I thought

the babies will now be Ate and Kuya

It has been years it seems.
Now that I visit, it feels like I am a stranger discovering things on pages that I wrote.

So many things have happened.
I thought they were the same story repeatedly happening to me.

There were no words for a long time.
I thought I was a wretch and my days were extraordinarily ordinary.

What was I up to?
I thought I was not doing anything because I was working.
Picking my nose and the pieces of my life peppered with many beginnings.

I thought I did not know how to write all these
because there was nothing to write.
but as I tried to grasp in words the moments that fleeted by

I thought that I have to write again.

To write about my abundant blessings is making me fizzy inside.
Here's why.

the babies are growing.  they are incessantly talking and learning.
the toddlers are tall and fat and they are very funny and very sensitive.
there are new additions to the brood.  a baby girl waiting to be born anytime.
and another on the way in October!

So much to write about I realize now, while Kiera is teaching Golda how to keep vigil at night.

maderwud and some truths

There is a children's story about a duckling or a chick who  went around the farm looking for his mother.  He saw a horse and asked:  are you my mother?  He met all kinds of animals and asked all of them the same question before he finally, at least found his parent or maybe just got adopted by a mom who really could not tell anymore if she lost a chick or a duckling or gained one more! Readily, this lost fellow was taken "under the wings" of a gullible fowl!

I can't blame this chick or duckling for getting confused, for how can you really tell from among the hens that are clucking or the ducks that are quacking which one is yours?

I really cannot understand for I have never been there, how nannies or yayas are able to love someone else's child completely and many times over than the real mother?

There are  siblings who sacrifice their own dreams for their other siblings and will not in the world count the cost.  They know nothing else, not even the word "sacrifice", because there is no time to mope.  It just happened that their mother or father gave birth and that's all. There was no choice left for the "good" child.

These are stories of motherhood in different contexts and personas.  One does not have to be a mother to give enduring and heroic love. In the same manner that you would be lucky to have a great mother, one is cursed to have a very BAAAD one!

Today, on our way to Shangrila to get some clothes for Justo,  the topic of becoming a mother came up in our conversation.  It started with the hamsters that Jacob and Jose are now crazy over.  I don't remember if someone said that he is the mother of Fluff and Muff, that the concept of  "boy mother" was once more mentioned.  This idea came from Jacob in our nightly bedtime stories where I would tell about a T-rex egg (Jose) that found its way to a brontosaurus' (Jacob) life.  Here in this story, Jacob took care of the T-rex Jose. Then  Jacob would say, "I take care of him because I am the "boy mother".  Then they will act out a situation with pillows and blankets dramatizing scenes from the "Land Before Time". 

Anyway, Jose asked today while crouched on my lap:  "What's a boy mother?"  "A boy mother is like our story of the T-rex and a brontosaurus," I said.  "The mother is not a girl but a boy who takes care of a baby just like a real mother would." 

"Who's 'maderwud' Ima?

(It would help if you know that before this, Jacob complained of a headache and Jose echoed immediately that "I av a eggache too!""

"Maderwud" is not all about being great and enduring.  It is something that happens because you have to do it, otherwise your young will go wandering around looking for his mommy and finding a "tikbalang" instead.  Motherwud is not always the way pictures show it or stories tell it.  All the more it is not as sweet as how Hallmark depicts it.  It is about getting up in the morning, dragging yourself to the kitchen on hard and difficult days, cook breakfast no matter what.  One does not always feel the love overflowing, nor smiles radiating from a kind motherly face.  A mother is an ordinary person doing a job that is sometimes greater than her/himself.  Some mothers would even have to take anti depressants just so they can look at their babies!

For all the wrong and right things, we "maderwuds" reach the point in our lives when we are halfway there and we cannot believe that our children have grown and that we have actually nurtured human beings if not monsters or gremlins. 

Just thinking outside the box.

my son Vitty with daughters Sofia and Ziva

Daddy and my older sister, Ellen

Happy Mother's Day my beloved mommy-Mary, sister Ellen, daughters Ana & Marie, sis in law Fay, Jessie, Tpie and Eva and everyone who came from a mother- let us toast a hard-boiled egg!!!!!!!

my brother Emmanuel and daughter Jodie

Sugar and Ana

Sugar and Juaqui

Sugar and Vitty

Jasmin at 91 watching her daughter Roxy with new pups

N.B.  The moms are not in the pictures because they were busy taking the picture. :)

mornings before a crazy day begins

 

foggy

 naked in the sun

smokey

34 first wedding anniversaries

Today i write a love song
A love song of me and mine.

Somewhere in the old boxes of time
a song so sweet, a memory of a line
a love song i hum in my mind.

 "Desmond says to Molly girl I like your face..."

In a campus in Diliman I was found,
a hippie flower child
Of organic beginnings
In gingham shirt
And stone washed Levi's.

a line from Joe Black says it all...
He was struck by a lightning
and started levitating
can you imagine
this Sugar of mine?

Brains and brawns coated in dark skin
while I, luminous in pinkish white
with eyes critical and wits so quick
maimed the hulk, in muted silence.

I am singing this love song
in the soft, misty mornings 
when the dawn is bursting
with the sun's first rays.
"obladi, oblada life goes on bra (?)"

My love unknowing, he sleeps in tender snoring
that I am singing this love song of mine,
"obladi, oblada"
He is definitely going to make it 
his record breaking 34th year of amnesia!

I don't want him to remember!
Because he is sweet that way, my "sugar, sugar"
No saccharine wedding anniversaries
My type of thing after 3 decades and 4,
and why should we bother?
We love each other
in a very unfashionable way!

...and so we were wed after 4 years of courtship
a true Filipina was I, a galant Pinoy Pele was he
on that day, 34 years to be exact-
wed by an old. bald guy in a cathedral called San Agustin.

... while his girl watched from the last pew...
 whhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatttttttt???????!!!!!!!!!!

the groom: a little bit like vitty and juaqui and some parts like ana 

the bride:  gown by Auggie Cordero, make up by Jesi Mendez

( I mean the priest's, not the groom's)
YEESSs!! (shrieking from the audience)
...in pious whispers, the women of Naic hissed ...

and who would not suffer from amnesia hahahahahhahahha!!!
( I mean the groom not the priest)

and this is what's true... this love song of his...
"the first time ever I saw your face..."
would be his last...
after waking up from his hypnotic trance
he woke up abused and harassed every night...
to feed and burp
the babies.

and as he got up from bed this morning - this is another day
what's the fuss?
Jacob presses the button of his fire truck
And the day begins
again...

and tonight, we will have roast duck!!
Cheers!

HEDCen: Morning Assembly

Today in school, I had a big, tattered box brought to the assembly for everyone to see.

2 gray school uniforms with molds growing on chocolate stains
a backpack with a week-old lunch inside
water bottles still with fingerprints on them
a shoebox with trinkets or left-overs of some school project
a cloth bag with soccer shoes
bags
more bags
jogging pants
PE uniforms
spoons and forks
dirty socks
folders
notebooks...

and brains left and completely forgotten for days  by the absent-minded owners...

All of these items LOST and UNCLAIMED.


Aaaahh! School!

Apple

I have owned and used Apple almost ever since I was introduced by force of circumstances to learn to use a computer.  My first and only PC conked out on me in a matter of few months- it made all the excuses to not operate and cooperate, hahahahaha!!!

I have had a desktop blueberry Mac, a blueberry laptop, a more serious granite powerbook, a MacBook, and iphones from the first edition to what i use right now, in a span of 2 decades.

Why??

Computers scared me and I saw a very friendly countenance with the playful blueberry desktop.  I basically learned how to use the computer on my own, the only reason why I broke my first and only PC as I have said, in a matter of months.  That blueberry mac started my love story with Mac.  

And I did not bother to know Jobs behind the job...  until now.

I like his story.  I like his work.  I know he'd like me too.  Love at first sight.



Ipad for Christmas? how about birthday?  wishlist...

Christmas in the making

The beginning of the congea season.

A festive table setting

and presents in red and green


angel wings on my garden

signs that Christmas is in the making!

birds are waiting...

lest I forget: for Sofia Soleil, my first star

remembering...

        skin
        eyes

       hair
       sound

       scent

remembering now because
another skin
another eyes
will share the same bright sky

another voice will be heard.


...remembering the joy of the first born star!

tiny, delicate fingers
wisps of sunkissed hair
wing-like lashes
cheeks of cherries...


and now, I remember you all over again when I saw your twin star
so much like you
and yet different.

remembering you in my memories of sunny days
and starlit skies.

A HEDCen Story: Sometimes, the sky is pink

...or orange or lilac but not always blue, and ladies and gentlemen, we are all under that one big sky!!  

One foreigner may not like the concept of "destereotyping" colors.  He hated the pink polo that his son had to wear on Mondays and Wednesdays.  He  could not contain his displeasure and disgust as he wrote about it in his blog.

We have different opinions, contrasting in fact.   He insists on enrollment.  We said that it is unhealthy.   

Jacob in his pink uniform

His child's school is his second home.  It is not wise to bring him to a place where the values and beliefs at home do not meet.

We really want him to consider other schools but if this is a way to open him up to see that colors do not choose who will wear them -  and that commercialism and consumerism brought this limited and illogical prejudices and stereotyping of colors, then maybe it is worth giving it a second chance. 


We remain to continue to raise plump, juicy, bright and happy children regardless - whether it is snowing or not. 

one moment without voices

One moment of blessing

is

waking up in the early morn

when

the sun is half-awake

and 

not fully risen.

someone 

woke up like 

the happy kingfisher 

in the river nearby.

 someone

heard the morning voice

sweet like the dewdrops

and rose

sleepily like a 

puppy.

 and woke the 

sleeping bear 

snoring heavily.

 One moment 

before the sun rises

one moment

before they

are

big themselves 
like 

the sleeping bear.

.

precious 

is

this moment now.

A Warning

If we will only listen, this bird has a message.  This message was not created by the bird.  Have we forgotten that we made this sign and the message inside the sign? Yet this bird will try everything to call our attention to their eventual destruction- and the world for that matter and use our own devices, our own words to say something very important.

I recommend a Nobel Peace prize for Mr. Sea Gull.

(but what is it that i have been hearing about you?  you like cheese flavored doritos? )

details

what would your details be? a colorful caterpillar amidst leaves and roses?

handstitches, pockets and tiny glass beads?

details on an old curtain stitched and shirred to create another version of the same material

details of a dream expressed on a cafe's wall

or details printed on a baby's skin that will forever belong to him and that will be the footprints he will leave wherever he goes.

when we tell a story, the details make it a different story from all the other stories.  our lives are marked by the details that would add up to a quilt of images that we hope we can always remember...

do you witness the details of your "love" as accurately as the bees do with their flowers?

we are not a boring pattern if we look closely.  if we call forth silence, beauty will unfold before our unbelieving eyes.

look at yours.  what are these details that make you a work of art?