Yaya's Leaving

When Yaya approached us two weeks ago to tell us she was leaving, we felt our little world tilt lopsidedly off-kilter. Her father had called her cellphone, instructing her to give notice up to April 22nd. It appears he had returned to work as a sacada in one of the sugarcane plantations to the north, and he would be able to send her back to school.

Yaya Rose has been the kids' caregiver, it seems, like forever. She came to us when Woog had started his first year of school, a sturdy and feisty laughing girl of sixteen, always with a quick-witted retort for every situation. It was her her first time in the big city and on her initial solo flight to pick Woog up from class, she took the wrong jeepney home and ended up miles from her destination.

How we panicked. Atch left work, ready to comb the streets for Yaya and Woog. Sam drove to the school and interviewed everyone he could get a hold of. And my father-in-law jumped into his pick-up and drove aimlessly around the district, looking for them.

Two hours after they were due home, Yaya and Woog returned. It seems Yaya had pleaded with the jeepney driver to bring them to the right street, and bless his heart, despite it being way out of his route, he did. Yaya, sobbing with fright, phoned me immediately. After reassuring her that all was well, I had a word with my son, who it turns out, had the adventure of his life. Such fun he had on the long drive, he reported.

That misadventure aside, Yaya Rose quickly grew into the family. She may have been young, but she exhibited such initiative, responsibility and resourcefulness that we left Woog in her care without turning up a sweat. Woog loves her like a second mother.

Yaya & Woog at Pa-on Beach

Yaya's duties multiplied when I had Eli but she took all this in stride, even if I knew she was tired in the evenings when we came home from work. Poor Yaya. Despite this, she stayed in on most of her days-off, opting to save rather than have fun. Occasionally her mother dropped by to borrow money off her salary.

Yaya with four-month-old Eli

When she told us she was leaving, Atch and I offered to send her to school if she would stay with us. What a life we would have without Yaya Rose! The kids would miss her terribly, and we would have to begin another exhaustive quest to find a trustworthy nanny, someone we would have to trust with our sons' very lives. Out of the blue, I had nightmares of a new nanny dropping Eli on his head and not telling us. Or mistreating our mischievous little Woog.

Yaya consulted her father about our offer, but he was adamant about her returning home. She had to bring her little brother to the local Daycare center each day ("Nanny without salary," Yaya smirked), and to herd the family's carabao home from grazing after class, he said. Yaya being the dutiful daughter she is (a huge chunk of her salary goes to home to her family), acquiesed to all of this.

So she's really leaving us. Yaya has become so much a part of our family, it'll be like cutting off an arm when she goes. And if someone were to ask if I ever felt depressed, now would be the time for me to say "yes".

Already time is growing short. Atch and I are scouting for a replacement, and yes, good help is so hard to find. The last person we hired a month ago to assist Yaya skipped out after less than a week. How does one find a person one can trust?

Atch and I are praying really hard that we find such a person. We've told the boys and Woog still doesn't believe it. He thinks it's all a great big joke. I cringe at the tantrum he is likely to throw on D-Day.

Still, the world continues to turn and I am hoping for a light at the end of our tunnel. Even if we have to lose someone for which we hold great trust and affection.

I wish Yaya Rose all the best. When she leaves, I pray she remains safe, finishes school and has a wonderfully blessed life. She deserves it.

The Brotherhood of the Ar-'cave'

When Atch was little more than a snivelly thirteen-year-old, a provincial lad from a sleepy little town to the south, his forward-thinking and highly optimistic father sent him off to the big city to get a high-school education. Left to his own wits and devices save for the guidance of his sister barely a year older, Atch took it upon himself to learn the ways and means of the city boys his age. That was when he discovered a mentor in the person of Monsieur Pacman. Also, Sensei Atari, and last but not the least, the highly celebrated brothers, Señors Mario and Luigi.

Atch spent his every spare moment (and often, most of his allowance), with these mentors, honing his skills in the downtown district's video enclaves. And might I deduce, although he may violently deny it, that he logged countless classroom hours there as well.

It was during one of these aforementioned days that Atch emerged, disoriented, from the encompassing dimness of the gaming consoles and beheld the dimness of the late afternoon sky. He had spent the better part of the day ensconced in another world (or worlds) and time had fled from him, fleet of foot. Behind him, an unnamed man approached, and pressing the point of a blade at his back, demanded his valuables. Perhaps this man thought a boy who could afford to play video games the whole day had money to burn. And Atch, this terrified provincial lad of thirteen, ignorant of the dangers of the streets, ran.

He doesn't recall how far he ran before the man, older and slower, thrust the blade into his back, piercing through his knapsack and his shirt, before slicing into his flesh. The feel of the cold blade gave Atch the much-needed spurt of adrenalin, and he pumped his legs almost half a kilometer more before winding down with a stitch in his side. That was when he started to feel the pain and the seeping of blood from the wound.

He crept back to his boarding house, cleaned and doctored himself, not letting his sister know. He carries the scar to this day.

Fast forward to the present.

Once a gamer, always a gamer. Or the mango doesn't fall far from the tree. Whichever way one puts it, the true test of paternity will show itself in the way a child will automatically gravitate towards a father's old habits - all but dead and forgotten - almost as if the child were genetically predisposed to follow a certain behavioral pattern.

Woog mysteriously disappeared after a chicken dinner at the new mall. Nobody really gave much heed because I was feeding the baby the last of the mashed potato, Yaya was gathering a mound of bones for the doggy bag, and Atch was getting ready to go out for a smoke.

"Where's Woog?" He asked.

I waved my hand around vaguely, thinking our four-year-old was somewhere in the store, pestering one of the servers as was his wont. But Atch was having one of his premonitions, and he walked out of the outlet with a frown on his face. He came back ten minutes later looking bemused, leading Woog by the scruff of his neck.

"Guess where I found him...." Atch began.

"Mommy, I went to the ar-cave!" Interrupted his son.

"The ar-cave?" I shot Atch an amused glanced.

"The ar-cave." They both said in unison.

So we packed up and walked across the way, three doors down, and sure enough, a video arcade sat there in all it's dim-lighted glory, looking for all the world like some futuristic cave with flashing lights and bleeping sounds emanating from within.

We pushed our way through a multitude of kids and teenagers while Atch and Woog bought themselves some tokens. Soon they were engaged in some sort of electronic shoot-out:

Woog & his Tatay in a battle versus the evil dead

"I aim with my heart. He who does not aim
with his heart has forgotten the face of his father..."
(from The Gunslinger by Stephen King)

It went on and on while Yaya and I gawked around us in pitiful bewilderment, clearly out of our element, surrounded by a sea of gamers, Eli included:

Starting the baby's training early

He's already got that floaty disoriented "don't-bother-me" look

In the haze of all the zinging, bleeping and flashing lights, I suddenly had a vision of what the future was going to be: the boys will have reached their tweens, and as expected, the house will be empty on a Saturday afternoon. So do I know where my boys are? Yes, of course I do. They're in the video arcade, under the parental supervision of their father - who has taken up his old hobby (don't you know, it's like riding a bicycle) - where they improve their hand-and-eye coordination and work on their lightning reflexes. Meanwhile, the purchase of arcade tokens will take up a large part of the household recreation budget, and so will twice-yearly visits to the optometrist to renew eyeglass subscriptions. At least we won't be worried about bailing them out of juvenile detention facilities.

Finally, it is nearly 9 pm and none of the boys (baby included) show traces of tired. Yaya and I exchange a glance, and I began my quest to urge them homeward. We got home near 10 pm and we had to wake the sleeping baby for his bath. Somehow I have a feeling that this is going to be a weekend event.

Ah well, what goes around, comes around.

Calling Mr. Sandman...

It is six in the morning and I awaken to Eli chuckling

"E-heh, e-heh, e-heheheh!"

three inches from my face. What he is doing there, I cannot at first comprehend. Doesn't this little bugger have a crib of his own? Then recall comes with a sluggish wakefulness and I remember: oh, yes. Atch put him there. Beside me on the big bed. In the early hours of pre-dawn.

I am trying to sleep-train my 8-month old son. I am wondering if it is too late at this point in time to undo the beddy-bye routine that makes slumbering with Eli in the same room a living nightmare. You see, I feed him on demand. And if by demand you mean the getting up out of bed, the half-blind shuffling to the crib to lift a crying baby out and the the heavy sinking into the lounging chair to nurse him, every two hours, then yes, you have got it right on the nose.

Were I younger and in full possession of my sleep-deprived faculties, I wouldn't mind night-feeding him up to his tenth month, as I had with Woog. But age and its accompanying physical infirmities are doing wonders to my perception of reality. Just this week, I find myself climbing into a car idling at the curb. It is quitting time at work and Atch is here to pick me up. But it is not Atch gazing down at me from the driver's seat. It is a stranger who is smiling at me in a puzzled sort of way. I hurriedly apologize and back out of the vehicle. Behind me, the building's security guard is trying his level best not to guffaw. I look left-a-ways, and there is Atch, leaning on his horn and looking daggers at me. Ah, the extraordinary life of the walking dead.

So I am in the process of attempting to Ferberize my son, as they say in the child-rearing books. I am going to let him cry it out in the night so he will eventually learn to sooth himself to sleep. In turn, allowing me to pay the interest on my sleep-debt. I come equipped with research and I implore Atch to bury his head under a pillow while I begin to disorient Eli's sleep schedule like a rigid taskmaster. I am confident and I am determined. And of course, I am doomed to failure.

Which brings us to the reason why the beloved subject in question is right here and now, spraying minute bits of morning saliva on my face as he hyuks it up with great enthusiasm. And I look back at the night previously, wondering where it all came askew:

It is bedtime at Door Number Five and I am tossing and turning in half-sleep, anticipating. Then it comes. A whimper. Building up to a full cry. I let it rise to a crescendo before I slide out of bed and gently attempt to pat him to sleep ("Mom's here, Eli...ssshhhhh....sleep). Eli cries harder. And yet louder.

In the big bed, Atch is groaning and slapping another pillow over the one he already has over his head. Eli is cranking up the volume. Then he is screaming. I continue to pat him and I hum. From deep within himself, my son is discovering his inner bullhorn, and he lets loose with passionate blubbering abandon.

An hour passes. I am nearing my wit's end, and my chest is near to bursting. What mother can stand the pitiful howls of her own child? With Eli's every tortured wail, my heart hitches in my chest. Then and there I resolve to murder Richard Ferber. Apparently, Atch feels the same way, because he throws off his legion of pillows and thunders his way to the crib. He picks Eli up, and immediately, as if someone has pushed the off botton on his remote, his screaming stops.

Atch carries the hiccuping baby to the big bed, and as soon as he puts him down and snuggles in next to him, both of them fall into deep sleep. I shake my head in wonder. Atch is certainly mellowing in his old age. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he relents to allowing me to co-sleep with a yowling baby Woog, all those centuries ago.

And so the next morning finds me struggling to peel my encrusted eyes open while my baby son is on his tummy, shuddering in a fit of giggles. I turn my head and behold the source of all this mirth. It is Woog. He is sitting on the other side of the bed and making silent gruesome faces, while his brother near busts his gut in glee.

"Good morning, Mommy!" Woog exclaims. And suddenly, I remember that it is summer vacation. School is out for the next two months and the hot days stretch out before him with all it's endless mischievous possibilities. Ah, so this is why he is up so early. And I want to ask him why why why is he up with the sun now, when he let me plead with his sleepy, kicking self to "please get up or you'll be late" during the previous ten months of preschool mornings?

I sigh instead and allow the high-piping sounds of his voice and Eli's laughter to wash over me, fuel for another grisly night of sleep training just around the corner.

Would anyone know the Sandman's mobile number?

All tuckered out after a rough night

An Uneventful Sunday

When I regaled Atch about the ongoing brouhaha that was the SM craze, he shuddered and promptly shelved our much-awaited plan to bring the boys on a tour of the place after Mass on Sunday.

"Let's wait two more months," he announced, "maybe by May or June, people will get tired of crowding into SM."

Woog did his pouting stomping routine. He was so looking forward to spending some serious quality time on the kiddie train that plied the commuter route from one end of the mall's north wing to the other. After such a build-up of anticipation, this unexpected downturn of events was too much for his four-year-old self to take.

Eli merely goggled at his brother's spectacle and grinned.

But Mass ended early after a relatively short sermon by a relatively sloshed Father A. Apparently the allure of communion wine was harder to resist this Sunday. So Atch had a change of heart (a very rare occurrence) and hauled us posthaste to the city's destination of choice.

The mall opened at 10 am, and there we parked with the motor idling, the blast of car air-conditioning shielding us from the summer glare, while a humongous slice of the populace accumulated in front of each of the yet-to-be-opened doors of the mall.

"Oh God, Mommy, you were right." Woog exclaimed in horrified outrage, and Atch and I exchanged a horrified-mirthful glance of our own. Should we give in to laughter at the seemingly blase observation from the lips of our little ingenue, or should we chastise him for using such blasphemy on such a holy day?

In the end, laughter won (blast our souls to Sheoul), and to my great surprise, Atch changed his mind twice in one morning, deciding to drive to the opposite end of the city to visit the other mall. I wanted to say: 'Observe my kiddies, and take note, for this is a rare day indeed, one not to be repeated in another millenium'. But Woog had gone back to sulking, and Eli had fallen fast asleep in the backpack. Oh well.

As soon as we got out at the nearly deserted grounds of SM's rival, we made a quick stop for some groceries, then brought the kids to the resident Toys 'R' Us. Woog perked up immediately and Eli awoke from his stupor to behold the colorfully furry world of plushies.

I took out my camera phone and squeezed in a couple of shots



before store security came and warned me that it was prohibited to take pictures of the merchandise.

Eh? What merchandise? I was preserving my kids faces for posterity. What did he think we were? Secret agents from the rival store, out to take inventory their stock? But the security guy shook his head adamantly: cease and desist. Fine. Whatever does you. I stuck my tongue out at his retreating back and I felt much much better.

Woog spent some time at the Megablocks station, but as soon as Eli started yawning again, we headed for home.

And such was our uneventful Sunday.

Woog eventually did get to ride the SM train, at near closing time when the crowds were thin and the train had ceased the day's run. He was beyond ecstatic. And it humbled us to never discount the simple pleasure that kids derive from such pittances. It makes their memories of childhood all the more sweet.


Would that we could have given him more.