The Mayflower

" But I will establish a covenant with you, and you will enter the ark, you and your sons and wife's sons with you." (Genesis 6:18)

Some time in the year 2002, when I visited my brother Bar in Manila, he told me he has a new hobby. He knows how to "weave" a cross-stitch. He showed me the design of "The Mayflower." It was a beautiful cross-stitch template. I asked it right away from him and humbly requested my wife to to do the job. Unknown to my brother, my wife who was pregnant at that time with my second daughter Miel, was also addicted to this. In fact our house was full of finished framed cross-stitch. "The Bride" was one of the "Obra-Maestras" my wife and her mom did which took them several weeks to finish "without toilet privilege." My mother in law has all the materials: needles and pins and threads of all kinds, colors and sizes in this kind of hobby during those years. It was a craze at that time. Even in schools, it was required as project to the pupils and students to get high grades in Home Economics subject.

Every day, I waited patiently what the Mayflower would look like. There were lots of challenges: the cross-stitch has a lot of back-stitches and half-stitches. My wife suffered stiff-necks and double vision that made it more difficult to finish. What a patience in my wife's part. Until finally it was finished. An alive cross-stitch of "The Mayflower".

What is the Mayflower anyway? What made me like it? According to one of our close family friends and church member, it was the ship which the Pilgrims took to sail from Plymouth England going to New England (now America) on September 16, 1620. Aboard the ship were 102 men, women, and children running away from religious persecutions in England. On November 21, the Mayflower dropped anchor in Provincetown, Massachussetts. The Pilgrims drew up THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT. All adult male passengers on the ship were required to sign it. Under this covenant, "government will be based on the consent of the governed" (majority rule), thus an important precedent in the birth of democracy in America and the whole world.

Today our Mayflower is alive...unfaded...hanged on the walls in the sala in our house portraying its waves hammering the ship . Thanks to my wife and my brother bar.