Slices of Sunday I

It is another of those power-interrupted days when the city's electric cooperative has magnanimously decided to do maintenance work on our neighborhood's power lines during these last few scorching days of summer. And so Sunday finds us at my parents' house for lunch and siesta.

Woog is asleep. Atch is asleep. Eli is giggling with my father in a generations-old kick-ass tickling game called Pong-Pong-Piyadong. I am in my mom's storage shed out back, looking through dusty cobwebby memories of my childhood.

Eli screams. Long, loud and piercingly.

I run back inside, ready to hurl frightened angry accusatory words at my father, but he is cradling my sobbing son in his arms, and those words die a guilty death at my throat. Eli has made mushi.

I lay him down on the couch and change his diaper, wincing at the sight of his marble-hard turds. In his easy chair, my Tatay wrinkles his nose over a cup of coffee.

Eli whimpers. I thrust Optimus Prime at him and he is instantly engrossed, silent. My poor baby son is the unfortunate recipient of the hard-bowel malady that has plagued countless ancestors from both sides of his family. It is an ailment that has so far eluded capture, through countless formula and diet changes, and futile attempts at toilet training.

It is excruciating to watch, this process of voiding his bowels. He finds a nice quiet corner and squats on one fat haunch, lifting the other cheek into the air to create a pocket of space. And then the pushing comes. His face turns red, he sweats rivers, and his legs tremble with the effort. He grunts and groans and gives birth to dark awesome monstrosities while the air is filled with his ululating cries.

Sometimes we ply him with prune juice. Other times, his poor abused behind is speaklessly violated with a suppository. Always, it is an agonizing time for him. Except during his good days, when from out of nowhere, he tugs at my leg, pats his heavily sagging diapered bottom, and proudly announces, “Done.”

Today is not one of his good days. And together, we feel his pain.