I am Maria. I entered the “job” of being a daughter-in-law at 26. At that time, my husband’s family had already gone through many hardships. My mother-in-law had died young, leaving my father-in-law, Tatay Ramón, to raise four children alone. He grew rice and vegetables all his life in Nueva Écija, without a stable job or pension.
By the time I married his son, almost all of Tatay Ramón’s children already had families of their own and rarely visited him. The rest of his life depended almost entirely on my husband and me.
I often heard the neighbors whisper:
“What is that? She’s just a daughter-in-law, but she looks like his servant. Who would take care of a father-in-law for so long?”
