Not Much Difference Really

Panic. Panic. Panic.

Woog is moaning underneath the blankets. Clutching them up to his chin. Curled into himself like a shrimp. Shivering, burning, shivering.

Mom. Sniffle. Mom, my head is dizzy. My feet are cold. Mom. Mom.

Thirty-five years does not prepare you for the sight and sound of your son's first full-blown fever-chill. Not when the Biogesic fails to work. Or the cool sponge bath. Or the glasses of water. Or the two layers of blankets, one of which is thicker than his tongue.

Panic. Panic. Panic. Should I call an ambulance?

Eli is looking at his mother in wonder. She is fluttering about like a headless chicken. Totally useless female. He clambers up on the bed and tries to warm his brother by leaping upon the bundled-up febrile form. Maybe all Woog needs is a good romp to start him sweating again.

Ooomphff. Mom. Eli is bothering me. Go away, Eli.

Leave Manong Woog alone! He's sick!

'Tick, Eli says. 'Tick! 'Doog 'tick!

Mom, my bones are owwie. Mom.

I could give him a massage. Accupressure-something. Where did I read that?

I rummage through the medicine box, hunting for the ever-reliable cure-all. My bottle of Polar Bear. That menthol-eucalyptus essential embrocation that has seen us through headaches and toothaches, mosquito bites and back pain, clogged noses and sore throats. It will help Woog's owwie bones, at the very least.

But it is missing. I upend the medicine box on the bed. Gone. Who had it last? I rack my useless brains.

Oh! Woog did. For his asthma. I run to the adjoining room and start pawing through Woog's baskets.

Panic. Panic. Panic. Oh, my poor fevered and shivering son.

Woog! Where did you put the Polar Bear, I call, still ransacking through his well-ordered belongings. Woog! I yell louder, fear making my voice hoarse. Where is the Polar Bear?

Footsteps thundering on the floorboards behind me. Eli.

He lifts up his worried eyes and offers me:

Bear, he says, bear.

He is handing me Blue Bear. His comfort plushie of choice. Bear, he says again, gifting me with a frown of anxiety and his most precious possession.

I am nonplussed. I can hear Woog in the other room. Laughing, shivering, laughing.

Oh, 'Pet.

I gather Eli and Blue Bear in my arms, the object of my quest forgotten. Woog is still laughing hysterically in between bouts of shudders. I start to laugh, too.

Bear, Eli declares adamantly. He hands the toy to his brother, who is too bundled-up to reach out, and too shaken up with mirth to take it.

Eli eyes the laughing lunatics. Perhaps this is an inside joke, he thinks. If it is, he doesn't get it. But he starts to laugh anyway. If you don't get 'em, join 'em. The one who laughs last, and all that...

Our laughter subsides to snickers more than half an hour later. My panic subsides with it.

Woog is fever-free the next morning, and decides to do a whole day TV-thon. All is well with the world. Eli and Blue Bear with it.

Not much difference really

Manog-hilot

When I was a little girl, I fell out of a neighbor's bugnay tree. The branch I was hanging from broke with a sharp crack and I landed flat on my back, gasping for air like a catfish on the chopping block.


The next day I was running a high fever and had the hoarse raspy cough of a veteran smoker. My parents brought me over to Tyo Gunding, a silver-haired man with a brown seamed face and a nearly toothless grin. Tyo Gunding enclosed my thin wrist with two knobby fingers and felt my pulse for a second or two, questing for a “kibit”. He laid me face down on his lap, and with his gnarled hands did something twisty to my back. I felt a mild uncomfortable snap, and then he let me up gently. The fever left me that very afternoon.


Through the years of various childhood mishaps, my siblings and I were Tyo Gunding's frequent customers. On some visits, I even came face to face with some kids from school who were there for the very same reasons I was. Tyo Gunding was obviously a manog-hilot of great reknown.

I never really thought deeply upon this phenomenon. The Tyo Gundings of my world were as accepted as rubbing Acete de alcamporado and binding the tummy of a colicky baby, or calling out “tabi-tabi” to unseen spirits when transversing an area of heavy vegetation.


It was a time when adults would append the requisite “puwera buyag” to every sentence someone would utter in praise of their younglings. And when these same younglings came down with fevers oddly coupled by cold clammy palms and soles, they would send for a “manog luy-a”, usually a female healer who would rub key areas of the child's body with a piece of ginger, blowing on it at intervals while uttering strange hispanic-sounding incantations. I vaguely remember a “manog luy-a” working on me once. As far as I know, this is done still.


I grew up and had kids of my own. When Woog was a rowdy toddler trotting faster than his equilibrium could keep up, falls were a frequent occurrence. Some of his more spectacular acrobatic performances were followed by a fever and dry hoarse coughing the next day. Without any second thoughts, we would bring him to Tyo Jimmy, an elderly man who owned an aquarium in which swam the ugliest fish I have ever seen.


Tyo Jimmy would briefly take Woog's wrist. It always intrigued me how the manog-hilots could tell something was wrong, some vein misaligned or pinned between a bone or cartilege, simply by taking the child's pulse.


Tyo Jimmy's next step involved either rotating Woog's arms from the shoulders, or stretching his legs backwards at the socket, depending on where the “kibit” was. He always ended each session by rubbing Vicks Vapor-rub front and back. “No baths until tomorrow,” he would say, “and no air-conditioning for at least an hour.”


We would thank him profusely and drop a twenty-peso bill in a small bowl in front of the hideous fish. He never touched the money himself. Nor did he ever specify his exact charge in “medical” fees. At any given time, the bowl would contain a motley collection of fifties, twenties, and coins of various denominations. I suspect if you offered him a loaf of good bread or a tray of eggs, he would gladly have accepted them, too.


And within the next few hours, like clockwork, Woog's fever always disappeared. The coughing, within the next day or so. When Eli would take sick from performing magnificent stunts of his own, we brought him to Tyo Jimmy, too.


They were almost always elderly men or women, these manog-hilots. Some say they were born with the gift of touch, others say they apprenticed for a long period of time under older healers before they could practice their craft. It seems they followed a code that disallowed them from charging a monetary fee for their services. It is said that if they did, they would lose their gift. Probably the reason for Tyo Jimmy's hands-off-on-money policy.


Needless to say, my sisters-in-law, both doctors, disapproved of our visits to these local chiropractors. “No scientific basis whatsoever”, they would say, or “of course your body aches when you have the flu, the manog-hilot massages it a little to make it feel better, is all.“


Yes, I suppose taking our febrile kids to the manog-hilot does take a stretch of faith. Why risk your children's bodies to someone with no formal medical schooling when there are hundreds of over-the-counter chemicals to pour into them, right?


But how do you argue with what may just be thousands of years of efficiency and effectiveness? Or with wide-spread word of mouth? And its not as if these manog-hilots dance around a bonfire in the dark of night, shaking an annointed palm branch over our kids and chanting all manner of satanic summons to raise the malignant spirits.


When my boys are grown and have kids of their own who are wont to slide down bannisters, tumble from headboards, or fall from trees, I hope they remember manog-hilots like Tyo Gunding and Tyo Jimmy. I certainly do.



Glossary of terms:

kibit – term used by the manog-hilot to describe a vein trapped between two bones, or between a bone and its cartilege after having been misaligned from its usual position due to sudden forceful movement.

manog-hilot – term used for a local chiropractor who heals through touch therapy.

Acete de alcamporado – camphor oil

tabi-tabi – literally “excuse me”. A phrase used to beg passage from unseen spirits who are believed to inhabit heavily wooded or grassy areas. It is said that harming these unseen entities by inadvertently stepping on one will bring unexplainable bodily harm and sickness.

puwera buyag – a superstitious phrase used to ward off “buyag” or “usog”. Buyag or usog is used to define a mysterious weakness or sickness accompanied by fever, excessive yawning or a tummy ache that come over a child when caused by a comment directed at that child by a person with “isog dungan”, or an overpowering personality.

manog-luy-a – a healer who negates the effects of “buyag” or “usog” by performing a ritual that includes rubbing a piece of ginger on parts of a child's body, blowing at the ginger and at the child's head, and chanting Spanish prayers.