I RECENTLY JOINED a seminar-workshop on Self Awareness and, in the exercise on getting in touch with thoughts and feelings, I realized how exhausted I felt. I had this image of myself running all over the place trying to get things done and I was all but out of breath. Had I committed myself to too many things? Or was I just a poor and lousy manager of time? Thinking that it could be the latter, I quickly looked over my son’s collection of self-improvement tapes and chose several that dealt with goal-setting and time management.

I listened to about four tapes but the one that impressed me most was Stephen R. Covey’s First Things First. It was on time management like the rest but it asked me questions which none of the other tapes did: What are the truly important things in my life? Are they receiving the time and attention they deserve? Have I closed the gap between what is deeply important to me and how I spend my time?

I had earlier read Covey’s best-selling book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and totally agreed with the author’s approach to solving personal and professional problems. Covey emphasized time-honored principles like fairness, integrity, honesty and human dignity. I was happy to note that he used the same principle-centered approach to managing time in his First Things First by teaching a person how to balance his life.

Covey told of a conversation he carried on one evening with his daughter Maria who had just had a baby. Maria confided in him: “I’m so frustrated, Dad. You know how much I love this baby, but I’m just not getting anything else done.”

Covey said he understood how the situation could be so frustrating to his daughter, who was bright, talented, capable and involved in many worthwhile projects. As they talked, both father and daughter came to the realization that Maria’s frustration was essentially a result of her expectations, over which she had control. For the moment, however, only one thing was important: that Maria enjoyed her baby.

Covey encouraged Maria to relax and enjoy the nature of her new experience, to let the baby feel her joy in the role of mother. He told her: “Don’t even keep a schedule. Forget your calendar. Throw away your planning tools, they only induce guilt. This baby is the FIRST thing in your life right now. Just enjoy the baby. Don’t worry. Be governed by your internal compass, not by some clock on the wall... No one else can love and nurture this child the way you can. All other interests pale in comparison to NOW.”Covey’s story brought back to me scenes from my childhood and my mother’s precious gift of presence to us, her children.

I GREW UP in the 1950s in a historic town in the North, the fifth of seven children (a younger brother died when I was six). Life in our family was pretty simple. My father was the breadwinner and my mother a full-time housewife. My siblings and I attended a Catholic school run by a French congregation. We walked to and from school, a good 15 minutes away, and we also went home for lunch. I was usually home before 5 p.m. after a full day in school. As soon as I went through our gate, I would yell at the top of my voice, “Ma, I’m home.” My mother would answer back with her “Here I am” wherever she was in the house. Rain or shine, my mother was there. She could be roasting sweet potatoes for merienda, feeding the few pigs we kept in a pen in the yard, or ironing our school uniforms. But she was always there.

Even now, whenever someone asks me what I remember best about my childhood, I never fail to refer to the fact that my mother was always around, always there when we needed her. With so many of us to take care of, she was kept busy with household chores and helping my father make ends meet. But she was a steady presence for us.

I can remember only one time that she was not around when I came home from school. I was then nine years old and in the fourth grade. I arrived home to find my father cooking the evening meal, with my two brothers assisting him (my two older sisters were then studying in the city). My mother had to leave for Manila with my youngest sister because my grandmother was dying. She was away for no more than a couple of weeks, but I held my breath each night during those two weeks and counted the days until she got back.

The memory of holding my breath and counting the days reminds me of my little friend Gino. Gino is six years old and enrolled in a nursery school. He lives with his mother in a house of their own. His father --like many other Filipino fathers -- works in Saudi Arabia.

I first met Gino when his mother came to me for a counseling session. He had come with his mother from SM Megamall, where his mother had bought him a videotape of The Lion King. He showed off to me their purchase, quick to point out that he had many more in their house. And he had many toys besides. Just the Christmas before, his father had brought him to the duty-free shop so he could choose from the wide array of toys the ones he wanted. This had happened, too, the Christmas before last.

Gino has been with his father for no more than five months in all of his six years of life, when his father would be home for the Christmas break. His father’s home visits, however, are always busy ones -- spent with his grandparents, his mom, his father’s friends. His father rarely talks to him. He is somebody who comes home at Christmas and brings him gifts. That is all he could tell me of his father. Gino spends 11 months of the year holding his breath, waiting for his father and his toys to arrive.

I guess there are other children who feel like Gino, a child for instance whose mother has gone to HongKong or whose father is a seaman. But a child who is living with parents could feel just as bereft. Like Kim, another little friend.

Kim, an 11-year-old girl, was brought to me for assessment because she was doing so poorly in school. her mother suspected that Kim suffered from a learning disability and she wanted me to confirm her suspicions.

Kim has turned out to be an intelligent and creative child. Her problems in school have little to do with her intellectual capabilities. Her parents are separated and she is now living with her mother and two older siblings. For about three years before the separation, her parents would have fights which would end up with her mother leaving the conjugal home, taking all her children with her. On these occasions, Kim would miss school. Sometimes, the situation would become so bad that she would be able to attend only half of the regular days in a schoolyear.

When I started seeing Kim, I was struck by how ‘talkative’ she was. She had an endless stream of stories -- about her family, her father whom she said she missed so much, her schoolmates. She made up stories about children, beaten up by parents, children who got no help with homework, children abandoned by siblings. I found out later that the themes of her stories had very much to do with her own situation. Since the family was so troubled, each one with problems of his own, nobody paid any attention to Kim. She needed help not only with her homework, since she missed school so often, but she also needed someone with whom to share her stories and to help her cope with what was going on in her life.

It was very obvious that Kim did not get enough attention from anyone. Not from her mother, who sold real estate and kept such a busy and erratic schedule she had very little time for her children. Not from her sister, who was also busy with her job. Nor from her brother, who preferred the company of his peers.

I suppose Gino’s father and Kim’s mother have only the best interests of their children at heart, dreaming of a magical tomorrow for their families for which they are willing to make tremendous sacrifices. But Gino and Kim cannot look that far ahead -- they only really wish that their parents would show as much concern for today as they do for the future.