Lasterday's Ka-chum-chum and Other Variations of Communication

I am listening to how my family talks, something I normally take for granted in the everyday rush of things, and I am amused to discover that over the course of time, we have developed an internal language that only the four of us can understand.

I wouldn't be surprised if every family in the world has their own version of it: a dialect rich in context and bearing its own long-winded origins. The sort of talk that crops up at the dinner table, or is thrown absently over the shoulder as one goes out the door, the kind that causes puzzled looks from outsiders living just beyond our tight-knit little circle of four.

“Ba-buscht!” Atch exclaims, very like a minor Nazi potentate, and no one is surprised when only Eli responds, shrieking-running-laughing into his father's arms. On the other hand, a scoffing “Daw sa ba-buscht ka!” (You ba-buscht, you!) succinctly describes one's apparent lack of humor and understanding, usually accompanied by a playful (and sometimes painful) pinch on the tummy. It is also not uncommon for me to be on the pinching end of the deal.

It will do no good to explain that “ba-buscht” is predominantly the creation of a 16-month-old Woog who used to scream “Ba-buscht! Pa-pah-boom!” - phrases that might have meant something, or anything - while evading his father's frustrated attempts at a bearhug.

Or that one of the many ways guaranteed to get Woog to behave is an ominous “Can we trust you?” And the very solemnity of its utterance calls forth the discordant crashing of a church organ playing a funeral march in the background. Woog, wide-eyed with the weight of consequence, settles down with a quavering “yes.”

Of course, a simple “do you want to get whupped?” always gets the message across, but this in this family, we live for the drama.

The first few times Eli said “Mom-Mom”, I fluttered up to cloud 9. Until “Mom-Mom” turned out to be a word he deployed to suit his purposes. As in “Mom-Mom” (pointing to his sippy cup), or “Mom-Mom” (pointing to a toy car just out of reach), or endearingly “Mom-Mom” (lifting his arms to be carried). I belatedly realize that his lack of an intelligible working vocabulary leaves him no choice in the matter. Incidentally, he uses the “Mom-Mom” routine on his nanny, as well.

In the middle of the night, he cries out in a nasty dream, and if his mother still snores in neverland, Atch rises to comfort him. “Ka-chum-chum,” Atch murmurs, settling the whimpering toddler on his chest, “it's alright, poor ka-jam-jam boy, Tatay's here l'Arlel, ka-chum-chum.” And the use of the magic non-words sends Eli hurtling back into slumber.

“Dubby, Aif.” Atch says before he leaves. “Dubby, Atch,” I say in return. Dubby, as if one didn't know, has evolved from that all too common expression of love everyone seems to throw around. In our family, it has taken on a new twist. Dubby. Dub-dub. Da-la-lub-wub. Take your pick.

Sometimes, even our peculiar language is a source of confusion. As in “Mom, lasterday the teacher said to bring my baby picture to school,” Woog says. And it will take some figuring out on my part whether “lasterday” refers to yesterday, the day before that, or even the week before. In Woog's lexicon, “lasterday” may refer to any given day in the past.

Some words are more colorful than most (announce a “weekee”, and the kids scamper away squealing), others are steeping in scatological inference (“Did you make mush, Eli?”), and some are uttered in a deliciously secret whisper (“Bangy-wang-wang later?”). Others still are decendants of words passed down from both sides of the family (“Mom, my gû hurts so much I made puffa.”).

I wonder if someday, sometime way way in the future, our descendants will start conversing in some totally evolved alien tongue that anthropologists will need to document it.

Won't that be interesting?

Deedee...

I did not kick your head!

(...did I?)

Of course, I didn't. Else there would be one legal editor walking around today with a hefty dent in her noggin. So there.

Still, thanks for the pimp job. One can always count on family. So in return....here's to you.

The Christmas Box

When I was a little girl, I remember precariously bending over the canal that ran under the driveway outside our gate. In those days, it was a muddy mossy sometimes garbage-clogged culvert that flooded over at each heavy rainfall. But it was also a wonderful magical waterway filled with mysterious aquatic plantlife and otherworldly organisms. Best of all, it was one of the prime tadpole-fishing grounds in the neighborhood.

When the current ran swift and the wind was right, the canal would be surrounded by a perimeter of kids, shouting encouragement at a variety of roughly-hewn makeshift paper and styrofoam boats racing along its murky waters. And I would be in the thick of it all.

“Get out of there! You'll fall in!” My mother would yell.

“Look, you've got lots of toys here inside,” she would cajole.

“You naughty impossible girl! You'll get elephantiasis!” Even then, “sugar 'n' spice 'n' everything nice” was never my thing.

Sometimes, these episodes from my past come come back and nudge me whenever I am faced with puzzling behavior from my own two boys. Like last Christmas, for instance, that marvelous time of the year every child looks forward to.

“Woog needs some school socks,” I hinted loudly to no one in particular a week before the big day, “you know, the white ones.”

“And Eli could use some new p'jamies,” I confided even louder, “everything he has is knee-length on him.”

The replies I got ranged from a scathing “That's your job.” to a scandalized “But its Christmas!”

So Woog and Eli, the lucky little rascals, were recipients of a mountain of toys from their benevelent grandparents, uncle and aunts. We got home from the noche buena feast laden with a huge box of toys for the boys. Frankly, I was a bit jealous. All Atch and I got were bath towels, a couple of shirts, a dirty-white tote in fake crocodile skin, and a new set of throw pillow covers.

The next morning, the boys literally tore their way downstairs to get to the goodies. One by one they reverently/roughly took each item out, and tested them briefly, only to catch interest in another...and another...and another...until they reached the bottom of the...

Hello-o Box!

It was a simple cardboard thing my brother picked up at a local supermarket to lug all the gifts he had brought home, but to my kids, it was a cube of infinite possibilities....it was a car....a plane...a spaceship....it was the whole goshdarn Hongkong Disneyland!

They knocked elbows, knees and heads in their rush to be the first to get in.

There are times it seems I am too far gone from my own childhood to realize what my kids are on about, and why they do what they do. Until I am reminded of that little girl who was a few murky drops away from catching elephantiasis. And so I hold my waspish adult tongue and allow them to disregard, like so much used-up confetti, the Hot Wheels, and the Legos, and the off-roader jeeps, and the Pokemon action figures, and the pirate ship replicas, and a huge fluffy Eli-sized Elmo doll that I wish someone had given me as a child...

All for this box which they spent not only the whole Christmas morning in, but the whole week after that, until it disintegrated from all their loving attention. Atch took pity on them and tied a cord to it, and we took turns pulling our “boys in the box” across the living room floor. Much shrieking and laughing. Something I wouldn't trade all the toys, or white school socks, or longer p'jamies in the world for.

Tatay Bebot

My earliest memories of him were of being carried in one strong capable arm while the other held a bottle of his favorite San Miguel Beer. He was the first person who taught me how to eat with my bare hands: dried salted fish with leftover rice crust scraped from the bottom of the pot. Shirtless. With one foot propped on the chair. All the while, my mom scolded in the background, scandalized at our apparent lack of civility.

One time at a big family dinner, an aunt caught me scratching my itchy ass with a huge fish bone. The table went into an uproar. He was the only one who chuckled and showed me how to relieve itchy body parts by rubbing them on the rough edges where the walls met. From then on, I never needed any help having my back (or butt) scratched.

After a night of heavy drinking with the neighborhood toughies, he would lay himself facedown on the bermuda grass, a hung-over penitent, allowing the rough patches of greenery to ease the relentless itch of his alcohol-related allergies. I would jump up on his back then, leaping and shrieking with glee, something my own dry humorless father would never allow. And I endlessly wondered how they could ever be related.

One day, I told myself, I would be just like him - my uncle. He was, for me, the epitome of freedom.

I missed him when he left the country, and whenever he arrived, my siblings and I would unanimously declare a school holiday. The three "salawayons", he would jokingly call us. And by doing so, he acknowledged that he was one himself. Blood always tells.

I would throw myself in his arms and begged to be carried just like a little girl. How we laughed. When I got bigger, I grudgingly accepted the proferred lap instead. And while he puffed on his cigarettes and chugged at his beer, I would listen to all his stories, and complain to him loudly about my own father's harsh discipline - something I could safely do when I was with him.

He was a generous man, sometimes too much for his own good. Several times he took the shirt of his back to give to someone who admired it. Sometimes that someone was me. I was the recipient of innumerable shirts, a pair of purple corduroy pants (which I wore constantly when I was pregnant), and a handsome 20-year-old leather belt that Woog's behind has had a passing acquaintance with from time to time.

I did try mightily hard to be like him. I did a pack a day (too bad my asthma and I were in constant disagreement), drank like a fish (and was rushed to the emergency room with gastroenteritis in the middle of exam week). I even strove to cultivate his laid-back brand of humor. Alas. I was destined to be as dry as my own father.

Just as he was godparent at my christening, he stood as godparent at my wedding, as well, smoothing over the rough spots and declaring to all and sundry that I peed on him at my baptismal party. Promise me, he exhorted my husband and I, visit your Tatay every Saturday. He needs the company. We promised.

He showed me how to cook sarciado and dinuguan, a great revelation for this eldest daughter who grew up in a non-cooking household. Heavily pregnant one Christmas, I gobbled up his delectable spicy prawns simmering in a stew of thick coconut milk, a dish he had cooked for his own in-laws. Never mind, you go ahead and finish that, he laughed, I'll cook up another batch.

The happy years seemed endless. He and my aunt came home for their 25th wedding anniversary, and when they renewed their vows, Atch & I laid gently lay the binding cord across their shoulders while three-year-old Woog bounced in his seat - a ringbearer on steriods.

Two years later, I talked to him over the phone for the last time. The cigarettes had finally done a good job on him. My aunt said the diagnosis was terminal - he had lung cancer. I'm coming home, he gasped on borrowed air, you wait for me, I promise I'm coming home.

And I fought against tears. And I waited.

My sister called me a day after the New Year, sobbing. He had died peacefully in his sleep.

I cannot think about how he is never going to walk through the door again, unannounced, surprising everyone and calling for a bottle of "whatever" - his favorite San Miguel Beer. Or that I am never going to sit on his lap again and listen to his rough soothing singsong talk. Or that he will never meet my second son. And that no matter how I look, I am never going to find a better father.

He is in a good place, my aunt tells me over the phone, I know because he has told me so. And please tell your husband for me, she begged, convince him to stop smoking...

But if this is a lesson, then it is late in the telling. I write this to try to ease the tightness in my chest each time I think of my Tatay Bebot. I write this to pave the way for my hot scalding tears to fall, as an ode to what he was for me. Because I will always prefer to remember him as he was: that tall, lanky, chuckling, laid back man. My uncle.

I sometimes wish he would visit me in a dream. Maybe there, he'd let me sit on his lap again. Even for just one more time.