The New Kid
October 28, 2009
I transferred Max to a new and big school just last month, I was scared how it would be for her as the new kid. On her first day, I settled in a small sofa outside the directress’ office sorta like a waiting area near her classroom, “Ma’am, it would be best if you won’t be here tomorrow so Maxine can adjust right away.” Right. Short of saying, “So YOU can adjust right away, Mommy.” So the next day I just drove around school, stopping every five minutes in front of the playground until the security guard approached me, “Ma’am, andun po yung parking area.” Oo alam ko okey, pinapanood ko lang yung anak ko, new student kasi sya e alamo ba yun. Baka kasi awayin sya ng mga kaklase nya or baka kurutin ng teacher. Teka teka teka, bakit ka nga ba nangingialam? E kung ikaw kaya ang ihagis ko sa parking area?! Di mo ba naiintindihan, nanay ako okey! WOKEY!
“Ah okay, salamat ho manong.”
I watch Max watch the world. Watch her make friends. Watch her face trying to understand me, listening in such a real way it is almost heartbreaking. I watch and wait for her to answer back about a world she is obviously so interested in, sensitive to. Like a miniature sage.
“Mom, how come there’s no moon tonight?” “How come it rains?”
“I don’t know baby…”
Because I really don’t know. I know nothing of moons and why sometimes they appear white in the daytime, lingering in the mornings while it should only appear at night. And that rain is precipitation but it is just too boring to say that. In fact, one day she will find that I know very little. That I know nothing, really. And yet, now, I feel compelled to give her answers…
“Moon is just playing hide-and-seek with the stars and I think Vega is it!” “You know, it rains when the bluefairy cries…”
I’m still learning, Max. Or someday you will tell me. I don’t know if this is the right approach. But I’m learning and trying and figuring it out as I go. Just as you are with your speech and your songs and your life. And I still can’t believe you exist. It has been four years and I guess I figured I would be used to you by now. But sometimes when I pick you up from school there is a moment where I open the door and think, did I really have a child? Is this a dream?
And then you appear with hair all over your face your hairclip missing, with dirty white uniform and a half-eaten sandwich in your lunchbox and a toque made of paper, glued on both ends, you told me you cooked in school and you’re a chef now and yes, there you are. I remember now.
Moments have passed. Life shape-shifts. You grow up. I remember our past and cannot believe I have so easily forgotten much of where you’ve been.. I have photos to remind me. And memories. And old things. Did you really fit into those crocheted booties? And I never knew you had such shiny eyes until it lit up when you first laid eyes on a real elephant. Big Mama loved you. Shucks man, I couldn’t believe I could see thru your soul. If only I could take her home just for you, a pachyderm in the backyard would be really cool! Yeah, I think so, too.
Happy fourth birthday Maxxiebear, loving you always like an insane person.
Mama
P.S.
Here are some photos of some of your firsts. I cried and cried when you made that major decision to grow up.
Featuring M vs M: THE FIGHT
September 14, 2009
When it comes to moods Merl is black or white, so transparent, has no pretensions. With me, I am gray plus good at blocking pain. No one would know if I’m mad or sad. I’m the actor who sometimes doesn’t know herself either. When the husband gets into my nerves I’m a succulent plant that absorbs and absorbs and absorbs. I hate confrontations and fights. My inner self wants to scream at him but no voice comes out except for a sweet, melodious tone, “Daddy one more time nalang magagalit na talaga ako sayo…” I give warnings when I reach boiling point. A gentle word turns away wrath… A gentle word turns away wrath… A gentle word… I am programmed like a Stepford Wife. But like any other machine once in a while I get glitches too…
…That’s when we fight. He’s always good at philosophical views and the ifs-therefores argument and critical thinking, like he studied under Plato in the Acaedemy or something, while I stutter because my reasoning does not correspond. I hate it! I’m an F minus minus minus. Damn that he knows me so well. When we fight and I’m losing words and he’s still pretty much loaded I wonder why he cares to fight back and doesn’t let me just get away with it. Maybe he’s a masochist; maybe he enjoys watching me while I completely lose it…. On the other hand why do I get angrier when he doesn’t fight back? Duh.
So when he’s mad, he gets his drill and makes holes on the walls, gets the wrench and does plumbing, digs the soil and prunes the plants. It has been months since he last touched his house project. He has found the perfect opportunity to avoid the silence after the word war. Because there’s a ton of not looking at one another and walking in wide distances so as not to get too close to each other in this small area of space.
When we fight, there’s unconscious parenting competition. A scene at the beach: “Max it’s time to leave the water the sun is too hot you might get burned…” and the little tyrant wouldn’t budge like she is super-glued in the sand. I turn up the volume and try one more time and another and another until I lose my patience… Then Merl would go, “Come on Max, do it for Daddy…” Then as if she is suddenly sprinkled with pixie dust, she starts to rise like a possessed voodoo princess. He’s out-parenting me! He’s on superdad mode and doing it on purpose! Eventhough I know he isn’t. I just wanna think he is.
Merl and I don’t really fight, or maybe I just don’t keep records. The only thing I remembered was when I missed the exit of C5 elevated u-turn slot – thrice – and he was so freaking mad since we had to go all the way around and back over and over again – the only part of my life that I felt so genuinely stupid and didn’t wanna admit it.
“Sinabi ko na kasi sayo beforehand na ayoko nga mag-drive e! I’m pulling over!” (Pride)
“ANO BA! BAWAL TUMIGIL DITO SA FLYOVER!”
“Alam ko OKAY!” (Pride + Lie)
And then after so many hours gone to waste of not talking I ask if he’s mad at me which is quite obvious but I still ask. And he starts his monologue and I pretend to listen but in fact I couldn’t listen because I’m just glad that we’re REALLY talking now. I cry. He hugs me. I cry some more. I talk and talk until I become tired of listening to my voice, because when we fight I become a manic motivational speaker, he becomes tranced.
Then we forget why we are angry in the first place.
We become happy and we wanna dance and shout or change the world or something. And we figure that the night is still young…
Happy Anniversary, dude…
Then we cuddle. Happily married people share not so pretty moments. That what seems to be personal seems to be universal. Fighting is such a complicated dance that when you finally get the complicated steps right at the end there is such a good feeling of relief. There’s really no solution; it’s just a decision to move on. We’re boxers fighting in identical shorts.
After a fight.
The house sparkles.
Fin.
I Want to Go to Heaven, But…
August 3, 2009
…She’s crying because she misses her Mom who is now in heaven.
“Just like your Mom?”
Yup. I cried just like that lady when my Mom went to heaven because I miss her, too. Max do you know that someday Mama will go to heaven? Do you want me to go to heaven?
Looked down on the floor then softly whispered, “…Then I will be crying, too.”
Have You Witnessed a Miracle?
July 9, 2009
Having a baby is not always as blissful, as hallelujah-moment, as light and as cute as a Johnson’s Baby commercial. Some have high-risk pregnancy when a mother is put on bed-rest for weeks and even if it may sound like a mini-vacation, the mom gets bored and restless, and the younger family members might not even understand why mom couldn’t even get up to prepare dinner. And there’s always a worry of seeing blood on the underwear or feeling contractions and it would cause panic thinking a simple tummy ache is contractions. The drama doesn’t end there because you’d find out that the real thing starts at giving birth. Some like me undergo caesarian birth because I had polyhydramnios (and my hope of natural birth went out the window.) Some are induced. Some have premature birth. And I still wonder up to now how it feels to ever give birth the normal way, what labor pains feel like. Because they say you never really experienced motherhood without giving birth the natural way. With two CS, I still feel half-baked. When moms in preschool ask me, “Did you get epidural?” I’d go, No I was CS, and I feel like so out-of-season.
Have you witnessed a miracle? Maxine and Maia have a total of three first cousins. One of them is Baby Nikki who is in the US. Today is her day. She just turned the big ONE! And she is the Miracle.
Nikki was born preterm and had to undergo major surgery on her spine the moment she was forced out of her mom’s womb. When Kuya Nardie (Merl’s one and only brother) and Ate Racel told us about Nikki, that the probability of a baby having her condition was like winning lotto, everyone was downcast. I saw a tear in Merlin’s eye, maybe more for his brother. He was driving but we prayed. I wanted to tell the parents not to blame themselves because it was no one’s fault. They knew that for sure. They sent pictures of her with tubes. She was so tiny, so fragile, so beautiful. For months all pictures were in NICU when the background was supposed to be her cozy crib in their beautiful home. She fought.
So it was Mommy Racel I worried about. She is supposed to be enjoying this, I thought. I felt she was cheated by savoring that moment with her newborn. The only worries she should be thinking right now are lack of sleep and how to loose those post pregnancy pounds. Is she jealous of other parents who just went home with their newborn in a breeze? Does she even think it’s unfair? Or question God why? Is it difficult for her to see commercials of healthy babies? Does she even think she is a bad mother because she wasn’t able to breastfeed? And when they finally brought Nikki home, did she ever ask herself, “Is this baby really mine?” Because she couldn’t remember anything sweet now about the birth. This was how it felt to have a real heart break, nothing like a lover’s quarrel during teenage past.
The first time I was pregnant, people would tell me that the moment I would see my baby for the first time I would experience a magical love that would never match all the other loves in my life. They spun tales of a world filled with tears of joy and milky-sweet baby’s breath, of hours gazing into newborn eyes, of a world where the baby would fill an emptiness in your heart that you didn’t even know existed and how you could literally hear the angels singing as your baby yawns. But it was never like that to me. The moment I woke up from anesthesia, the first thing I asked Merl was, “How are the dogs?” And for two days I didn’t come near the nursery until Merl said, “’Di mo ba pupuntahan ang baby?” I was embarrassed, what kind of mother am I? And when I saw baby Max I was looking for that mother-baby connection, THAT magic. It was later that I found out I was undergoing post-partum depression. Now with my second baby, I was hoping it would be the other way around, but then she was in an Isolette for days being treated of an infection. I never had it perfect.
“You are Not Sexy”
July 1, 2009
“WHAT?”
“I-saaaaid-you-are-not-sex-y!”
“Oh really?” Keeping a straight face and the composure.
That’s what Maxine told me when I brought her to school this morning. I almost dropped her lunchbox. I know I don’t have hips and I don’t do an awesome catwalk and I don’t have boobs but I have sexy underwear, I think I can write and I can carry a conversation and that is sexy, and, and, and… sniff. I believe I am sexy but since it came from a child, and children don’t lie, then I began to doubt myself. At least I think sexy.
So much for convincing the inner self.
“And WHY am I not sexy?” Kind of bothered and really dying to know.
“Because you’re not wearing a dress!”
Oh.
Here’s Maxine’s favorite book right now, Hannah and the Seven Dresses by Marthe Jocelyn. I love her books too.
Water
June 24, 2009
Today is Maxine’s first day at Kindergarten. Goodbye Playschool. On the other hand, it’s Maia (1.5 y.o.) who started playschool today, two hours a day, three times a week. Officially, her first day of school started last week and I TOTALLY forgot all about it. Yup, I was that mom, bury me alive like a naughty Vestal Virgin.
Two years ago, Maxine’s first day in playschool was all documented and recorded meticulously.
September 17, 2007, Monday will always be a special day to me. It was the Bear’s first day of playschool, and the night before, I got butterflies just thinking about it. When I woke up the next day I got the first-day-of-school-stomach and I wondered if I was the only mommy who was feeling this way. I found myself as nervous for the Bear’s first day of preschool as I was for my first day of work in the corporate world. So we went to the new school as a family and dropped her off without fanfare, the daddy with his camera and extra lenses, the mommy with the videocam and the caregivers with two pink backpacks filled with snack and extra (extra and more extra) clothes and shoes…
I didn’t even feel those butterflies on Maia’s first day of school.
With second in school I can now squeeze in a bath without a baby lobbying outside the bathroom door. Or a child-less trip to the grocery maybe? Grab the book I’ve attempted to read ten times already and couldn’t go past preface. Relax in a coffee shop? Have a good online chat with friends I haven’t seen for years? Possibilities abound! I am now drooling as I think of more. Moms are eagle-eye with first-borns. But with the second, the mom sees o-p-p-o-r-t-u-n-i-t-y.
So I’m water… keeping it cool, taking the path of least resistance. I’m like water, as I’m led to all these different opportunities, taking the shape of anything that comes, unbounded. I move around obstacles and I try to join with other streams – those people who will make me stronger. I am patient and still and can carve my way even through stones. And when trapped, water makes a new path. I’m like water as I have no form, yet I can take on all forms. Because I can fit into different personality types without changing my form. But then, like water I am frozen and fragile in the cold, I take the easiest path and I shed tears easily.
Possibly, even Maxine is enjoying her freedom now than when she was only child. And I noticed Maia is a happy, confident, and not-clingy baby compared to big sister when she was of the same age. The latest addition to the family will always be more fortunate because the parental flaws dissipate and thin-out. I now spread myself evenly to each kid, the husband, the home, to myself, like water molecules constantly moving in relation to each other. I’m still a stage-mom, though.
I’m more fluid now. But what’s most important is that my spirit overflows! Now I’ve finally understood what taking the path of least resistance means no matter how complicated the words are. It’s simply to let go and trust.
Oh God, oh God, oh God… I climbed up the stairs by two’s, by three’s… Terrible things ran through my mind. I reached first floor as if I had wings. Then there she was with the security guard, she was seen in the main door leaving the place. I hugged her. SO. TIGHT. She could have popped. “Max, Mama was so scared I thought I’d never find you! Thank you Lord.” It was sheer terror that lasted for hours.
And then the next day it was Maia’s turn. I looked away for literally a few seconds, and when I looked down for her to try on a dress, she was missing. It was the same spinning, floor-dropping, shaken world effect feeling that was still so, so familiar to me. I shouted. No sign of her. I felt like fainting. Five seconds… Ten seconds… Thirty. And then yaya found her. I vented out my anger at the helpers which I never did except for this one. I was just WTF’d at the helpers for not doing their job, and WTF’d at me for being so assured. I seriously wanted to throw-up from too much fear.
Three Moms and a Celebration
May 22, 2009
“Happy Birthday Mommy Leni!” is the text message Ate Low sent me this morning. It’s Mom’s birthday, gosh how could I forget? When I first told Maxine about my Mom “who is now in heaven with Jesus” she still couldn’t grasp the fact that her mom has a mom.
Max: You don’t have a mom! You’re my mom!
Me: No Max, everyone has a mom. Mommy Leni is my mom, Grandma is Daddy’s mom and I’m your mom…
Max: No! You don’t have a mom!
So today I told her that it’s Mommy Leni’s birthday…
Max: Is she your mom, the one who is in heaven with Jesus?
Me: Yep!
Max: You don’t have a mom! You’re my mom!
…She will understand in time.
There are days that I long to stop the clocks, for my mom to see our beautiful children, just to tell her that it’s because of her that they exist… But God is really good! The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away, but he gives back a hundredfold. He gave me back two beautiful moms in the world – who teach, who love, who are happy when you are happy and sad when you are sad, who dream great dreams for you, who encourage you and make a positive difference, who inspire and believe in you. ..And the kids, who are more fortunate than ever, showered with double-loving, double-spoiling, double-laughters!
Nana Cecile is not my step-mom and Mommy Onie is not my mother-in-law. There are no labels when it comes to family. They are simply MOM. Nothing compares to these women.
See the wonders of the Lord, He gave me a total of three mothers. Bring out the champagne!
No Children in Bed
May 21, 2009
Before I started to have kids one of the rules I laid down was, No Children in Bed. I wanted the Western way, babies in their own nursery, with only those walkie-talkie thingies to monitor even if that sounded taboo in this country. But since we started in a bachelor pad, there’s just not enough space for an extra room. So the crib was stationed beside the master’s bed.
The husband tells me he needed more room. It’s a california king size bed. Sorry we kinda knocked the King out of it. How can I tell him that the kids will sleep with me ‘til they are 16? He’d freak out. I can’t even imagine sleeping without them. Of inhaling emptiness where their breaths used to be. Yup, there are entire nights without us touching each other and you say we need to have our little hideaway where we can remember that we’re a married couple in love and not just mom and a dad. You do have to make extra efforts to nurture your couple life and intimacy, though. But who says you need to do it in the bed?
Waking up beside the kids is like waking up with the sweetest sunshine. When the little whispers, giggles, eskimo kisses and nonsensical secrets start. I don’t really know when I’d get the beds, or maybe not at all. Maybe when we transfer to the new house, Max insists for a fairy princess pink and purple room. For the meantime wild horses couldn’t drag me away. We’ll play it by ear.
Clever Title Not Needed
May 18, 2009
