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.

Suddenly This Summer (Part 2)

Breakfast was a memory five hours gone, and the stirrings of hunger in our gut now raged like the ocean throwing pieces of itself at the breakwater. By 2pm, we began to drool at each sizzling drizzle of pork fat at the grill, and the tantalizing aroma of cooking meat was answered by a chorus of rumbling responses from tummies beneath the tablecloth.

"I'm hurrying, I'm hurrying!" cried Dudu, the medical student, narrowly missing her trembling fingers as she sliced into tender hunks of char-grilled chops. At the table, Atch and Tatay were making short work of the oysters, dipping them into chili vinegar and downing them with beer.

My Mom hobbled out from the corridor, supporting her sprained ankle with a makeshift bamboo cane. By virtue of her being semi-ambulatory, the duty of manually inflating the kids' life preservers fell to her able lungs. Because vacation time in this extended family has always been spur-of-the-moment, we had, as expected, forgotten to bring the air pump. And If this meant life preservers filled with my mother's exhaled Winston's smoke, then so be it.

The kids were herded, grumbling, into designated places at our al fresco lunch, but the moment food was dumped into their plates, they fell to, burying their faces in cold mangoes and watermelon.

"It's Holy Week, aren't we supposed to fast and abstain from meat?" Someone absently commented, and was roundly ignored.

For a while there was silence as each one forgot the others' existence. Except for some mad scrambling with forks as the grilled milkfish was served, all went juicily, scrumptiously well.

* * * * *

With no surprise, the kids forgot siesta-time entirely. They waddled back into the surf, in the wake of a surfeit of warnings from nervous adults, and chased by their mothers belatedly wagging bottles of sunscreen. The invasion of paradise had just began:

Unbreachable boundaries

Castle Diablo & architect

Eli (straining to evacuate his lunch) with his Mom, on the sand

As sunset approached and the tide receded, the rest of the sun-phobic adults pussy-footed their way across the sand, led by my father with his bottles of beer, plate of left-over milkfish and long-convoluted tales of his (misspent) youth.

Tatay & Atch amid beer, cigarette smoke and stories of the past

Between a rock and a hard place:

With two kids and little privacy, any likely place will do

My Mom was apparently snoring her lunch off in one the air-conditioned rooms, having been the only one to remember her siesta hour(s), but the kids continued their hunt for shrimp and hermit crabs while the rest of us communed with the sunset.

Guard doing tour of duty at man-made shrimp and crab trench

The arid "Martian" landscape

Deedee & Dudu salute the dying sun

In the rush of our hectic lives, the simpler beautiful things often come in last, but that Black Saturday, surrounded by the tang of salty sea air and the red-gold of a setting sun, a sense of calm filled our dark souls and stilled our pounding overworked brains.

Come join me

The traditional Catholic upbringing of our youth demanded penance in time of Lent, and we realized that our penance was in not having appreciated the glory of His Creation, thrown our way each day, often sadly ignored. And in this far-flung bossom of the world, where The Shepherd called out to His sheep, we repented.

Hinigaran sunset