Maiden Flight

Manila trip - Day 1

Woog knows his dinosaurs. His particular favorites are brachiosaurs, diplodocuses, and brontosaurs - those huge lumbering long-necked lizards that lived millions of years before his own father ever thought of depositing the sperm cell that eventually formed half of him.

Woog emulates these favorite dinosaurs even as the plane taxies off into the runway. He and Yaya Rose crane their necks out the window as the whole world tilts at an uneven angle. If human necks could get any longer, theirs does the day of their first plane ride: June 4. Woog's 7th birthday. What better present can a boy and his nanny get?

Trying to believe his eyes

As the houses and trees depreciate into miniature structures down below and the clouds rush pass their faces, Woog trumpets his glee, the sing-song whoop spiraling up from his elongated throat to emerge shrilly out his mouth, only to reverberate in a pressurized cabin where a couple of hundred other people share limited air space. As one, his fellow passengers stretch their necks like a herd of grazing dinosaurs searching for the source of the sound.

The absurdity of imagining dinosaurs on a plane thousands of feet up in the air strikes Woog's mother as funny, and she takes a dozen shots of the first-time flyers who are straining against their seatbelts in excitement.

Yaya, are you going to be sick?

Eventually, one other starts to protest the papparazo invasion before attempting to escape his own restraints.

Fortunately, a stick of spearmint gum placates him, and his mother doesn't even scold when he swallows the whole wad after chewing. The window is beyond his line of sight, you see, and he is enjoying his maiden flight as only a two-year-old can.



Nine people land an hour after their scheduled time of arrival, having dipped and shimmied in the overcast sky, waiting for air traffic to clear before touching terra firma. The kids battle their midday hunger pangs at the airport by ganging up on each other until their irritable parents pull them away by their ears, or separate them with firm taps to their bottoms.

Finally, after the confusion of looking for and finding the car and driver sent by a cousin, six hungry adults and three hungry kids pile into a pick-up that seats four people (Atch spends the drizzling journey out in the truck bed, bedecked in a raincoat and umbrella). After the typical speed -crawl that one can only find on Manila streets, everyone finally settles down to a lovely meal that is summarily devoured without much fanfare, expense notwithstanding.

Chomping our way through The Aristocrat, Roxas Boulevard

Happy Birthday, Woogie! Welcome to Manila!

Speeding Through Time, Heels Digging In

It is June. Woog's 7th birthday. Where did my baby go? Where did the summer go? The rain is pelting down on the roof, and the sun is making its requisite weak effort. Mano a mano, neither the one giving in.

We wake up early today, the darkness permeating our tiny room. Even Woog, for whom sleep is infinitely preferable to food. The boys are excited to be getting on a plane for the first time. We are heading for Manila today, with cheap promo tickets bought online the month before. Our birthday presents for Woog, who is 7 toady, and Eli, who will turn 3 in July. And for Yaya Rose, who turned 19 last month.

It is June. In a week, my gapped-tooth older boy will be in first grade. The years are speeding by (oh be still, my racing heart), and I haven't the foggiest idea of how to slow them down.

I console myself by thinking of the month that has passed, and the many highlights that seem like mere flashes in my consciousness. Events that have made me, in equal parts, laugh and fume:

My Tatay, after gurgling half a case of beer with his brother, Ninoy Toto and my Atch, then attempting to turn off the overhead lights with the tv remote control.

Samantha, the Indian neighbor kid, slamming in and out of our apartment with impunity , and raiding the refrigerator while complaining of hunger. The things people need to teach their kids. I ought to have a few words with her mother.

Yaya Rose, coming home tearfully after a vacation. Her father refuses to let us send her to school. He prefers to pay for her tuition himself in their small pastoral community school in the hinterlands. When he can't even manage to put enough food on his family's table. When he is possessed of such small-minded maliciousness that makes us want to chew him up and spit him out.

The kids, building a castle out of Debbie-Does-Dallas and other Playboy Playmate video tapes that my uncle has sent over from the States. My uncle emails my father: you can watch these now you're a retiree. Tatay doesn't mention that VHS machines have become obsolete.

It is June. Woog is 7. That magic age, the beginning of the end of his wonder years. I look forward to the future with mixed emotions.....

Atch Does 41

Atch celebrated his 41^st birthday yesterday running after his rambunctious sons at the mall. And then he dragged half a burlap sack of garden soil home so I could experiment with the heretofore unexplored regions of my dubious green thumb.

I got him a litre of Carlos Primero, and a litre of Johnny Walker Black, plus a bottle of Carlo Rossi Muscat for the both of us. He scolded. He frowned. He complained. He flexed his well-defined skinflint muscles. So expensive, he said. Three bottles! Too much.

He finally shut up when he opened the Johnny Walker box and discovered it came with two personalized whiskey tumblers.

Say thank you, I urged.

Thank you, he finally said, giving me a smooch and an unsuccessfully disguised pleased smile.

Earlier, the bank's HRD department had ordered him to take a vacation leave. They complained that he was present everyday, in all sorts of weather, eschewing his leave credits to loom over his stressed employees with his dark frown and watchful slits.

In typical Atchbund fashion, he choose his birthday week to take off so he wouldn't have to treat his co-workers to a birthday snack. My husband, the cheapskate.

Still, he channelled his bank manager personality over the household, harassing Woog as the boy lingered over his meals, growling at Eli for being so stubborn, and telling me off for being late for work.

Relax, L'Atchy-poo, I told him, you're on vacation. He glared at me, glancing meaningfully at the clock. It seems the only time he has ever relaxed is when he snores in deep sleep, or right after spilling his seed. When I come to think of it, one is synonymous with the other.

Today, the three bottles remain untouched, still in their boxes. I've texted him to chill the Carlo Rossi, and to pick me up for work so I could treat his thick unglamorous toes to a much-needed pedicure.

He is going to complain about the expense again, I know, all the while trying to keep his mouth from lifting at the corners – my very own “Oscar the Grouch”.

Happy birthday, L'Atchy.

Edited to add:

Grrrrr....

He picked me up after work and had to reverse a couple of times to avoid hitting the curb, drunk out of his mind.

He had taken it upon himself that morning to visit one of his old drinking and pot-smoking buddies a couple of cities away (I'm on vacation, Aifee!). That answered my question about why Woog called me at work earlier, looking for his Tatay:

Maybe he's in Greensville at Auntie Inday's house, Mom. Do you have the number?

Go check, Woog. Take this down. 708_ _ _ _

Maybe he's at Bata with Manong Kylot?

Try and call Bata, Woog.

Ok, Mom. Dubby!

But no. The dearly beloved birthday celebrant had gotten himself good and sloshed, celebrating his birthday with friends at a corner sari-sari store, even before celebrating with his family. I practically had to steer his feet in a relatively straight course to the salon to have his toe nails done, where he plunked himself down into the lounging chair and went straight to sleep.

Mouth ajar. Leaking alcoholic ectoplasm, and loudly vibrating with drunken apnea.

The girl who did his nails did try mightily hard to stifle her giggles (he sounds like an outboard motor, no?)

And of course there was no chilled bottle of Muscat when we got home. No intimate and mildly inebriated conversation over sisig. He went straight to bed, leaving his Aifee fuming, fuming, fuming....

A Toddler's Birthday Tantrum

Look at you, Pet-a-poo. Crying your eyes out. Mommy tries to snap a picture of you on this night of your second birthday, but all you want to do is grapple the camera away from her. Tears are coursing down your miserable face, and runners of snot are dripping down your nose.


Do let up, 'pet. It's your birthday.


This morning you woke us up inhumanly early, raining kisses down on random body parts and grounding your chin down where you kissed. You left us groaning and ill-tempered on this blessed dawn while you chuckled and burrowed through the blankets and bared our warm limbs to the too cool morning air.


Tatay finally got up and asked you if you wanted to go for a ride. "Come!" You squealed, lifting your arms up imperioiusly. Manong Woog roused himself too, and the three of you left Mommy in peaceful blissful sleep.


Downstairs you continued to shriek, "Car! Brooom-brooom! Go....go!" Mommy had hopes that Tatay would bring you to Church for a birthday prayer, but he brought you to the market to buy coffee instead. In your 'jamies. With a full to bursting diapy.


(Doesn't matter to Tatay where he brings you, or what state he brings you in. As long as he gets his supply of heady caffeine, then all is right with the world).


But you are happy and you come home excited from your foray into the realm of native coffee beans, chattering incoherently to the neighbors about your grand adventure. And then not a few hours later, we leave for work and school, and you are in tears again. Poor 'pet. Bewildered each day as your nearest and dearest abandon you for long stretches of time. No wonder you are in a constant itch to go out and explore.


Look at you now. Night has fallen and you are in your 'jamies again. Your universe has shrunk to a minute space where you and Mommy engage in a tug-of-war with the camera. You are wailing piteously, turning your face up into the sky as if to ask, why? Why do I have to suffer such injustice? You look exactly the way you did two years ago at this exact same time: a yowling bundle of pug nose and fish lips, inconsolable at being pulled out from your warm watery home.

Poor 'pet. You are channeling your newly two-year-old self in a tantrum of great dimensions. Your own personal version of picketing at the roadside with a huge placard of protest for being left at home.


If only I can make you understand why we have to go away to work each day. And as I try to explain, you reject each placating offer of Tatay's laser pointer, a story book, and Manong Woog's fancy red ruler. Tatay finally puts Enya on and I twirl you around to Orinocco Flow. You settle down then, head deep in my shoulder, arms holding me tight. Music to soothe the savage beast. You have missed me, it seems, but never more so than I.


I hand you over to Tatay and you dance with him too, a sliver of a smile peeking from your lips and flaring your too damp nose. We wish things were different, that we could spend whole days with you as you grow. But for now we settle for waltzing away your hurt and sulk. Anything to put a smile on your face again.

Ah, good. You are laughing once more, shaking your hands to a Celtic beat. But you keep your arms tight around our necks, unwilling to let go. For now.

Because you are newly two and we are your whole world. It would be nice to keep it that way for as long as we can.

Happy birthday, 'pet.

Just so you know. You are our whole world, too.

The Day of the Giant Red Bee (a photoblog)

Woog had his first birthday party at age two. It took his mother nearly a year to prepare: drawing up a concept, filling out the guest list, planning the food, games and decorations, scouring wholesale shops for novelty items to hang from the pabitins and fill the piñatas with. It was a payday to payday struggle, with a then employment-challenged Atch dutifully chauffering me around on the weekends and patiently carting my purchases, but we made it. And Woog had a memorable birthday blast that was talked about in the months that followed.

By contrast, the joint birthday party we held for the boys (Woog 11 days into his sixth year, Eli 22 days short of his second) took me less than three weeks to arrange. Funny what slightly more money, slightly more children, and considerably less free time will do to your planning stage. Still, the kids had fun, and Eli was especially ecstatic. The cheapest clown I could find (“that's hilarious,” Atch guffawed, “the cheapest clown! Imagine someone callling you cheap, and you're a clown!”) was fortunately un-cheesy, the food overflowed, the games were loudly energetic (even the grown-ups got to play), and the giant red bee was a hit:

The invite

The tarp. Took nearly half a blasted day to assemble
their favorite characters and do the lay-out concept.

The cake

The cheapest clown. Meet Anderson and his balloons animals.
One of the gamest clowns ever, despite Woog clobbering his
brightly-colored loins with a rubber mallet. Ow.

Anderson in action

Eli and Mom

Fine dining manners

Piglets at the trough

The Bee! It's the Bee!

Where you been all my life?

Eli's first love is not his mother.

Say what, grampa?

The geriatric and the pediatric

Don't worry, Eli, I'll blow the candles, you go ahead and hug the Bee.

The boys and the Bee

Pabitin frenzy

Grown ups in a frenzy. Tore all the crepe to shreds, too. Tsk.

Mom, look what I got!

Bee, look what I got!

The Bee stings the piñata

It's a Battle B-Daman! Yehey!

Bee photo op

Eli, Bee, and the grandparents

Buzzing with the bee

It rained a bit which meant that less than half of the guest list turned out. Either that, or we unwisely scheduled the party for Father's Day. In any case, we had a ton of food left over and Atch grouched about the waste. When we got home, we gave plates of spaghetti, barbecue and sandwiches to the neighbors, and carted the rest over to Atch's hometown of Valladolid, 31 kilometers away away. We'd learned that very same day of the passing of Tatay Ponyong, his late aunt's husband, and knowing how hard-up that branch of the family was, the food certainly came in handy at the wake. Not a waste, Atch, never a waste. It was meant to be.

On the rainy drive back home, the kids slept, still fully dressed in their birthday outfits. Atch and I exchanged an ancient weary glance. We'd forgotten how tiring and back-achy hosting a children's party was, even more so now we were older and had less energy than the usual. “This is the second to the last party,” Atch declared, “the boys can have another one when Eli turns four or so, but that's it.”

Mmmm-hmmm, I think I might have yawned. That'd be about it. I felt a sense of accomplishment, like a dutiful tick mark made on a checklist of things-to-do. And while my excitement didn't reach the level of the last one, this party was made more meaningful by the happy smiles on the faces of my boys, and the relief it brought to those who needed it.

But thank Lordy it'll be a while until I have to conjure up the next party. It'll take just about that long for me to recover.

The Evolution of A Boy

He was quiet when he woke up this morning, barely saying two words to anyone. He was pensive at the breakfast table, as well, seemingly deep in thought.


Maybe having a birthday does that to you. You feel like something should be happening at such a momentous occasion. Maybe the sound of your bones growing, or the skin of your face taking a different shape, or maybe even the sudden blossoming of wondrous insights inside your skull at the stroke of your birth hour.


But he had just turned 6, after all. And the changes he might have been expecting were still a long way off into the future. Far far away. In forty or so years, his growing paunch will tell him. And so will his aching back, his cynical thoughts, and thousands of strands of no-hair.


But for now, he is just a little boy who has just turned 6. And 6 is the exact same age to ask his mother at the breakfast table, "when are you going to evolve into an old woman, Mom?"


In the olden days, if I asked such a question, my father would have delivered a brisk clip to the side of my head and commanded me to stop spouting such nonsense. But I recognized the little girl that I used to be in his odd query. Perhaps he was wondering how long it took to become an adult. And I fancied his maturing mind was trying to grasp the concept of age.


Suddenly, he said, "Pokemon can evolve."


I was flummoxed. Is the generation gap too wide a chasm for me to cross? It seems I have lost my son in translation.


I was quiet for a bit more while I tried to analyze his question from every angle. But Woog's mouth won battle of supremacy against silence and emerged victorious. Suddenly, words burst out of his mouth at a mile per minute, shattering the morning calm with the enumeration of various Pokemon monsters he has observed to have, at one time or another, evolved on national television.


I laughed with him, relieved that he'd found himself again. Stay yourself a while longer, I said to him in my head, you have years and years and years and years.


After breakfast, we granted his birthday wish to spend the day at my parents' house. Later, when we picked him up, we learned he had helped his aunts set up an impromptu garage sale in the front yard and earned himself some money for convincing an old lady to buy a beat-up toy car.


The lady had asked him what on earth he was planning to do with ten pesos, and Woog, who has never had an allowance in his life, told her he was going to buy bubblegum. "Pleeeeeeease," he begged. She relented and haggled him down to five.


And so he has five pesos for birthday money. I can almost see the wheels turning in his head. Our spawn might turn out to be the world's greatest salesman. Fancy that kind of evolution. I just hope he doesn't sell us out of house and home.

Happy birthday, Woogie!

07-07-07, 7PM

The number 7 has held a special significance from the time of the ancient Babylonians, who revered the seven sacred planets. For the Chinese, it is a lucky day to get married as the number signifies togetherness, while Japanese mythology has seven lucky gods personifying earthly happiness. Seven is a sacred proportion in Islam, and Buddha is said to have taken seven symbolic steps at birth. In the Bible, God rested on the seventh day. Roman Catholics have seven sacraments. Even gamblers see seven as a lucky number - just look at the slot machines where a trio of sevens equals the lucky jackpot.

And for Eli, who turned a year old on July 7, 2007, he began the momentous day at 7AM wetly gaping at chandeliers and statues of saints for a thanksgiving prayer at the nearest church. By 7PM, at his birthday party, he showered the significant night with a healthy dose of tears, and his special brand of tantrum fireworks, retiring upstairs to leave his guests gorging on a hefty repast:

His lucky banner and balloons

His lucky food and family

His luckless overstimulated self

His mom, the lucky rescuer

His lucky bottle

His spoils, the morning after.
A Fisher Price, the lucky boy.