The Beach

Mom, Woog whispers conspiratorially with a hopeful look on his face, I want to ride a boat this summer.

He glances sideways at his Tatay, almost fearful that any whiff of his wish would cause said paternal authority to reply with a stern rebuff.

But Woog gets his wish in a spur-of-the-moment decision. After dinner at my parents’ house one Saturday, someone vaguely mentions the beach, and slowly the whole family drifts toward the discussion like seaweed undulating in a lazy current.

Plans are made. Assignments are handed out. By the time we head home an hour later, Woog is too keyed up with excitement. He loudly thrashes on the bed the whole night, keeping everyone awake.

The next day, we are up before the sun. Atch heads out to the market to buy the day’s dose of high cholesterol for the grill, and I stuff clothing, swimsuits, sunblock, sandwiches, and other miscellaneous items into beach bags.

By 8 am, two cars are on the road to Cadiz, 48 kilometers away. We take a pump boat ride to Lakawon

and I tell Woog that the last time he visited the island, he was a 9-month-old fetus in my tummy. You know, our weight broke the boat's gangplank in half, just the two of us.

And I tell Kylot that he was an hysterical 3-year-old screaming to be let off in the middle of a choppy sea. The boys giggle, wriggling in their seats like puppies.

Woog & Kylot

All aboard!

200-pound capacity rubber boat, 300+ pound load

Easing into the sea, butt first

Me: Come swim, Tatay!
Tatay: No! The sun will give me more liver spots.
Me: How 'bout a beer bath instead?
Tatay: *snort* Get your wobbly abs out of here.

Coral pirate

Auntie Dada: Give me back my cigarettes, El.
Eli: No! Mine!

Family on the sand

Smiling through the sunburn

And so we head back home...tired, a little too sandy and painfully sun-drenched. But very happy.

Summer Headgear

Kalbooch boys

Of Hope, Belly Fat, And Battered Cross Trainers

Summer swoops down on us like a murderous flock of sparrows, and the heat assaults us in a blitzkrieg. It drives away most of our lucid thoughts except the constantly pressing need to seek shade and pursue any stray flurries of cool air.

The heat finally melts away the thick blanket of doom and gloom surrounding me, and suddenly everything seems bathed in light. Never mind that our very young and very pregnant landlord & landlady have raised our rent by a thousand pesos. Never mind that the global economic chokehold has strangled dead any hope of our building a house this year. Still, the sun is so very bright and the future practically dazzles us. We will prevail.

For self-professed creatures of the summer, Atch and I are woefully out of shape. Beach season is upon us, and each morning we force ourselves to get up an hour earlier in the hopes of getting some exercise, only to fall back into delicious sleep like rancid Jurassic pork.

I unearth the elastic binder I used to wear after each of my sons' births, and it keeps my prodigious gut in so my office uniforms still fit - in a manner of speaking. But, Wonder of wonders, the binder curtails my voracious appetite. In two weeks, I trim an inch off my middle.

Encouraged, I offer the binder to Atch, but he shakes his head disdainfully and turns it into a running joke (look at my Aifee, so desperate she's wearing body armor), all the while sucking his breath in as much as his tummy will allow. I am still wearing my old maternity dresses on the weekends, so much so that my sister-in-law's husband takes to asking, sotto voce, if I am pregnant again.

By some stroke of luck, and the siren call of an empty refrigerator, we finally get to lace on our ancient walking shoes and pound the pavement for the 20 minutes it takes to get to the nearest market. We stock up on fresh vegetables and a newly murdered chicken before making our sweaty breathless way back on foot.

We are exhilarated. Already, I feel the surge of energy burning the calories, melting the fat, and incinerating the thick cobwebs from my mind.

Summer is here, I whisper to my battered cross trainers, same time tomorrow?

Play It Again For The Second Time Around Once More, A Rerun

Because we sent him to school at age 3, and because the Philippine school system is run by a bunch of bureaucratic idiots who change their policies depending on where the money falls (6 1/2 to 7 years is the new parameter for first grade) , Woog graduated from kindergarten for the second time in his life.

A record! Atch declared, he's the first ever person on both sides of the family to do so. Atch would know. He spent 8 years in college.

Still, there was much rejoicing, albeit a shortage of excitement, as Woog's big day loomed. We a.) rented the requisite toga, b.) listened to him as he practiced the alma mater songs, and c.) attempted to drag him away from his Nintendo gameboy to buy the regulation navy long pants. Only the first two were successful, but then again, graduation wasn't a new thing to get all worked up about, so two out of three isn't so bad.

Teacher Piorque and Shi Lau Shr

With the oppressive heat of summer pressing down on us and making us cringe into the pavement, nearly 300 nursery and kindergarten kids, accompanied by parents, siblings, cousins, grandparents, aunts, uncles, nannies, and their whole barangays, it seemed, filed in a surprisingly orderly manner into the gym, and sat obediently on plastic chairs arranged for the occasion.

We waited, we sweated, and we clapped through the opening remarks, awardings, speeches, and presentations, guarding our toes as eager parents and hangers-on rushed forward with their cameras and handycams to capture each gloriously shining moment of their beloved offspring.

Woog, our 6-year-old veteran, frolicked in the first few rows with his graduating class, pulling off several caps and running away with them, jumping up and down on his chair, and playing abbreviated games of tag before the assistant teachers shushed him and pulled him back to his seat. Him and 300 other kids.

Chaos, thy name is Woogie

Finally, his name was up, and our first-born rushed forth upon the stage with his signature ear-to-ear grin.

Watch out first grade, here I come!

Ignoring the heat, we took the requisite hundred pictures, and we all headed home where we fell to our lunch like hungry wolves.


He never even asked for a graduation present.