Chokehold Hugs and Razor Kisses

Tell me, honestly...would you yell at your 10-month old baby?

How would you when he greets you each night as you come home from work like you're the dearly beloved one that he hasn't seen in years. The delighted screams, the excited gurgles...oh, and the wonderfully asphyxiating way he latches on to your neck with both sausage arms...and the sweetly saturated smooches he slobbers upon your cheeks and your chin,

"Um-bwuh, um-bwuh, um-bwuh!"

he goes. And wouldn't you just know it, his passionate nature suddenly kicks in and he decides to kiss you open-mouthed, with teeth - all three of them.

It is at this point that you recoil in pain and try to disengage yourself from Mr. Sucky-face, and you go

"Owww! No, Eli. No biting. Biting hurts."

pro-forma, according to all the parenting advise you've read in dozens of baby books both in print and on-line.

But does this razor-toothed eel get it? Noooooooo. He rears his head back and lets out a throaty giggle, making your heart melt, just before he plunges back down and goes to work on your ear.

"OWWWWW! Eli, stop that. No biting. Please."

"Eh-hek-e-hek-hek-hek! Eeeeee! Um-bwuh, um-bwuh, um-bwwwwuh!"

So tell me, would you yell?

Too sharp for words

Even as you lie in bed at night with an uncomfortably twisted head, because he is nose-to-nose with you, milkily breathing into your face while

choking

hugging your neck and grasping at your ear. Even as you go to work with an angry welt rising on your left cheek where he has ceremoniously bestowed another of his lovingly moist enamel-tipped kisses (while the officemates loudly speculate about the passionate night you must have spent with the husband - lucky, lucky you - and quietly, shamefacedly, you let them).

Attempting to tear Tatay's lips off

Even as you anticipate coming home after work, to behold your beloved biter in all his fat-cheeked fervor, and to begin the jagged-edged welcome home ritual, over and over again.

Tell me...would you yell?

Travails Of A Nitpicking Wife

Today, I woke up at an outrageously early (for me) hour in the morning, mopped the floors, tried to get Woog out of bed, prepared the toast, tried to get Woog out of bed, did three loads of laundry, tried to get Woog out of bed, percolated some coffee, and tried to get Woog out of bed. Today I had a nutty day at work. My document formatting decided to go all Salvador Dali on me at the printer. The boss didn't help matters any by heaping on some extra-curricular work for his Rotary district. Today, my back hurts like the very devil (in fact, it seems the devil himself is having a jolly good time right now, pounding away with a mallet).

But all the above has nothing to do with what happened just a couple of minutes ago (and as introductions go, I would say this puts the raisin atop the moldy cupcake). I texted Atch asking if he would be picking me up from work. No answer. I called his office. He was out. I dropped him a ring, and he finally texted back. Oho, so there you are.

I remember, more than five years ago (although it gets more and more foggy each time), when he would text me constantly, every hour on the hour. How are you? What are you doing? Have you eaten? What are you up to? You want to go out tonight? And in the evenings when I got home from work, he would call.

He was persistent. He was consistent. I was a very wanted woman then. In demand, all so very often, and all the time by him.

And then we got hitched.

These days, I call him and text him: What time do we expect you home? Are you eating dinner here? Are you picking me up? Hey, what's up with you? You still alive?

I realize this may just very well be the universal language of love carried around by a majority of married couples, particularly, of the wives - those previously cozened and cherished denizens of some seventh heaven who now find themselves deposited unexpectedly amongst old and comfortable possessions (e.g., old shoes, a patched worn-out easy chair, the battered wallet), to be conveniently forgotten until otherwise needed (e.g., "Aifee, where's my mug/shirt/car keys/cellphone?", "Wanna bang you, Aif. *pant-pant-pant*")

Whatever happened to the "want-to-know-where-you-are-what-you're-doing-will-die-if-I-don't-see
-you-want-you-right-now-heart-on-my-sleeve" guy? Of course, I get this sort of flattering treatment from my kids all the time, but still, it isn't the same.

"Atch," I asked when he picked me up that night, "do you remember when you used to text me everyday to ask what I ate for breakfast...?"

He looked at me, both puzzled and exasperated, "Aif, I know what you had for breakfast. We eat breakfast together, remember?"

He was missing the point, as usual. So I jumped straight into the fray by reminding him of how sweet he used to be, constantly calling me, etc..etc...

Still, he managed to looked flummoxed, probably wondering why, at the end of the workday, fresh from all the stress, cross-eyed from reading heaps documents and solving all manner of crises, did his wife decide to dredge up the long-forgotten (and he has forgotten) past.

"Uh, Aif. I see you everyday. Why do I need to call you?"

*Sigh* Was he being honestly clueless, or was he trying to wiggle out of this one? I decided to let it go. Figure out how to re-work the romance back into our marriage one way or another (even if I have to club him over the head to do it).

"'Wuv you, Aif, " he said after a time.

You better.

*** Latest bulletin on Project Resurrect-the-Romance:

The car died the next day, and he escorted me across the street (walking on the danger side, yet!) and waited with me until I was able board a jeepney to work. Then he crossed to the opposite side to ride a jeep of his own. How gallant, my errant knight in rusty armor. I texted him, "Thanks Atch." and he texted back, "You're welcome."

I realize I may be settling for peanuts at this point, but hey, it's a start.

Woog Gets A Stiff One

Isn't it funny how the very traits that used to drive your dear mother to distraction are now visited upon you with a vengeance in the person of your own child? Perhaps it's nature's version of serving up your just desserts, karma at it's most potent, "an eye for an eye...", the wheel of ka, and all that.

Woog awoke yesterday with a crick in the neck. And for the rest of the day, he did his best to drive a crick into everyone's necks as well.

"Mom, I don't feel well, " he moaned from the stairs as I hurried to get ready for work. It was 8 AM and I'd given up trying to prod his inert form from the warmth of his bed.

"What's wrong," I asked, hurrying over to feel his forehead, "are you sick? What hurts?"

"My neck hurts."

Ah, the stiff neck. No biggie. I launched into a lecture about the hazards of staying in bed too long, despite the efforts of one's mother to rouse one for breakfast. He rolled his eyes at that and continued moaning. Typical.

Still, I urged him on to the breakfast table, where he commenced an exaggerated display of upper-body stiffness, groaning at each tiny movement and throwing long-suffering glances my way.

"Woog, you have to eat. Try and roll your neck around, just a little bit. Like this (rolls neck). Work the stiffness out, it'll go away, I promise."

And so he moved his head a fraction to the side...and wailed.

Patience is a virtue...I exhorted myself and went over to help him. But the moment I laid a hand on his head to move it, he broke into drawn-out pseudo-sobs, "No, it hurts, it hurts! Mom, I'm sick!"

"Alright, lets get you to the hospital then."

A terrified "No! They might cut off my neck!" and a continuation of his moaning sickbed mode. Over a stiff neck.

Wasn't this scenario gratingly familiar? Once, over a year ago, his Yaya had called me at work in a panic. It seemed Woog had fallen on his wrist after a rough and tumble game of tag and was screaming that he had broken it. Atch & I left our offices in a flash and rushed him to the ER for x-rays. And the result? The wrist carefully wrapped in flannel that this whimpering little boy held gingerly close to his chest (the x-ray technician had a devil of a time trying to get him to lay it on the metal table), WAS. BARELY. BRUISED.

"Mommmmmy, I'm sick...a-huh-huh-huh..."

Before I totally lost it and wounded his feelings completely, I was suddenly reminded of a certain 7-year old girl huddled for a good part of New Year's Eve in her father's arms, sobbing over a tiny burn in her forefinger from touching a warm ember of a fizzled firecracker. Or of the same little girl screaming blue murder as her mother held her in an attempt to tweeze off a miniscule wooden splinter from the pad of the little girl's big toe. The memories came flooding in, of the same girl feigning speechlessness because of the "excruciating agony" of lightly swollen tonsils, or calling in sick from school because of an aching shoulder blade.

In the midst of this dejavu, and mostly because I was shamed into facing this version of my childhood self, I tried to tame my temper and smooth over this impending crick in my relationship with my son. Wasn't his fifth birthday barely a week away? Surely he deserved some sort of break from his perpetually harried and irritable mother.

Patiently, I stayed by him while he nibbled at his toast in between whimpers and groans, and when he was done with that, he asked to be excused, leaving behind a plateful of rice, egg and vienna sausage. It was when he asked to be carried to the tv room that I put my foot down. "That's too much," I warned him. Offer the kid a hand and he takes off your whole arm. Sheesh.

I left late for work, in equal parts miffed about his insipid frailty and guilty over not having given him more of my time. By the time I got back that night, Yaya Merly had assembled her report: He refused to take a bath, for fear of moving his neck. He refused to take his siesta, for fear of moving his neck. He stayed in the same stiff position in front of the tv the whole day, for fear of moving his neck - despite a bathroom break outside to pee on his Lolo's rear tire and to squirt his cousin Ia in the face with his water gun.

At bedtime, as I rubbed a mentholated liniment gently around his stiff neck, he arched his back and purred, "Mommy, can you please do my back too?"

Like I said, offer the kid a hand...but then again, this is my childhood self glaring right at me. How could I refuse?

Breaking Out Of Bondage

I remember quite clearly the blood that gushed out of my brother's nose the day I punched him on the beak. I was both horrified, guilty, and yet strangely exultant. And the countless number of times I talked him into potentially dangerous situations, carrying that authoritative air of an older sibling. Like the summer I nearly got him drowned at a local beach. Or like the scar he carries on his forehead to this day, a remembrance of the time I persuaded him to dive from a rusty oil drum to another one shallowly filled with rainwater.

And what about those times we ganged up on the middle sister, making her cry, then tickling her to make her laugh hysterically. Everyday, over and over again, like some demented science experiment gone haywire. Its a wonder she didn't end up laced in a straitjacket in a white padded room. Or the countless times at the dinner table when someone would let fly a piece of bone (or a utensil, or a slipper, or a plate) at a sibling across its width. Or even the time, the middle sister got second degree burns from a steaming platter of newly-cooked rice upended on her lap by brother dearest.

Cats and dogs had nothing on us.

Even my husband and his sisters have their own battle stories. Inday has a burn scar on her back where Atch had once thrust a lighted firecracker. And Atch tells of the time he ran and left 8-year-old Nathalie alone in the family car when the hood caught fire. Underaged and sans a license, he had taken the car for a spin, with his youngest sister along. If it weren't for concerned bystanders who rescued Nat and threw sand on the fire, the gas tank would have have gone kaboom.

All this history has me marveling at the pair of boys that sprung from our loins, whose first act upon getting up every morning is to put their arms around each other and coo high-pitched unintelligible syllables with blissful smiles on their faces.

We had expected Woog to openly resent the intrusion of the baby, who bumped him from his number one status in the household. We prepared ourselves for the eventuality, both physically and mentally bracing ourselves for war. Instead, we were nonplussed from day one.

Woog is deeply in love with Eli. And vice versa.


We remain startled, unbelieving, and deeply surprised as every single day, without fail, these brothers who spring from a long line of bloody sibling wars - their ancestors once chased each other down rural mountainsides, after one sibling shot the other with a BB gun - greet each other with tight hugs and enthusiastic smooches.


The evidence is incontrovertible. The only person who can quiet Eli during a tooth-growing tantrum is his Manong Woog. Normally not a morning person, Woog would scream blue murder and kick at anyone who'd try to get him up at the unholy hour of 7am. Put Eli into the equation, and he'd be up and giggling within seconds.

Eli is the only child we have ever seen Woog share his toys with. Ever. No one, and I mean no one (not even his own mother), can cause Eli to scream in hysterical laughter like his brother. He is the one-man audience to Woog's stand-up routines (no one else can summon up the time or the patience.

We are holding our breaths in suspense. Will this outrageously wonderful situation change? Given our histories, Atch and I keep expecting it to. And we are bloody idiots who cannot comprehend this miracle in front of our noses. This breaking of the chain, this re-routing off the beaten path. This gloriously open expression of brotherly love that breaks all the bondage of sibling rivalry in our family through the ages.

They are blessed. We are blessed. We give thanks.