I really should have listened to mom. After all, she was, until her death at 85, her own living proof of vanity as a virtue. It involved antidotes that, in her case, at least appeared to delay aging. Picked up from old wives’ tales, these antidotes had not impressed me—not until their efficacy with her became evident as she aged.

Nothing irritated her more than catching me scratching my bulging tummy; obviously I hadn’t lathered it with cocoa butter as she had advised since the beginning of my pregnancy. Scratching indeed sealed my fate: stretch marks forever.

I remember how she turned livid visiting me at the hospital the day after the birth of my first child, her first grandchild, and finding me out of bed. I was in the bathroom shampooing, scooping water from a pail.

“Punas lang!” she admonished, proceeding to lecture me that nobody ever died from not bathing after giving birth. Bathing so soon, in fact, is the worst thing for hair and veins, she said.

A damp-towel bath was all she took herself for an entire month to avoid pasma, the curse manifesting in veiny hands and legs, now upon me.

Lusty chignon

Of course, Mom needn’t have called my attention to her knee-length, dark, shiny hair, combed back neatly and collected into a lusty chignon—her crowning glory. She swore by gugo, the natural root soap she used to wash her hair and the aloe vera plant’s sap as conditioner. She hot-oiled her tresses with coconut oil—fresh, she insisted.

As usual, I had my own silly reasons to not be impressed: I didn’t like to smell like latik—only Prell and White Rain shampoo for me. Mom, in fact, smelled of jasmine, which she wore in bunches in her hair.

Slim until 60, no pasma, no varicose veins, no stretch marks, she must have done right. Her hair had obviously thinned early in her ’80s, but she died still wearing a natural, decent crown—mine is all but lost.

It seemed I couldn’t do anything right by her. Visiting me at home a week after giving birth, she noticed our bedroom air-conditioner aimed at the foot of the bed, the cold air blowing directly toward my legs and indirectly, but all the same dangerously by Mom’s health standards, toward my matris, my womb, again inviting the dreaded pasma.

Now, when my legs feel easily tired from the onset of varicosities, I think guiltily of Mom, and try to redeem myself to her however possible. As she herself did or didn’t do, I don’t wash my feet until I have fully rested them, and I hold them up propped.

Mom’s habits, though, presented a downside in her late and sickly years: Nurses working with an IV needle had a hard time searching for a vein to raise for the occasion. As a consuelo de bobo, my own veins need no prodding; they volunteer themselves.

Mom was nearly brought to tears when, tired of and rendered cross-eyed by plucking one hair at a time, I decided once and for all to shave my armpits. She warned I’d suffer the curse of dark armpits growing coarse pig hair. Mercifully, mere baby powder broke the curse.

Wrinkly hands

Once, watching me bake a pie, she noticed I kept washing my hands too often—before, between and after procedures. She said I should wash my hands only after I was done baking, terrorizing me with prospects of, again, pasma, and throwing in rheumatism, wrinkly hands and split nails for good measure.

I never thought of myself as vain; in fact, I disdained vanity. My first visit to the beauty parlor was at age 15 and, even then, not for any sense of vanity: I went to cut my hair conveniently short for a long study tour in Spain and France after high school. After that, I returned for the same thing—a short haircut, although I submitted myself to an occasional perm. I shampooed my hair every day, again much to Mom’s horror.

I may have tried to do things differently from Mom, because I didn’t want to be thought competing with her, an absolutely losing proposition. Now I begin to see the value of vanity as Mom preached it. It may be a bit late in the day, but immediate and decisive steps may somehow save the day for me.

A glossy claims that sometimes, makeup works wonders for an older woman. Immediately, out went my expired foundation and other outdated cosmetics, and soon my daughter and I were going counter to counter searching for the “right makeup” for me.

I settled for a primer with sunscreen and a compressed-powder foundation, an eyebrow-eyeliner and blusher in two shades, all natural—“organic-based,” as they say. Not cheap, but in my case definitely essential.

Alas, everything Mom warned me about is coming to pass. It’s not about just looking good, to be sure, but about looking good as a consequence of good health. Still, I’m grateful for small mercies. I’m able to walk not only unaided, but fairly apace, and I still stand unshrunken at five-two, much to the amazement of friends whom I now tower over.

I do my best to look worthy of being my mother’s daughter. As a form of damage control, I don’t hesitate to resort to whatever helps—more regular visits to the beauty parlor, body massages, or colon cleansing. I’ve learned to live with small aches and pains.

Still, I can’t help wishing I had listened to Mom.