FORTY-five years ago I joined a feature-writing contest for Quezon City high school students and won first prize for this piece, written when I was 15 years old. The judge was Pura Santillan-Castrence, whose brilliant essays I admired. I recently found this while fixing my printed files. I am publishing this in memory of my late mother, Lilia Relato Remoto, of Oas, Albay:

It has been said that a mother's hands shape the world. From cradle to college and even long afterward, a mother nags, laughs, cries and goads you to be not just what you are but what you can be.

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