Mall Zombies

Manila Trip Day 3
(June 6, Saturday)

Like any family on an expensive vacation, we are trying to squeeze in as many activities as we can without falling down in exhaustion. Still, we have a lazy and leisurely breakfast at the Sampaloc apartment's penthouse before heading out to Robinson's Place Malate a short drive away.

Atch, "the cooker"

Waiting for "the cooker"

Too impatient to wait

Before we leave, my sister Deedee, a BPO lawyer and staunch Manila denizen, drops by from her midnight shift laden with goodies, and we haul her with us into our uncle's Revo for the day's fun.

As Atch's geographical memory of Manila thoroughfares kicks in, he drives us through practically empty streets free of the horrendous start-of-weekend traffic the night before. The sun actually manages to hail a weak "how do" from her cloudy perch in the sky.

Even the mall is quiet, but the kids, armed with a short night's sleep and the natural hyperactivity of the very young, swarm all over the electronic toys exhibit, while we adults sprawl on lounging chairs at the Wi-Fi area. All too soon I am awoken by mall security

"Ma'am, bawal pong matulog dito" *

without my realizing that I have actually fallen asleep. Ah, the signs of progress...




To get me conscious, Atch drags me to one of the gadget stores where he makes a very brave purchase of a much-coveted iPod, while I try not to clap hands to my mouth in horror at the cost. Still, the extravagance sufficiently rouses me enough to respond much more efficiently to handling frisky kids during a very loud and messy lunch at one of the mall's Filipino-themed restaurants.

My first taste of the Ilocano bagnet: deep fried pork with a spicy vinegar-garlic-pepper dip. There go my cholesterol levels.....

____________________________________
* "Ma'am, you aren't allowed to sleep here."

Two Weddings and A Monkey (Part 3)

Yes, I kissed a monkey. But it was nothing compared to the exhaustion.

*****

As the family of the groom, we were traditionally expected to shoulder, if not the expenses, then the job of playing nanny to the bride's family and friends. And so we did. On the very night we arrived after a two-day road and sea trip, we gritted our teeth and steeled our travel-weary spines as we surrendered cars and manpower, even for the most inconsequential and sometimes uncoordinated trips.

Poor Atch, who spent the rest of that night ferrying wedding gifts, make-up artists, photographers, friends of the bride, and various other hangers-on. Poor Tatay, who went with him to serve as navigator on the dark and bumpy roads from one district to the next - back and forth, back and forth. Poor Deedee, who hovered and fluttered over everything in a panic, having been appointed impromptu wedding coordinator over the whole affair.

Poor Dudu, who rushed out with the last remaining vehicle, responding to a frenzied phone call from the bride to make sure that her parents, who were decorating the church, had had their dinner. Dudu made her own hesitant way on streets she had never driven on, only to find out that it was a false alarm. Poor Emil, Dada's loyal boyfriend, who was there solely as our guide in unfamiliar territory, but ending up a chauffer-and-baggage-carrier extraordinaire, missing his dinner by more than 5 hours in the bargain.

But most of all, poor Nonoy, probably the only groom in the history of wedding-dom who gave up his car for the comfort of the make-up artist, videography crew and Lord knows who else, riding to the church in, of all public utility vehicles, a tricycle (!!!), while fully bedecked in his wedding barong and shiny black shoes.

Nonoy got hitched at a turn-of-the-century church on the coast of Dauis, Bohol, a spitting distance from the sea. Its claim to fame was a fresh-water spring that had miraculously spouted up during the Spanish era, after townspeople hiding from marauding pirates prayed fervently in their desperation of hunger and thirst. The spring had been analyzed to contain zero microorganisms, and it was said to cure all ills of those who drank from it. Before we left, we intended to fill up several gallons worth.

We were all solemn in the melting humidity as the ceremony progressed. Even Woog managed to behave reasonably well in his stifling coin-bearer outfit.

The choir's voices soared up to the immense domed ceiling, and descended slowly down upon us in gentle diminuendos, raising goosebumps among the congregation. At the back of the church, Atch and I took turns chasing Eli, who was bent upon exploring all the dusty and cobwebby nooks and crannies of ancient baroque architecture.

Family of the groom

Eli and Eish

"Romeo" and his rose

The reception was held by the lip of the sea, the many hanging lanterns casting a warm glow on skin, white tablecloths, and the raised wooden deck. The breeze blew in, carrying salty sea air, and as the bride and groom kissed in the luminous dark, a thousand fireworks exploded over the water, blowing away much of the exhaustion and ushering in a satisfied relief.

Nonoy had gotten himself a competent handler. All was well with the world.

Nonoy and RJ

Eli at the edge of the Dauis seacoast

Eli and Mom walk the red carpet

Woogie by the sea

*****

The next morning, despite our previous late and alcohol-laden night, we bounded out of our beds early, eager to face our first free (and only) day as tourists. We had to wait for a couple more hours for the family and friends of the bride to get ready, but as the sun slowly approached the sky's zenith, we decided we were absolved of our nanny duties and enthusiastically sallied forth:

Bohol Bee Farm

Cruising down the Loboc River

And yes, I kissed a monkey.

Tarsius syrichta

We all did.

Eli's response to: "Don't touch the monkeys."

The following day, we had a repeat of our tedious land-and-sea journey back home. It's been two months since that day. We're still bone-tired.

Two Weddings and A Monkey (Part 2)

Puke. There was a lot of it. Particularly from the other car. We trailed the Revo across the pretzel-loop highway leading up towards the mountains of Don Salvador Benedicto. Two cars, eleven people, two carsick little kids, ears popping in the high altitude.

Not a week after Nat tied her groom down, we were making our way to the quaint little city of Bohol to witness my only brother, Nonoy get bound up, as well. Atch was continuously wincing at the thought of his rapidly dwindling resources. I was cringing at having two excited little boys under my charge, having permanently let go of the nanny that week due to some very serious infractions.

We started out after breakfast, half a dozen adults and four kids, bracing ourselves for a two-leg four-hour road trip interspersed with a two-leg six-hour trip by sea. Taking a plane was too expensive, my father, a do-or-die skinflint declared. And Atch all so readily agreed.

Wawa and grandkids, getting ready to board the ferry

I see the sea!

Nine hours and one ferry boat ride later, we were on a highway linking Toledo to Cebu. Woog was tiredly demanding for us to turn around and go home. He was tired, he was hungry, he wanted his soft bed.

But as the brilliantly lighted hills loomed ever closer, he started bouncing up and down on his seat, “Mom, this is the best day ever!”

Cebu at night was phenomenal. As the traffic inched slowly forward, my father made an equally phenomenal leap across the seat to the luggage compartment at the back, where he emptied his sixty-something bladder mostly inside a freshly upended water bottle, splashing some of his urea on places we preferred not to think about.

We spent the night at a hotel, too hungry to be nice to one another, too tired to go around and see the sights. More family members joined us: Dada, who took an ill-timed leave from her new job (“told them I had pharyngitis”), and the next morning we drove to the airport picked up her twin, Dudu, who flew in from medical school in Iloilo (“yes, sem break at last!”).

Eli: Trade?

Woog: *snort*

We unlucky thirteen drove to the pier where we tiredly boarded another ferry after a long interminable wait under the scorching noonday sun, on towards our final destination: Tagbilaran, Bohol's capital city.

By the time we had docked at the port, it was full dark. Deedee, the lawyer sister from Manila met up with us, as well as two uncles and their wives who had travelled all the way from Kansas and San Diego. It was mayhem and chaos as we tried to fit 19 people and mountains of luggage into two cars and the hotel mini van.

In all the rush and confusion, we didn't notice that we had left behind our legal eagle. Deedee, after having successfully directed the cramming of everyone and everything into every single available space, was left standing by her lonesome on the wharf while the vehicles carrying tired and hungry people sped away. Everyone in each car all thought she was riding with the other. It somehow seemed like a portent of dark beginnings for everyone.

The Island

“Maybe you'll write about us in your blog,” the bespectacled man said. I turned around, bewildered. Beside me, Atch was sitting on a piece of driftwood in the sand, doing his drunken master thing and insisting that some of the rechargeable batteries still had power in them.

“She will.” Atch slurred empathically, before I even had a chance to open my mouth.

The man continued, “My wife, she's blog-crazy. She reads all blogs.”

I gave the bespectacled man an embarrassed grin. “Maybe I will,” I amended.

In my arms, Eli was whining. On the sand, Atch finally gave up trying to stuff the batteries into the camera.”They're all dead, Aif,” he mumbled, fumes of Tanduay 15-years carried by eddies of ocean air to my face. I wanted to tell him “I told you so”, but the bespectacled man was still lounging on the railing behind us, playing host.

It was the afternoon of our first day on the island resort, Atch's company's summer outing. His colleagues were scattered all over the sandbar: soaking, kayaking, snorkelling, drinking. Woog was showing off his new swimming skills and was half-floating under the stone bridge of whose railings the resort manager was now resting his prodigious bulk on.

This guy doesn't know me, I told myself, transferring Eli's 10-ton weight to my other arm, he's guessing I might have a blog, probably on the off-chance he'll get free publicity.

And isn't he the same guy who overcharged us on the kayak rental nearly ten years ago? I squinted, trying to remember, but my memory flitted away on the salty sea breeze.

I was on this very same island one summer almost a decade ago, pre-Atch. With an ex-boyfriend, also pre-Atch. There were brightly-coloured starfish by the hundreds, then. And the kayaks didn't have half patched-up holes, or missing paddles, or absent lifevests. And the tennis court didn't look like an overgrown Celtic ruin, and the sand around the “floating” cottages was free of squilchy grey mulch.

Still, I didn't want to offend our host. I was here as a guest of the guests, after all. I was here for Woog and Eli, the former having the time of his life, the latter having set foot on the seashore for the first time.

Where am I again?

Poor Eli. He wailed on the aqua-bike. He screamed aboard one of the kayaks. And now the cold waves and the whipping sea wind were giving him second thoughts. Give it a chance, pet, I urged him silently.


Woog, meanwhile, dug a hole in the sand and asked me to bury him. We gathered and discarded countless shells and other sea creature skeletons before it finally turned dark, and we headed back to the lodge where I equally cajoled, bullied and manhandled the boys to shower and change.

That evening, Atch sweated off the alcohol at the grill, fanning at the hot coals under the beef while a tropical storm raged outside, and lightning fandango-ed across the sky.

“Boot!” Eli exclaimed, pointing to the moored jetski. “Boot!” he squealed at the three anchored outrigger watercraft. He and Woog passed the time getting in the way of food preparation and popping mixed nuts into their non-stop mouths. At least Atch's officemates found my sons cute and adorable. Or maybe they were only being polite.

We woke the next morning to a mildly sunny day, and despite my desperate urging, the boys hardly bothered with breakfast before trooping to the sand, buckets and shovels in hand. Like a miniature sumo wrestler, Eli stomped down on every sandcastle Woog tried to build, and Woog wailed each time, pushing his brother away with his feet. Finally Atch pulled the baby aside and dug a depression on the sand for him to trample on.

Across the sandbar, the loans collector and the office manager were gingerly lifting sea urchins from the water with a paddle and laying them on a kayak. Woog ran off to see them at work, facinated by the spiny black balls undulating on the hot pink plastic. But they weren't spiny for long. The gatherers broke off the poisonous but strangely fragile points and hauled the creatures away in one of Woog's pails. “The new bucket meal,” the loans teller announced. Apparently, they tasted very well with rum, whiskey or beer. “Raw too,” the office manager added. One of the spines had pierced his palm and he went off to find a pair of tweezers.

The urchin with the urchins

Would they have harvested sea urchins if there were plenty of starfish around? I wondered. For that matter, would they have eaten starfish? Urk.

Lunch was uneventful, though I saw no sign of sea urchin flesh on the table. Later, everyone packed up to board one of the pumpboats that would take us back to the mainland. “Boot!” Eli gurgled sleepily. He and Woog seemed none the worse for wear after their island adventure.

But the boys slept all throughout the two-and-a-half-hour road trip back home, Woog cramping my left shoulder and the top of Eli's head lodged hard under my chin. This is the beginning of the end, I thought. And I bade a wistful farewell to summer days when I would go away to the beach to unwind, splash, soak up the sun and have fun. It's my babies' turn now. And I never felt more of a parent than I did at that very moment. A very exhausted, ancient and windswept parent, but a parent nonetheless.

Back home, Atch swore loudly when he found a dent at the rear of the car, something he had tiredly overlooked when he claimed it at the port where we had parked. And I swore just as loud when I put on a shirt that brushed against my fiery red back. In my zeal to protect the children from the sun, I had smothered them in sunscreen and forgot to put some on myself. Behold, here grimaces a sunburnt parent.

And Atch plans to take us to another island next summer. Oh, help.

*****

Much later, I remembered the bespectacled man, and in fairness to him, I did write this post. So there.

Suddenly This Summer (Part 3)

"Mommy, I want to go 'twimming in the 'twimming pool!" Lisped two-year-old Eishka, dragging her groggy mother by the hand. Said mother was blinking against the glare of a very early summer sunrise after having spent the wee hours yowling her lungs out at Paradiso's videoke bar.

Yaya Rose and Yaya Arcelle, themselves mote-encrusted and sleep-deprived, were rehashing their midnight performances in the same videoke shout-out, and laughing with hysterical horror about the hapless centipede that crawled over them the night before as they lay huddled in blankets against the arctic air-conditioning.

Atch was cranky and muttering darkly about people singing way off-key .."and at the top of their lungs, too..." cutting into his precious sleep. "...likely kept the whole resort awake," he grumbled. But the rest of the midnight revelers largely ignored his sour-graping. He was prevented from singing the night before due to a heat-induce sore throat, bully for him. He perked up after I handed him his morning coffee, but not by much.

We introduced Eli to the joys of the twin swimming pools. After a previous day spent digging his toes in the warm sand however, the cold chlorinated water made him scream bloody murder, runners of tears and snot streaming down his miserable face:

I want to go back to the beach!

Lucky for him, he was rescued by his Tatay, and together they contemplated the plumage and shrill warbles of the lovebirds in cages around the pool area.

Two beached whales

Breakfast was a subdued affair, most of us either nursing a hang-over, or sulking over having been ordered to return contraband shrimp and entire hermit crab communities back to the sea where they belonged.

The rest of our stay was spent in the swimming pools, and even my mother with her sprained ankle jumped in, creating mini-tsunamis in her wake, much to the delight of the kids.

Finally, it was time to leave, and amid the flurry of packing, the yelling at dawdling children, and the last minute snagging of swimsuits left to dry, an air of exhausted melancholy settled into the adults. Even the little ones seemed a touch subdued. Vacation time has come and gone. Back we plod to the real world.

We waved our tired goodbyes to the Hawaiian-shirt clad staff and sent ourselves on our way. Except for one hair-raising incident when an embarrassed Kylot muttered, "Auntie, I'm going to throw up," and Atch pulled over to let the poor car-sick boy heave his half-digested lunch over the side of the road, the drive home was groggily floatingly uneventful.

We got home to our beloved furnace of an apartment. Dust had gathered in thick flurries over surfaces and in corners in a conspiracy of powdery coup d' etas during our one day absence. We dragged our limp lethargic selves inside and deposited our lumpy waterlogged belongings on the dining table for sorting.

And as I eyed the growing mound of laundry-ables piling up, I sighed, thank you Papa God for the wonderful vacation. A Happy Easter to You, too.

So We Moved

I am not even about to harass myself with a retelling of this most prodigious and supremely stressful event. Suffice it to say, the apartment next door was up for grabs, and grab it we did. Door number Four was getting too crowded, what with the in-laws and all. So we moved. To door number Five.

So we moved. Why does that sound so blessedly simple? Foremost in my memory is leaving my three-week-old son in the old living room while Yaya and I negotiated the bulky dresser downstairs, across the courtyard, then upstairs again to the new bedroom.

Atch covered in sawdust and sweat as he drilled holes and stapled electrical cables.

Woog running wildly back and forth from one apartment to the next, unsupervised.

My milkjugs knocking painfully against my chest as I waxed the new floor.

Nursing Eli while helplessly listening to Atch's poor back creaking from the strain of carrying three sets of cabinets, one disassembled queen-sized bed, an aircon unit, a tv, and various other odds and ends.

Combing the city to find the least expensive possible dining table...and wincing anyway while shelling out the money for one.

Going back and forth for the gazillionth time carrying clothes and shoes and pillows and sheets...how can three people accumulate so much stuff in five years?

Trying to appease Woog who shied in terror from his new bedroom, and his first ever prospect of sleeping alone.

Vacuuming. Wiping and disenfecting. Again and again. And yet again.

In the end, when we finally settled down to enjoy our first breakfast in the new apartment, it started to feel like home. We were practically sleepwalking in exhaustion, but we were home.

August 2006

Post Birth Pessimism

I am swimming in a sea of disorientation. Apart from the lack of sleep, I am in a constant state of hunger. I am striving to take care of an adamantly needy Woog, feed a voracious baby, and try to keep the room and bathroom reasonably clean.

Partly, I am in a state of disbelief that Eli turned out so dark and “Atchbund-y”. After four years of getting used to fair-skinned and comely Woog, I naturally expected the next one to be another Mommy-clone. Instead I am finding myself in very upclose and personal circumstances with a changeling (Atch forgive me). I am in denial. Oh the guilt this feeling spawns!

But he is so fat and juicy and deliciously bite-able. I can spew all that mush about my heart being so surprisingly accommodating. But I won't. I'm still so tired. And hungry. And sleepy.

Woog has suddenly become a giant. I hold this stoutly compact bundle that is Eli, and then I look at my older son, with his suddenly huge feet, his hard scabby knees, large awkward fingers, the flare of his booger-filled nostrils – and suddently I am overcome with a mild case of ... distaste? A mild case. But still. Oh the guilt!

Atch is still in full fix-it mode. He repairs the breastpump, assembles the crib, fixes the baby monitor. In between, he washes the car and supervises the fixing of nice gingery batches of hot shellfish soup to encourage my breastmilk. He even nails my broken bakya together. Yet I find myself outraged by his constant absence from my side. Like I want a vigil. And my every wish granted. Now. At this very moment. I am constantly cranky towards this lovely man who has done everthing within his means possible to make me comfortable.

Oh the guilt!

And I worry that I'll be a fit enough mother. One child, yes. But two? The feeling persists, inspired by the confluence of sleep deprivation, my bloated post-natal belly, and my stinging cracked nipples.

I hold Eli and I wonder if I should be feeling more ... maternal? Oh, but I am so tired, and hungry, and sleepy. And the room needs dusting, and there are baby clothes to launder, and the toilet bowl wants a good scrubbing, and Woog has homework to get done...

I have never felt so overwhelmed.

July 2006