She was smart, confident and disinterested in trying to make an impression.

They became friends before taking it a step up and if anything, she became a stronger woman because he was confident enough to let her develop her potentials. Theirs was a marriage of equals.

She chose to be a full-time wife, putting aside a career to manage the home and be a mother to four daughters. It was a choice that she affirmed over the first 19 years of married life.

This impressed me that a woman with her abilities could comfortably decide not to pursue the path of a successful professional or entrepreneur. During her leisure, she sewed, knitted and quilted; she crafted leather jewelry; did Chinese brushwork and baked the best bread which we came home to after school.

For a while, she taught kindergarten after completing her second college degree, but the demands of being a teacher competed with being there for her family so she set aside teaching.

Mom was a free spirit who preferred denims and rubber shoes to sprucing up but I remember how elegant she was when she accompanied dad to his office affairs. She preferred to go camping and was in her element on an adventure trip when her side of the family went island-hopping on a cattle boat they hired one summer. Dad liked to travel in style and we returned to the same islands the following year on a yacht. I caught my mom?s wistful look as we waved to my uncles camped on the beach but she did him proud in her hostess gown, delicately handling the canapés served for cocktails in the company of diplomats.

Her life was an eloquent lesson on what it meant to be a wife. The evening before my wedding, she quietly said, ?Be everything your husband needs you to be.?

Widowed at 42 years old, she had given him the best years of her life and had no regrets. Her wisdom, passed on in a single line and expressed eloquently in the course of her life, has contributed to making my own marriage of 24 years the happiest of my life. She had successfully communicated the value of this vocation and the pricelessness of the person we commit ourselves to till death do part.

From the book ?Honor Thy Mother,? published by Rosa ?Bing? Carrion