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Last Wednesday, October 21, Rica Peralejo shared the good news of her six-year-old son Philip graduating and moving to Grade 1.
The ceremony only took place recently as it was postponed a few months earlier thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.
When she was looking at her son’s photo wearing a graduation sash and holding up his certificate, the former actress suddenly had a hard realization about motherhood.
“How can you be grade one now and how can you be seven in three months? All the numbers are going up, yours and mine, but all that means is that there is less time,” she wrote. “From the moment you were born, it was always about letting you go. My only prayer is that you’d still like to meet me for deeps and sillies even when you have no longer any need from me.”
When the time comes that Philip is independent, the celebrity mom hopes that he will understand that his parents would always want to be with him, even when he grows up.
“You are my firstborn and equal, a son and a good friend. Love you, Philip. You are so precious to me,” she said.
Rica confessed that this graduation milestone of Philip is “a simple ritual, a simple requirement” yet admitted that it brought up a lot of emotions that made her reflect on motherhood.
“Moms have to manage many silent cries. And we often have to quickly wipe the tears away as we get up and tend to need after need, lest they see and ask why,” she explained. “For how can we tell them it is because you? You are the reason behind these salty drops streaking my harried face. Tears of joy mostly, yes, but also some of sadness, some kind of advanced grief or mourning for those days when things would no longer be the same.”
“When I am safe from stepping on Legos and the books are always arranged, with nothing much to do but gather dust,” she concluded.
Rica and her husband, Pastor Joseph Bonifacio, welcomed their son Philip last January 17, 2014. Their second son, Manu, was born last June 9, 2019.
Known as a child and teen star back in the 1990s, Rica last appeared in the film Paano Na Kaya starring Kim Chiu and Gerald Anderson in 2010, and the talk show Mommy Hacks last 2015.
