Part Two

AFTER spending more than a decade as a journalist-editor in the Philippines, fortysomething Marvic Cagurangan decided to pack her bags in 2005 to work for a newspaper in Guam. Like any overseas Filipino worker (OFW), her reason was purely economic. She has two boys from a previous marriage, 16-year-old Nakni and 14-year-old Ico, who both live with their grandparents. Being apart from them is hard, but she’s thankful she has very supportive parents and siblings.

She recalls the first year of being a single mother: “It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be because I’ve always had a family support. We lived two blocks away from my parents’ house, where my brothers and sister also lived. So it wasn’t like I was all alone. I have two children, one of them has autism. But, honestly, I’ve never ever felt miserable, never resented my situation.”

She considers the financial aspect as the hardest part of being a single mom.

“I wasn’t making that much. When I was working for [the now-defunct but legendary] Today newspaper, I had to freelance here and there. After my editing work at Today, I’d stay up until midnight to finish my tabo [a colloquial term for sideline jobs to supplement one’s income; nowadays it’s called raket].

But still, all the tabos weren’t enough. As her boys grow older, the higher the cost of their education. Her youngest, Ico, has autism and goes to a special school.

“I realized that I would never get any financial support from my kids’ father, who now has his own family, so I decided to take a foreign job. ‘Kaya ’yan, OFW na ’ko. I thank my luck, too, for having worked for a paper like Today, where my bosses and coworkers were also like my own family. Chuchay [Lourdes Molina-Fernandez, now the editor in chief of BusinessMirror] and Lyn [Resurreccion, current Nation and Science editor of BusinessMirror], particularly, were very supportive of me.”

Cagurangan manages to cope being the mother-father to the “two men in her life.” Yes, even when they began to regard girls their age more than mere playmates.

“Frankly, I just see my situation as it is—with no judgment or anything. But I guess any situation that would require a real father-son relationship would be the challenging part for me. My eldest son is now a teenager who starts looking at girls and he’s too shy to discuss those things with me. Although when I was home last March, I hung out with both of them as friends. They’re not kids anymore.”

For four years since she became an OFW, Cagurangan has learned to deal with having long-distance relationship with her boys.

“Thanks to technology, being a long-distance mom is not that big of a deal anymore. The first thing that I do when I get home from work is turn on the computer and buzz my boys. I get to see and talk to my boys every night through a web cam, although, of course, it would feel a lot better to kiss and hug them in person.”

In Guam, like in the Philippines, Cagurangan is a credible and widely respected journalist-editor. She has found a new passion as well, the therapeutic world of visual arts. It all started as a hobby but one day, people began to buy her works.

She simply refers to herself as “a journalist with a paintbrush.” She’s been painting for eight years and has had a couple of group exhibits and one-man shows in Guam. More interesting, in an ongoing exhibit at the Bank of Guam, she displays two of her paintings, Ico’s World and The Mystery of Autism, which she did in collaboration with Ico. In a written bio for the exhibit, she reveals how “she finds relief in her second career—the arts—which permit her the freedom to entertain her imagination and rebel against stifling rules.  The canvas is her playground and colors are her toys.”

Her boys are her major inspiration.

“Being a single mom and being away from them—that’s a double-whammy. It has been a challenge but I have managed well. Probably, it’s partly due to my nature as a cheerful and free-spirited person. ’Yang problema, nakakapangit ’yan. Eh ayokong pumangit!”

For the Guam newspaper, she continues to cover the political and government beats and writes a humor column, titled “Flights,” for which she was voted the best columnist for 2006 in a GU magazine survey.

Nothing beats success.

Next week: Cheryl Serrano

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