Speed

Faster and faster, my fingers pound on the keys. It is as if I never left. The old sensations cascade over me and I am kayaking through the rapids, riding roughshod over words, getting drenched with words, inadvertently swallowing words. Will this thrill of a ride never end?

January

All little boys explore the various orifices of their body at one time or another. Eli is no exception. He has a particular liking for his nose, and he roots around in it regularly, to our great dismay. Occasionally, he unearths a motherlode, which he then pops into his mouth, smacking his lips delicately.

We are horrified to the depths of our germophobe beings. We discourage him, scold him, screech at him, even slap his busy little hands away. We ply him with other more palatable alternatives, but he merely gifts us with his triangular smile and continues with his mining expeditions. Perhaps we should be grateful he cannot as yet reach his ass.

January

We rush my Tatay to the hospital. It is my mother-in-law's 71^st birthday, and he falls into a blank stupor at the party. Inday takes his blood pressure, and it falls at 60/40. His pulse disappears into the unknown. He blanks out twice, and each time he comes to, he assures us that he is only tired, that it is only the wind that has whacked its cold hand upon his back, that we only need to take him home so he can rest.

In the emergency room, he keeps up the protest, this man who has been smoking for the last 50 years. Deedee, Dada & I bustle about him, and the children who are away call us frantically on our cellphones: Nonoy the doctor, Dudu the medical student – they all get a chance to speak with their father. Who is still protesting.

I stand in a corner and my mind is a-whirl with the memorial plan I have set aside, just in case. And where on earth to find the money to buy a small plot of land in the cemetery. Tearless, I am steeling myself, mentally preparing for the inevitable. I am first-born, after all.

A week later, showing no visible sign of duress, my father sails with us across the strait to his hometown of Dumangas. We light candles at his parents' graves, we stuff ourselves with prawn, oysters and mud crab, we drink with him and two of his brothers. He laughs and he laughs and he laughs. It dawns on me then that I have never seen him so happy.

January

It is the year of the Ox. My birth year. I look at myself in the mirror and wonder if the way I'm constructed violates all the sacred tenets of Feng Shui. Feng Shuit, more like. I feel the dark digits of despair and depression clawing hungrily at me, as they so often did when I was young, so long ago. I snap at the husband. I growl at the boys. I go through all the self-defeating motions, sabotaging any chances of well-being.

January

One evening, we bring the boys and their Uncle Eisen to Chopsticks Alley to watch the fireworks and hear the bands play. It is a hawk and a spit away from home, and the boys are in their 'jamies. We walk the street that's been converted into a showcase of Snake, and Rabbit, and Dragon, and Rat...and all the other life-size Chinese lunar animals, lit from within.

While Atch and Manong Eisen buy beer, I take the boys to their respective animals and explain that they represent the year they were born. Horse for Woog, Dog for Eli.

I glance behind me at their Uncle Eisen and see that he is even worse of than I am, this man born in the year of the Tiger. Hasn't been home to his wife in over than a decade, and recently laid off from work. He is quiet, guzzling his beer.

The boys are thrilled with the fireworks that light up the night sky. When we get home, it starts to rain, and the downpour washes the dust from my eyes.

January

Siesta time. Woog is on one side of me, sleepy, grumbling. Eli is on the other, wide awake. My younger son is yakking his head off about nothing in particular. He is one of those children who doesn't have to raise his voice for it to resonate across great distances. Woog is growling, I am growling, Eli still refuses slumber. Apparently, only his father can make him sleep on command. I have seen it happen, time and time again, and it irks me no end.

Woog puts a pillow over his head, and I try to ignore Eli's grasping fingers, which squeeze at my arms like masticating machines, while he murmurs into my face. Outside, it starts to rain. I am about descend into nothingness, when Eli's voice takes on a different cadence.

I force my protesting lids up a gradient or two, and I hear my son singing his first full-length song:

Yeyn, yeyn, go 'way

Comma-gen, yanada dey

Yittew Eyi wansa pyey

Yeyn, yeyn, go 'way

I must get the tape recorder, I say to myself. But Eli's toneless, tuneless chanting lulls me like the sound of the breeze on the sea. I fall asleep, and this great moment is lost forever.