to sophia, belatedly....

Far from the grumblings I now read, about having you inside my tummy all those months, I smile at the thought that it was after all worth every hurdle and discomfort I went through. You are more than your father and I have anticipated.

The happiness you bring into our family make us marvel at everything more tenderly, as if with purer eyes. That by just being yourself. Innocent and yet perceptive of our love. Feeble and yet powerful enough to get us scuttling about for your needs and wants. Simple and yet to be treated with utmost care and delicacy…

Sometimes, you and I have our little clashes, when in my best effort I couldn’t grasp what you are trying to say. In your unrelenting baby aches and cries, you challenge me, and I frustrate you with my motherly blunders. But often, the smile in your face, that seem to tell me I am doing just right, more than makes up for all of those low moments in our young life together.

Your dad and I...we may not be the best parents, but hey we try, for you and your brother. As days pass, I will constantly miss holding you in my arms, lying awake in the wee hours to make sure you’re warm and sleeping soundly next to me. How I wish to slip back to that time, and enjoy you infinitely...

But too, I watch you everyday in eager faith, that you will grow up to be a strong, gracious girl. My little love, never be fearful to share with us your small sorrows, and in the due course of struggling, even your greatest joys…

Happy first birthday …I love you so.
(10.28.06)

In Remembrance of Toni

I have decided to go back here, thinking that this is where it all started. For many months, I have fancied writing again, and did so in another blog I created, but I continually idled around, that it has all become one protracted nonsense. The excuses for random things and laziness took over me again, but I admit the domestication of a mother like me kills whatever little brainwave activity is going about in my muddled head. And I can hear myself making excuses again. So on to blogging. This time I hope that I’ll be more motivated and constant to slog on to Blogger, rather than just clicking and reading what seem to be now the washed-out entries of long ago….

Sadly, the reason why I’m writing now is to grudgingly try to disentangle myself from the inward grief I feel for a beautiful girl I once met, but who is now up in the heavens with her maker. At the tender age of five, one ordinary, humdrum day, a speeding vehicle sideswiped her outside her home, and killed her in the ensuing minutes before aid rushed to her side.

How cruel can fate be, even to the innocent and helpless?

We met her on the occasion that I wrote of another two deaths in the family. Shy and pretty, with long beautiful jet black hair, I was drawn to her as I am always, to little kids who have no wariness or qualms about them, just coyness that awaits a welcoming gesture, for them to open up. Her folks graciously received us at their home where we stayed the night. They gave us the most comfortable room, in spite of our small protests. It was an occasion intended for sober actions, but having had the opportunity to know them as relations, it was otherwise a juncture that made my son gain a friend, and us, share a few heartwarming moments with them in that quaint town.

What breaks my heart now is that my son had doggedly asked me to give the little girl his CareBears pillow as a parting gift, but somehow she was too shy to accept. And 3 year old Gabby-- a perfect illustration of how kids can be mercilessly direct and unrefined sometimes-- changed his mind in a millisecond, when she was about to take it. Back then, it seemed amusing, but never was there a trace of foreboding that it was the first and last time we would see of that little angel.

Not a couple of months afterwards, we heard the sad news of her passing….

What to make of it? I don’t know. The loss of a child is not new to me, having had a miscarriage the first time I got pregnant. But I believe it is not nearly as agonizing or emotionally crushing, as having indeed spent years watching a little life from you grow and blossom into a beautiful living thing, breathing warmth into your otherwise controlled but dreary existence. Of how many times it made you laugh aloud and look at everything in a much gentler perspective, and often with rosy eyes. Of the fact that a little being could bring out so much enthusiasm in you, could test the ends of your patience, and reward you with boundless joy you never thought you could take pleasure in.

But how I feel for them, the ones she left behind, who will get back to the house, a place once awash with her happy clutter, and her childish laughter, and all the jollity of a small child, that is now empty and devoid of any hope, reverberating only in endless tears and untold sadness...

Why her?

Much as there is enough happiness found in my little kids, I can only cry, and cry eternally inside, for the special one that got away....

Blue-eyed Angel

I am no fan of the Tomkat, but certainly each one of us have our voyeuristic moment in showbiz, when you just got to have a quick look into that intriguing peephole. And this baby, little Suri, product of two demigods, is nothing short of a seraph. She’s just so beautiful that you can even forgive her manic, loopy father ...

bambina

i was watching you this morning, remembered you as a little life whose eyes had barely opened, and thought how fast time had flown since....now you are a cute little bundle of sweet smiles, and gurgles and coos...the softest skin, the littlest hands, the nicest smell in that body and little tuft of hair on your head...how can a mother not love you?

sophia 4 months

again....

It has been many months that I have itched to write something down on my blog. Heck, I do visit my spot everyday and hit Blog This! But once the empty page confronts me, my thoughts all get into a big jumble. And I grumble about having nothing to write. It's like having a very good dream at night, and being awaken by a loud thud in the morning, you open one eye and out your dreams go flying off the windows, like specks of dust......you just don't have the power to bring them back as a lucid whole. It frustrates me no end. The trouble with me is I am not always inclined to talk about the everyday things, which is what I'm exactly supposed to be doing. I mean, where do you get the inspiration to write anyway? Isn't it the inconsequential stuff around you that make up a structure of thoughts that push you into blogging? Yes, I agree....but it's me. Sometimes I want to talk about this and that, I am pretty sure I've had it in my mind......but the moment I sit down to write, all is gone into thin air. Am I in trouble? I guess, definitely. Dawdling dawdling dawdling.....

Anyway, so I say to myself, bear with my self....and she nods silently. Today, I feel terribly frustrated that I am in limbo....just incredibly staying afloat and waiting for life to take shape. It scares me to not have the courage to decide on something---where I am going, what I want, what I plan for tomorrow.... My thoughts wander, but something grounds me to where I am now. Is it my family? I don't know. I'm pretty much rotting in my comfort zone, and it's not comfort I am getting at all. I don't know my worth right now. Something must happen, I must get going. But where do I start? Hearing myself think this I am reminded of a virginia woolf and a sylvia plath, who thought so much of the world and life--but reduced to bare bones, they found life meaningless, thus the suicides.

People like van gogh, plath, hemingway--were they driven mad by the harshness of reality? But isn't it the same harsh reality that drove them to be mad and great? What makes one take his life anyway? Is it the too much-ness, or the nothing-ness? I remain clueless because I am not mad, nor great. I am just an everyday mother who has no cold weather or frigid husband or literary rejections to bleat about, and yet now I find life meaningless, and suicidal.

Thoughts

I'm on my 23rd week of pregnancy, and I must look like seahorse. I wish I could know what the baby's gender is. There seems to be a baby boom in my circle of acquaintances right now. Almost everyone I know is heavy with her own bambino, and that's why I'm probably apprehensive about my own too. If you should know, I have taken on a most motherly stance these days--I have been learning to sew things, and one of the first projects I've done is to give Gabby's old comforters a new look. Meaning that I took out old materials from his old things and sewn a new cover, with a matching pillow. I'm so eager to be a mom again. Or am I? Right about now, little baby is kicking inside me, giving me little contractions that, though not scary, remind me s/he's there, really there and raring to come out anon....

Geez, how I wish the nine months will be over and I have the little baby mewling beside me...at least then I can think of many other things, more important of which is getting a new job. If I had a choice, I'd like to be a home maker tending to my kids, but that is not quite an option for me and husband right now. At least not yet. My mind has been going over many possibilities of getting a job that allows me to stay at home with the kids, and yet earn enough to help Oliver meet our obligations, especially the rent.....but I have not come up with something feasible...

One thing's for sure, two kids is enough.

Thursday

It's been a little cool and overcast this morning, the sky threatens rain and I'm kinda loving it...I don't know what it is about the rains, but I settle more comfortably with the thought of the wet ground and wet leaves and wet feet. Where I am is most undesirable, I'm woozy with the five months old bambino in my womb, my country is in the brink of another unpheaval, I hate my job....but the rains somehow anesthesize me from all these ugly realities. Once I hear the Basia song again, I know I'll be on a different plane, completely heedless of the world spinning around me.

I am not aware how long it was since I last wrote, but it must have been eons. Many things have happened, we've moved house, taken on a relative, seen off a relative, raised Gab and witnessed him grow from lovable to dreadful... but most importantly, something grew, its sprout eyes each to each, inside me--a self-protruding truth that is now a life, jolting inside me, reminding me I am going to be a mother of two....

What it's going to be, she or he, I can only guess....and guess I will here on this journal, while I have something to say about it. Or, perhaps like a phoenix, resurrect my thoughts on coffee, or love, or death, or motherhood, or books, or rains.....or whatever. Basta!

Helloworld

I'm not sure that I'm back to my old blogging self, but I shall try my darnedest to chronicle the what-have-I's in the next few so and so moments of my life. Just about now my thoughts are repressed for anything that is writable on blog--I'm just hurrying to get home and cuddle with the little boy who now knows his stars from his moon. Lovesick mom...

My Missing Posse

In the course of changing templates to again satisfy my never-sated self, I lost the precious gang of bloggers I've linked up in my spot. The silly, idiotic me can't bring myself to retrieve them. The age of senility and bungling is come. Will you please please be a darling and help me? Here's them that I can remember:

sassy lawyer

belledejour

joe.my.god

sulatpinay

tito rolly

compulsive eater

The others I simply can't recall. I'd be indebted to anyone who can help me with their links. Merci.

Being Enough

“When will it ever be enough?”…This is my friend Lou whining this morning about her life. Lou who I envy so much for having gone to many places in Europe and the USA, whilst working and living in Singapore. How could someone like her complain of being unhappy and not feeling satisfied when she lives in smog-free country, in her own pad, and sends me emails thru her “notebook”—as compared to me who suffer the little indignities of having to commute to work everyday, smog billowing and giving me a foul odor in spite of having scrubbed myself bloody before then, me who do my blogs on this hideous desktop which has obviously seen better days? Life can be a bitch, ain’t it? But always, to each his own bitch.

I guess I cannot blame my friend. She’s just human like me after all. And no matter how I try to view her life through rose-tinted glasses, she certainly has her low moments. Like when she says that Christmas is always like any other day—except that her callers will be a little nicer to her and will be back to their nasty selves when the occasion is over. I believe her. I’ve had my share of monstrous callers back in Easycall. Call center work is such a thankless job, and I believe you’ve got to have a halo around your head, or otherwise a catatonic condition, to not feel the mortification of being shouted at and abused by cantankerous callers, day-in and day-out. I guess that’s why Filipinos are the most likely candidates for call center outsourcing; we just tolerate and forgive every single time. For someone like me whose ego got a little fragile over the years, I think I’ll have to reconsider working again for a similar firm.

Anyway, going back to Lou….she was and is a great friend and I suppose my only true clique. We used to share a locker, a journal, heck we used to share dreams of working abroad…and look at her now, she’s saving up for her retirement, while I’m just starting life as a mother, slogging like my husband to provide for Gabby’s milk and diapers. I should be the one protesting about all these domestic scrapes, but I’m not…I know it’ll never be enough, but I’m happy where I am. Truly. We’re worlds apart…and yet she makes me think that luck and happiness is all a mirage that our minds can conjure up at the most unlikely places. It's like Harry Potter creating a great Patronus with his happiest memories. Then all is wonderful with the world again...

I hope she’ll be happy someday.

Hell Hath No Fury

…. Like a woman scorned, not in love, but in doing what she thinks is right. The past few days I have been in such a disposition, that the contemptible ones who thought I could be waylaid by questioning my professionalism at work and spiting me for exposing their inveterate practices-- have thought otherwise and steered clear of my way. The husband and wife team of mandrills now know better than to monkey around. And just in case they don’t know this one other thing, I WILL BE my scorned self until hell freezes over.

Sweet Times

As luck would have it, my brother who has bunked in with us for more than a month, has finally landed a job.

It wasn't an easy task for someone who has worked abroad for many years and has enjoyed the fruits of his labors and green bucks, but ultimately felt like he was a been-there-done-that the moment he went home to his country. Pride and humiliation get mixed up in a nasty way inside you I can only surmise-- pride in feeling you got a sure leverage over others after your "imported" experience and exposure, and humiliation in realizing that you're no better than the new grad standing in line next to you, waiting to be interviewed.

You're just a dot in a swarm of nameless faces and frayed nerves shuttling here to there everyday, holes boring deeper into your pocket, sending you further to financial and emotional chasm. And, don't you just hate short-sighted relations who treat you like a superstar when you're out there, and sneer at you when you finally come home for good as though you're wearing that big letter L conspicuously on your forehead? I wish they would understand that making one's living in a faraway place isn't exactly fun.

Anyway, my brother doesn't really feel like that. It's all ME thinking aloud. Gee, don't you think I just yak endlessly, even for other people? But I do, I do.

Beyond all the difficulties that he all went through with admirable resilience, I am glad that God has made His plans clear for my brother. His job offer couldn't have come at a more appropriate time. Over a couple slices of Magoo's last night, we silently agreed... He is good, He is great.

I hope He listens to me naman....

Harry Potter Five

Finally put down Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. My little beading business was on the back burner for more than a week so I could finish the book. Phoenix was a comparatively long read compared to the first four books in Rowling’s 7 part series. But this one is definitely a cut above the rest coz finally Harry Potter is revealed as the nemesis of the evil Voldemort. In the prophecies of the eternally misunderstood Professor Trelawney, it could have well been Neville Longbottom in Harry’s place. Why, there were born on the same year, on the same date, at the same time. But of course Neville is everything that embodies an anti-hero being pudgy and all although he bravely fought the nasty death-eaters in the Ministry of Magic to save Harry. It is comforting to know that he becomes one of Harry’s best friends. It is also here that Harry tasted his first kiss and experienced the perplexing world of girls, er, women. And well, Ron Weasley becomes a hero in Quidditch.

I enjoy this kind of literature nowadays, shallow though they may seem. It’s because I intend to pass on these wonderful stories to Gabby in the many future late nights that we will be looking forward to, me tucking him gently into bed. Collecting the books is a different matter altogether. Harry Potter series--in spite of the commercialism and controversies of subliminal allusions to black magic--still abounds with lessons of heroism, modesty, friendship, love, and respect for nature. As I said, I am not pedantic, although I may clout and differentiate. But for the most part, I take children’s books as they are. For the young at heart. For me and Gabby.

Of Love

Watching the movie again the other night, I had wanted to re-relish the book a good friend gave me....There's a line uttered by Dr. Iannis while lecturing his beautiful daughter Pelagia about love. It is simple, but true.

"When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake,and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is nconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness; it is not excitement, it's not the desire to mate every second of the day, not lying awake at night imagining him kissing every part of your body. No.. don't blush. I'm telling you some truths. That is just being in love, which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love, itself, is what is left over, when being in love has burned away. Doesn't sound very exciting does it? ...but it is."

Being married for merely three years has made me realize that life is not all roses. It can often get unforgivably bumpy and rough that you just have to get a grip and find yourself time and again. The glamour of love is painfully lost in you. But come to think of it, you manage to rise above it all somehow. The struggle of giving, falling, being selfless, affirming, and understanding are manifestations of the lengths you are willing to go through to make life bearable and ultimately worth-living with the person you wake up next to each day----and therein lies the beauty.

Black, Bitter and Bold

Coffee truly fascinates me.
A beautiful picture
I got from Starbucks.

Tomorrow is Another Day

My brother recently visited a mutual friend whose wife just gave birth. I passed on my best to them, but with the kudos came the feeling of deep compassion for these first-time parents. They have probably marveled every minute of their nine months pregnancy, anticipating how their little baby would come out. Who will she/he take after--—mom or dad? Dad after all was a handsome chap in his days, and still is.

The precious little angel finally came out, but was carrying a rare genetic condition. He has Down Syndrome.

Down Syndrome is caused by excess gene from the 21st chromosome, aside from the ones the child has inherited from his parents. This condition may mean that the child may have some degree of mental retardation and other developmental stagnation. Certain physical traits are common to them too—folds over the eyes, flat nose, flabby body, and a soft tissue jutting out of their nape that extends to the shoulder.

My heart goes out to the little angel, not so much because of his looks, but how he would fare, if indeed his impediment would deprive him of the many warranties in life—learning, recognizing, and interacting. I have not in the past personally known a Down person, but I think they can be very vulnerable to illnesses, thus cutting their life expectancy to almost half. Can they be cured, or schooled, I don’t know…but if I were a parent to one, I would definitely do everything to make him a well child.

I have lost my first baby when he was four months in my womb, not a happy thought really. I went down, deep into the recesses of my guilt, asking myself where I had gone wrong. Did I neglect him and myself? Was I abusive and indiscreet with what I ate? How on earth did I lose this child that I have tried so resolutely to protect and nurture inside me? I badly wanted to be a mother to this boy.

As Miriam once said, what can be more important than a child?

My answer is...if anything, a little life that once came from you is the mirror of what you and your progenitors have been, and is the self-same life that will carry on the person you are now---your character, your achievements, your memories, your dreams, your love. You can only want to shield it from any tragic waste. It is that important.

I suppose Glenn Doman’s theory of teaching a brain-injured child to read comes to the fore again. It may not be as easy as it sounds, because I am not this child's mother or father. But I can share with what they feel—their anxiety, their fears and apprehensions, maybe even their attempt to rebuff the painful truth and question God of his motive in giving them this child.

Only time can placate them from their doubtful and fragile state of mind, and strengthen them to move on from there. And I believe that with infinite love, untiring dedication and persistence for the precious one, tomorrow may just be another day.

From Hell to Eternity

Have you noticed how certain people get into you; hit a raw nerve even if they are not aware of it? Or maybe they are, but they choose to be on the dense side and slight you anyway? Because I could never believe that everyday I go to work with these kinds of creatures that most definitely come from hell. And I am eternally sorry that I am in this kind of rut that pulls me deeper and deeper into emotional insolvency.

Oftentimes, when I recount my miseries to my husband, he would off-handedly tell me to quit my job and look for brighter, if not greener, pastures. I know what he means by that, although sometimes it appears to me that he doesn’t care one bit about what I’m going through. I should know, he has his own corporate hell to grapple and listening to mine is too much to deal with, although he admits that he, like me, finds it easier to gripe than to leave his job for his own peace. We are not at a stage of our lives to take things with nonchalance and impulsiveness, we have a kid now and everything focuses on rearing him and providing for him materially.

The same goes with these people I am ranting about. They have kids, and sisters and brothers and friends. So, to co-habituate with one another, we need to give up certain prejudices and self-importance, right? Wrong These people only put their pretty asses on your shoulder, and you, the whiner, have to do as they say.

Believe it or not, I have made the most stupid mistake of befriending him once, and now he sees me as a boil in his ass that he’s trying so hard to get rid of. Or at least that’s how it seems to me. He has this annoying habit of bossing me around, which aggravates my situation all the more because I hate being pushed to do things. It’s not that I am almighty and all. How do you deal with people who abuse office rules, make lunch a whole afternoon siesta, and yet have the gall to demand things from you, and impose themselves on you as if you are subordinate to them? I have not the audacity to confront people of what annoys me about them, but can they be too opaque as that? Whatever happened to consideration and sensitivity?

Once or twice in my life, I have experienced a situation that totally put me off, and however inconsequential it seemed, made me lose my faith in the person who put me into that. People who cheat on you, in spite of your well meaning, and who make you feel you owe them for something. I am not inclined to talk what happened, but let’s just say that I was used and abused. My abuser saw the opportunity to drop me off a cliff of embarrassment and self-loathing as to why, why, why I was incredibly naïve and stupid to have trusted them in the first place. And that’s where my hell came from.

My only regret is that I have not learned to just leave them shit and move on….

Odyssey

I have just put down the Dan Brown bestseller The Da Vinci Code which I took pain to finish, having just borrowed it from an officemate who expected me to return it ASAP. I admit, even on my beading foray to Quiapo last weekend, I had the impetuosity to take the book with me and cram through the last few pages while waiting for my bus stop. Everyone I know, this blogger friend included, said it was superlative read. Sure, it was. Or maybe, I have missed the whole point.

Undeniably a fun read, replete with all the ingredients of a bestselling thriller, I devoured everything I saw . It was so easy to give way into one’s indiscretion and accept what the book said as gospel truth. Hell what do I know of the gospels, to pun that (since The Bible has just been put in a very damaging light here). I have been nowhere near criticizing the papal nuncio in the Vatican, although I absolutely feel the Catholic domain needs a lot of washing down to do to remedy the bad jinx they've recently ran into.

Would you believe that one local broadsheet even ran a quarter-page commentary by a Catholic bishop, about the veracity of the author’s claims on the clandestine brotherhood and Jesus’ bloodline and the Vatican's real identity? Is everything real or theoretical in the first place? This book was eliciting both raves and rants, and I bet a lot of paranoia and defensiveness, from the four corners of the literary or literate world.

Who could not have wanted to read it?

Momentarily though I had to go back over my previous conclusions about the book, weed out those that I didn't find plausible. And, trusting my isms, this is what, an ordinary reader like me, have discerned:

It’s all just FICTION which, however too good, the writer simply fiddled with in his mind. And whatever historical congruence it may have to the past, I am loathe to leave it to the experts. It was nothing more than an odyssey for me that fell right smack to a category that I would call “highly entertaining”. I am Catholic, and given that I have issues myself, this one doesn’t make me rethink about my spiritual viewpoint, or the limits of it.

It’s great that I have seen the other side of the travesty, although that piece about the smiling Mona Lisa most certainly got me off. However storybound that part may appear, I think that my heart can rest well and not ever wonder why SHe’s forever smiling that beguiling half-mocking smile. What a secret she keeps...

Even Sappho would have acquiesced.

To Envisage Belledejour

A picture of the unflappable Belle in my mind...reminds me of the beautiful Malena.

French Leave

It's a sad day for bloggers who have made belledejour's journal a staple in their daily literary breakfast. For me particularly, she's become a ritual, that an almost-dependence has been created between my coffee and her diary, she being on top of my "daily fix" of favorite blogs. A lot of things were going on there for a while. But just today, I got there and read her goodbye-abrupt, albeit announced.

I feel I'm losing much. Like having just put a good Louise Brooks biography down.

Belle's blogspot is a non-descript layout which she never bothered to change in spite of Blogger's recent offering of eyecandy templates. But the moment you walk past her, you will be intrigued by the words "Diary of a London Call Girl". Who would have thought anyway that women who give pleasure for money like her can keep an online diary, much less write a very good one? She, or He, might indeed be a writer who poses as, she calls it, "the whore without portfolio". But I choose to see her with a simplistic eye--not the pedants she detests--and believe she really is someone who holds the world's oldest profession.

Belle speaks (or is it spoke already?) in a cryptic yet very confident tone about her sexual encounters with "clients" and, pardonnez, "fuck buddies", but hints every so often of her personal life and her true relationships. Yes, the lady is real and does get bitten by the lovebug.

What makes her even more intriguing is that she doesn't leave an online comment feature on her blog, but links her email address with--

"Write me. Who knows, I might even answer..."

Written I have once out of naivete, but what do I know, I am simply one of those who did not make any impression in her terribly inundated mailbox. Why, there must be a thousand letters from fans and men who are dying to know her real identity and would be offering to pay pounds and euros just to have a glimpse of her, if not exactly enjoy the pleasure of her services.....So what is a married obscure woman like me doing in her mailbox, gushing like an awestruck fan, raving about how I fancy her? Or her blog at least.

I admit I got titillated with the prospect of her meeting up with someone who has been for ages haunting her blogspot and email. Belle always seems to me like a beautiful lady ready to pleasure a stranger, and yet has the quotient to discourse politics and highbrow subjects at any given day.

There is nothing substandard to read in Belle's blog, although at times her encounters may be too salacious for a mother like me to indulge....i'm not just cut out for the really spicy stuff, see?

There has been a book and television deal, and from the looks of it she's going fulltime with her newfound enterprise, thus the sudden unexpected goodbye. But I will grudgingly let this good one go, while hoping that one day she'd come back and write for herself and the exclusive us again.