Baby on The Brink

You there, Pokey Bear. Why do you blatt on so? Your mouth is an overturned cereal bowl glistening with saliva and tiny rice teeth.

It pains me to see you, twisting and turning in Yaya’s grasp, your arms pathetically held out to me. Wailing.

I hate leaving you like this. I imagine you must be thinking: why are Tatay and Mommy and Manong Woog leaving again? It must be such a fun place for them to be going everday.

Poor, pet. You’re too young to understand that we’re going because we have to, not because we want to.

Wait. I speak for myself. Manong Woog loves school (thank Papa God for that) and Tatay enjoys bossing his people around (so he won’t have to boss us around at home. Thank Papa God for that, too).

As for me, Baby-boo, I would like to stay home and hold you to my chest until you quiet down and hug me tight, patting my back with one hand like I was the one in need of comfort. Perhaps I am.

Such a month it has been for us, no? Sleepless and snot-filled. Fearless and fast. Time has pulled you forward and forward at such dizzying speed. Why, last month you hardly crawled at all! Now you scuttle across the floor like one of the crabs Manong Woog was chasing all over the beach last summer.

(Remember how I nearly died of fright last night when I got back from checking on Manong Woog and found you had woken up and crawled to the very edge of the big bed?)

Last month, you had four teeth, now you have six. Your awful cold morphed into a chest-rattling cough, and it scared me to listen to you hack half the night away, until you puked into my neck and soaked my hair with phlegm and half-digested milk. Poor ‘Poke. Such a lot of weight you’ve lost. Even my arms don’t ache as much when I carry you around these days.

I keep thinking we have to make up for lost time. Then I remember…time has brought you to the here and now. Time has brought you clear into the brink of this eleventh hour of your eleventh month, where you nonchalantly let go of your grip on the tv rack or the sofa or the bureau drawers, and stand alone for minutes at a time while I hold my breath, my heart in my throat. And you are laughing. Laughing.

You will be cruising soon, and I must prepare all of my nerve for that. You will be turning a year old, as well. And ever more curious, too. It is all Manong Woog can do not to shoo you away from his toy shelf after you’ve tired of opening and exploring all the drawers and cabinets within your reach.

Don’t cry so, my Pet-a-poo. Tatay is leaning on the horn, and I must get to work, else I’ll end up not going. Yaya urges you to wave goodbye, and you make a half-hearted gesture with your hand before you remember that I’m leaving, and you bawl harder than ever.


I force myself to walk away, and I’m hoping you might call out “Mommm-mom-mom-mommm!” like you did last weekend from your crib with your arms held out to be carried – I might just end up staying, who knows - but all you do now is yowl fit to break my heart.

Hush-hush, Poke-poke. I’ll see you again, I promise. Tonight, when I get home, I’ll hug you so tight and tickle you so hard, you’ll forget that you ever were so sad.

See you later, Eli-gator. You take care. Papa God bless you.

And Mom-mom wuvs you soooo much!