Godmothers

*Thank you, Henry Petty, for serving as today’s guest contributor!”

My Godmother, Dr. Estrella Aesjo, had a major influence on me and my cousin (her daughter).  She is a pediatrician in Southern California, but she exhibited such warmth and kindness that it resonated in my being.  Like myself, she is also Filipino.  I guess us Filipinos are made that way.  I also have her to thank for having me Christened and Baptized as a Catholic.  While It took 31 years to fulfill the requirements to become fully Catholic, I thank her for influencing my grandma, who was predominantly Baptist, to go the Catholic way.  Not knocking Baptists, but it means a lot that she had a vested interest in my faith as an infant.

While I write to her and my Godfather regularly, and she has friended me on Facebook, I haven’t actually “spoken” with her since the last time I saw her when me and grandma visited there in 1992-3ish.  There was even a time when I almost was adopted by her, but luckily it never came to that.  I must believe that if I, God forbid, lost everything and had no place to turn, she would still take me in with open arms, or genuinely tell me,”You’re a grown A man – here’s the classifieds, you can crash here while you’re figuring that out.”

So let’s remember the moms around this time, of course, but also remember the other “mother figures” in our lives that aren’t just mommies by bloodline.