Once Upon A Hot Dark Night

I finally had the boys all to myself when Atch left for Cebu on a conference over the latter half of last weekend.

For the most part, I dreaded having to fend for myself as soon as our self-appointed family driver and resident cook boarded his plane Sunday morning. I did plead with him to stay and cancel his trip, but he hemmed and hawed and all but told me to shut up and quit acting like a child.

Sniff.

And so being the childish and utterly spoiled female that I am, I rang my father who jumped at the chance to spend a rare Sunday with his grandsons, with me tagging along like an extra leg. He agreed to pick us up. The boys were ecstatic. They were probably wary about me taking over the cooking again.

While waiting for our “substitute caregiver” to pick us up, I was able to get some work done on my writing while the boys tumbled about in the living room. Their play area spread outward to my minute office, and pretty soon I joined in the fun. Funny what a camera phone game (stuff-three-faces-into-the-viewfinder) can do to liven up a lazy Sunday morning.

My Tatay finally arrived and we piled into his car for the drive to our refuge-for-all-seasons, my parents' house at Bata, and we spent the rest of the sleepy afternoon doing nothing in particular.

Totally unproductive, Atch would have said. And he would have been well-vindicated: the power failed at Bata that night and we were duly chauffeured back to our tiny apartment where the electricity died exactly 10 minutes later. Payback time for missing Sunday Mass, Atch would have smirked.

So there we were in the family bed, the boys in their 'jamies, writhing and sweating miserably on the sheets. I sat at the foot of the bed, fanning them with the sturdiest cardboard folder I could find while the single candle cast grotesque shadows on the walls.

Woog, ever resourceful, had taken off his shirt and lay on his back spread-eagled, looking for all the world like a lab frog awaiting dissection. Eli just wailed. The heat was stifling, even with all the windows open, and he refused to be divested of his pajama top.

And so I fanned and fanned, sweating rivulets and swearing silently at the local power company that gifted us with cringe-worthy per kilowatt rates and consistently unreliable service.

Woog lay in silent resignation. Eli wailed. I fanned and fanned. We all sweated rivers. An hour and a half’s worth.

Outside, the neighbours came out and loudly cussed the power outage, perhaps in a bid to drown out Eli’s cries. He crawled towards me, my poor hot baby, and pressed his clean sweaty self upon my dusty sweaty self while I tried to manoeuvre my aching fan arm to get some flurries of air into everyone’s faces.

Atch was, post-conference, relaxing with bottles of beer in some snazzy Cebu bar with a live band and arctic air conditioning. He texted me a cherry “how are you”, and fanning the boys in a frenzy, I bitched back that he could’ve at least stayed. He maintained infuriating text silence after that.

Finally, just when I thought my arm would fall off and Eli would lose his voice, the lights came on. My younger son’s bawling was suddenly cut short like a guillotine falling on some 18^th century French noble’s neck. He chuckled through his snot and tears and clapped his hands like a toddler possessed. Woog merely sighed like a long-suffering martyr whose trials and tribulations were finally over, and wriggled back into his shirt.

The hell with the electric bill, I turned the air-conditioning on full blast.

_________________________

All of this I confided in a muffled voice into Atch’s armpit during a family hug when he arrived the following night.

“Poor Aif,” he said as he stroked my hair, not sounding very sympathetic at all.

Suddenly This Summer (Part I)

Woog stares sullenly at the battery-operated fan that is blowing wistful flurries of air into his sweaty face. "So I'm going to die," he announces in a grating whine to his hot sweaty irritated family over the breakfast table.

It is Black Saturday in the Lenten weekend and the electric company has magnanimously decided to let the populace repent of its sins through an unscheduled power outage in the middle of summer. It is eight o'clock in the morning and the house is a furnace. Outside, the cement jungle is worse.

"Call Bata and see if they have electricity, "Atch says through gritted teeth. Bata, where my parents live, is our "brown-out" refuge. Whenever there is a power outage, we hightail it to where they have air-conditioning at full blast.

Alas, the Bata contingent is sweltering as well. "Come over anyway," my sister says, "and pack for an overnight, just in case."

Aha, so they're planning to go away for the weekend. Spirits revived, Atch preps the car and Woog rummages for his plastic beach shovel. I am tasked with the packing of everything else.

We arrive at Bata in an hour. There are excited hyperactive kids everywhere, and Woog and Eli join in the fray. One of my sisters, the medical student, is listlessly walking around questing for a bathing suit. Her twin, the student nurse, is outside entertaining some boy. Another sister, newly arrived from the capital where she is a corporate lawyer, is making frantic phone calls to beach resorts, north and south. Apparently, everywhere else is booked with holiday-makers for the summer Lenten season.

My father is leisurely sipping his third cup of coffee, and my mother is at the dinner table doing paperwork, left foot propped up where she sprained her ankle gardening the day before. No one seems to be in a hurry. In this household where I grew up, schedules vary from moment to moment. Here, "the last minute" finds it's truest sense of the word.

Atch sighs and settles himself in the sofa with a glass of iced Coke and the morning paper, while the ebb and flow of noisy kids seethes around him. Finally, Deedee the lawyer finds one last likely place to the south. In two hours, we are packed in two cars and on the road.

* * * * *

We arrive at Paradiso Beach Resort, Hinigaran after more than an hour on the blacktop. Adults in the lead car shake their heads to clear the ringing in their ears. Unfortunately, the lead car has been tasked with carrying all of the yammering squealing excited children, ranging from ages 8 years to 9 months, said children having streaked off to the seashore as soon as the car doors have opened. We crane our necks in panic but they are oblivious to such mundane matters as adult concern:

Cooling hot footsies
(Clockwise from left: Yaya Rose & Eli, Eishka & Yaya Arcelle, Woog, Kylot)

9-month old Eli: "So this is sand?"

Burrowing for crabs

They are gone for more than an hour until the kill-joy adults forcibly reel them in for a late lunch at 2 pm. So enamored is he with sand and sea, Woog contrives to give the shore a passionate parting embrace before allowing himself to be dragged in to eat:

Sand lover