Marbles

Woog had been wanting to own a bag of marbles for such a long long time now. But being the parent that I am, I had horrible visions of him accidentally swallowing one. Or of offering to share them with his one-year-old cousin, Ia, and her swallowing a couple of them, as well.

Then with my imagination on overdrive and I would picture the whole household speeding posthaste to the hospital, where amid the ruckus of pumping out the children's tummies, my husband, my sister-in-law and her husband would be glaring at me, the guilty perpetrator of it all.

Still, in my heart of hearts, I couldn't resist this simple need of a little boy to acquire such treasure. After all, didn't I have a bag of my own marbles at his age? And I don't ever recall swallowing one either (even if I did, I'm still here, aren't I? Healthy gastrointestinal track and all).

His quest for marbles wasn't an insistent one. He would talk about them, wish he had some. Sigh a bit. Then perhaps, if it occurred to him, to wonder out loud most politely if we would buy him just one. Or maybe even a couple. And being the parent with the over-active imagination, I would hedge and say something like, “maybe...if you're behaved, and maybe...if we had the money. (like, sheesh, how much would a bag of marbles cost?)”

So yesterday, as I was aimlessly wandering the aisles of a china-goods shop (walking, walking, walking to get the baby down to birthing position), wouldn't I just happen upon the most deliciously colored translucent glass marbles in plastic fishnet bags? Fifteen pesos a bag, barely half of what I usually spend for a mid-morning snack.

And wouldn't you just know? I bought them.

This morning, I came in from the bathroom to find Atch hugging a yawning Woog. It being a Saturday, we allowed him to wake at his own leisure. We were about to leave for work when I suddenly remembered.

“Hey Woogie, guess what I got you.” And some interest sparked in his sleep-chinky eyes.

I pulled out a plastic bag from my purse and the clinkety-clink of glass balls sent him off his bed, all thoughts of lying-in forgotten.

“Mommy! Marbles! Thank you!” His voice was squeaky.

Atch and I took in his excitement and we exchanged a glance moist with full-hearted wonder. How simple it is to make our child happy, we should do it more often, Atch's glance seemed to tell me. I blinked back my affirmation.

We left Woog with hugs, kisses, and warnings about putting them in his mouth. Last we looked, he was sprawled on the bed in his pajamas, flicking one colorful glass sphere against another.

And hey, if he does swallow one, he can always poop them out, can't he?

07/01/06

Off Our Rockers

Today is such an off day for us. Well, perhaps not for Atch, who usually runs perfectly well on autopilot. We slept late, we woke up late, and we had to leave a dawdling Woog who was clearly not in sync with the day's schedule.

Poor Woog was designated to take a jeep to school. When I left him to say goodbye, he was querulously allowing his yaya to give him a quick bath and complaining he had soap in his eyes.

What slaves we are to the schedules we've set for ourselves. What makes it even worse is that we're practically forcing our children to conform to the program.

So what if our son wakes up needing a hug and some cuddle time for a nightmare he must have had. We're off schedule. So what if he whines for some attention while half awake, he struggles with his clothes. We're running late. So what, if near tears, he rushes down to the breakfast table trying to keep up with us. So sorry son, we're off, you go and take public transport to school. Serves you right for being such a slowpoke.

I was quiet on the drive to the office. It was head-bashing-against-the-dashboard time. Couldn't we have at least given him some time to wake up, hugged him and said his morning prayers with him? Nooooo, we had to rush, work was waiting. Onwards to those great hallowed edifices of steel and stone - the great dictating force in our lives.

Couldn't one of us have listened about his nightmare and commiserated with the pounding in his heart and the ringing in his ears? What a time-waster. Instead, we had left him raw and vulnerable to face the day without the armor of our loving support to draw around himself.

At some point, a clueless Atch commented on Woog being such a whiner. Already heavy-hearted from guilt, I lit on him, all hellfire and brimstone.

We're there, but we're not there, I bitched. We spend less than three hours a day with him, and instead of really sitting down and listening to him, we rush him through homework and bath time and bed time. We make a pretense of communicating with him, but what we actually do is lecture him on what he must do and what he must not do. No wonder he craves our attention.

But then, I argued, contradicting myself, if we take all this time to be there for him, we'd go off schedule. That's the thing, see, Atch? We have to strike a balance somehow.

We need to take the time to celebrate him, his being a kid, his being unique: warts and scabs and all. What we don't need is to leave him feeling rushed and somehow incomplete, without building his self-esteem, or letting him know that he is a priority for us and that we truly love to be with him.

I was near tears and near the office when I finally finished my diatribe. Atch was quiet, thoughtful. Commendable of him, quipped my peevish inner dialogue. Even if his silence merely meant he was trying to avoid a fight with me so early in the working day. What valor is there in arguing with a very pregnant and very emotionally distraught woman, after all.

Later, I am going to sit down with Atch and lay down a concrete plan. We need to save us from ourselves and this harried lifestyle we have imposed on our son. We need to allow him to be himself and to let him know that he's wonderful, brilliant, creative, compassionate and marvelous.

We have to. It's imperative. After all, we hold his heart in our hands.

06/30/06

Shedding

Almost every night, Woog and I take our bath together. It's part of our bonding process. And well, truth be told, it saves both time, water, and ergo - money. (What cheapskates the members of this family are).

One might ask, where is Atch in all of this? One may find the man of the house taking his own sweet time in the downstairs bathroom – his one concession to luxury – where he may fill the sweet air with the acrid smoke of his Winstons as he sits on his “throne” and contemplates his day. Later, all fresh and moist, we come upon each other at the junction of the stairs, whence we proceed to retire to our room for some quality family time.

Last night, as we were toweling off in the bathroom, I found the urge to have one last pee. Wiping myself off as Woog was doing his running commentary on all and sundry (he sure does talk, that kid), I pulled away a long sticky brownish clump of mucus plug with the toilet paper. Woog stopped in mid-sentence and gaped. I have been shedding these things for about a week now, and although Woog has seen this phenomenon before (and been duly informed of the facts), it was the first time he witnessed such specimen in such globulous quantity so up close and personal.

I took one look at Woog's face and tried not to laugh. His eyes were gleaming with a kind of horrified fascination normally reserved for say, freshly squashed roadkill frog, or his Wawa (grandmother) taking off her dentures. His upper lip was curving upwards, and whether it was the start of a gag reflex or the beginnings of an “oh ewwwie, Mom!”, I couldn't quite say.

Again I explained to him that I was shedding my mucus plug, that thick gel-like substance that blocks the cervix and protects the fetus inside. Once a mommy is nearing labor, her cervix thins out and releases the mucus plug. This is a sure sign the baby would be coming soon.

After a very long thoughtful pause, Firstborn declared, “I'm not going with you to the hospital, Mom.”

“Why not?”

“I'm afraid of the mucus plug.” (and at this, I mentally waved a sad little adieu to the subtle brainwashing tactics of his two doctor aunts who have been enthusiastically, albeit prematurely, grooming him for the medical profession).

“You can stay in the hospital room with Tatay,” I ventured hopefully.

“Can I stay home with Yaya instead?”

*Sigh*

“Mom,” Woog said, exiting the bathroom with a pat on my belly, “don't give birth to Eli until my birthday, ha...?”

And since Woog just turned four earlier this month, the thought of carrying this prodigious, malingering fetus for another year almost sent me to my knees in laughter – and tears.

29 June 2006

Tired and Terrified

Atch winced mightily as his wedding ring cut across his clenched fingers. The pressure was growing intense, but he silently endured the pain just as his wife bore down unceasingly on his hand. This was his role, after all, and he dutifully soaked everything up like a sponge.

This is not a scene from the delivery room. Or even the labor room. This incident is set around a routine check-up of a full-term pregnancy. The OB-Gyn withdraws her latex-gloved fingertips from the violated orifice of this red-faced algophobe. Freed at last, said algophobe's husband shakes his poor mangled hand gingerly, perhaps hoping to get some of the circulation back.

The OB-Gyn is shaking her head. The mucus plug is still too thick, the uterus still too high up. For a second pregnancy 38 weeks old, this is a bit unusual. And I've been 3 centimeters dilated for the past week.

Atch starts getting a determined look on his face, and I could almost imagine him hectoring me through a regular exercise regiment of power walking, squats and lunges. Anything to get my uterus contracting and the baby descending. Anything to avoid a costly cesarean section. As one, we blink away the image of hundreds of peso bills flying out the window. This is probably one of the reasons we fell in love – the irresistible primal call of one skinflint to another. *Sigh*

On the way down, we take the stairs. I am so tired. I can feel the clenched muscles in my aching lower back and Eli's weight pressing sharply down on my bladder, incessantly grinding against my pelvic bones. My thighs are trembling from exertion. I am snorting like a fire dragon out of steam.

Stoically, I have borne this for the last few bloated months.

I am so tired. And so terrified.

Four years ago, I nearly became a permanent occupant of the labor room. I lay for three agonizing days in induced labor before some sympathetic senior resident burst my amniotic sac with a wicked-looking plastic probe. After that, I lost all remaining shreds of dignity as I clawed my way through my husband's shirt and the drenched sheets. I fancy if I had any more strength left, I would have bent my IV stand in half. As it is, Atch tells me he has heard carabaos with a more mellifluous bellow.

Four years after pushing out a 7.11-pound Woog, I am back at square one.

I am so tired. And so terrified.

And so, undoubtedly, Atch and I will be pounding the pavement, son and dogs in tow. Muttering our prayers, shoring up a courageous front, and hoping to raise a low pain threshold.

We'll see...

27 June 2006