Siesta Hour

October.

He wouldn't sleep. Not even to close his eyes and be still. He had began to yawn, but still he preferred to sit up and talk in single-word mono-syllables, ride giddy-up on piled-up pillows, and burrow under the blankets like a green-and-orange flowered ghost.

I pleaded and cajoled, scolded and screeched. I fabricated stories of red-eyed furry creatures with long sharp teeth that would burst from the windows and swallow noisy sleepless children whole. But siesta hour was fast approaching its zenith, and not a single grain from the sandman's potent arsenal had found its way into this little boy's eyes.

I was sleepy and irritable. Manong Woog, also sleepy and irritable, had scrunched into a tight ball at one corner of the bed by the wall, protecting his tenders from energetic kicks and overly enthusiastic toddler tackles. In spite of the air-conditioning, in spite of the sweetly drugging sleepy-weepy music on the cd player, in spite of my rhythmic patting of his plump thigh, Eli remained wired on the adrenalin of his very youth.

Frustrated beyond all reason, I seized about for something substantial to throw at his shrieking, bouncing self and I chanced upon Goofy, one of the stuffed animals that had taken permanent residence on his bed. Goofy stared back at me with such insufferable dumbness, sure of his place in the face of my son's sleeplessness that a red un-motherly rage shut down all sense of reason.

In front of my happy frolicking son, I started to violently slap Goofy's face. Left and right. Left and right. All the while shouting: “You horrid little dog! I'm mad at you! Mad! Go to sleep, now!”

Not content, I grabbed hold of Alligator, an ancient 3-foot relic dating back from my own childhood. I stretched poor Alligator's mouth wide by two of his remaining chicklet teeth and yelled at his soft green non-ear: “Set a good example, you %^&*@ ! Close your eyes and go to sleep! You're keeping Manong Woog awake!”

Pooh with his yellow belly fat was not spared the force of my wrath, neither was Mr. Monkey or Barney or Blue Bear. I was on a roll, vaguely aware that Eli had gone very still in the middle of the chaos of pillows and piles of blankets.

I seized Goofy on my return trip, ready for another lambasting rerun, but Eli snatched him back from my grasp with a whimper. His eyes were swimming in unshed tears and his lower lip a 5-kilo piece of blubber whose ends were quivering downwards to his collarbone. Sniffling, he crushed Goofy to his chest and gathered the rest of his stuffed menagerie closer about him. He was asleep in two point four seconds.

Behind me, Woog gave a hearty sigh of relief as he settled in for some deep slumber of his own.

Gazing at my sleeping sons, I debated whether I did the right thing. I may have solved the problem at hand, but the long-term consequences might very well translate to an adult Eli spending long hours on his therapist's couch trying to rid himself of the replaying images of his mother's stuffed animal abuse.

But then again, didn't I just teach him the value of empathy?

Feeling better about myself – after a fashion – my own sweet siesta hour began.

Zzzz-zzzz.

Over Beers

There we were, hunched over our sisig and chicharon bulaklak, and nursing our beers like a couple of co-conspirators plotting the downfall of an absent drinking buddy. Or maybe two people in the midst of an illicit affair having a clandestine date. We certainly didn't look like parents discussing the household budget or child discipline issues. Not your a typical mom-and-pop operation, it looked like.

I was picking up the tab this time, having received some modest remuneration from one of my freelance writing gigs. When he called me earlier that afternoon, he sounded tired and throaty, and I thought I'd liven up our Friday night with a visit to one of our usual haunts. He didn't sound like he cared: head straight home and drop off to sleep, or down a couple of beers and exchange a few rare words with his Aifee.


But it was one of the unusual times I was offering to pay, and not wanting to miss this goldmine of an opportunity, my skinflint of a husband readily acquiesced.


So there we were, on our second bucket of San Mig Lites. We had wound our way through spirited discussions about the boys and work, wistful forays into the possibilities of our dream-home-to-be, and the inevitable summing up of income and expenditures.


We had finally come to the point where I was silent, chin propped on one palm, listening to him talk and talk and talk. His eyes, already silty to begin with, were at half-mast. With a lopsided smile on his face, he was yakking his face off and falling halfway towards drunk.


Funny how time has tweaked a good number of things. When I met him, he had a full head of hair, a golden tan, and an ego that rivalled some of the worst monsoon winds I have ever come across. These days he goes around saying I am partly responsible for his obscenely widening forehead. Years of slaving away at the bank have leached away most of the colour of his skin. And the ego? It's about the only thing that remains constant, it seems, except it has died down to a moderate gale.


Standing up in the middle of a watery belch, he wended his way towards the men's room, changing course midway and tromping off into the parking lot greenery where he bent over and regurgitated the contents of his stomach in between the company car and a blue Toyota SUV. My elegant and dignified banker, Atch.


As he walked back to the table with a vapid grin on his face, I was struck by how very fragile he looked in his rumpled uniform barong and his glasses slightly askew on his oily nose. Wasn't it only yesterday when he strode so confidently and energetically toward me with his arm stretched out imperiously for me to latch on? Didn't he half carry, half drag me on board a ferry at the ungodly hour of 4am for the trip back across the strait after we partied at a bacchanalian wedding feast and consumed Lord knows how many bottles of beer/whisky/wine? He steered, he directed, he commanded, and I practically kowtowed to this diminutive alpha male. A man now pale and bemused, looking old and tired. My husband.

Mrs. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

I paid the bill and we drove home in silence, his gear-shift hand resting on mine. The years may have been kind, but never before now did our mortality – his mortality, loom so close before my eyes. The realization gave me pause for thought and I shivered. And in the car's frigid air, his hand tightened over mine.

Once Upon A Hot Dark Night

I finally had the boys all to myself when Atch left for Cebu on a conference over the latter half of last weekend.

For the most part, I dreaded having to fend for myself as soon as our self-appointed family driver and resident cook boarded his plane Sunday morning. I did plead with him to stay and cancel his trip, but he hemmed and hawed and all but told me to shut up and quit acting like a child.

Sniff.

And so being the childish and utterly spoiled female that I am, I rang my father who jumped at the chance to spend a rare Sunday with his grandsons, with me tagging along like an extra leg. He agreed to pick us up. The boys were ecstatic. They were probably wary about me taking over the cooking again.

While waiting for our “substitute caregiver” to pick us up, I was able to get some work done on my writing while the boys tumbled about in the living room. Their play area spread outward to my minute office, and pretty soon I joined in the fun. Funny what a camera phone game (stuff-three-faces-into-the-viewfinder) can do to liven up a lazy Sunday morning.

My Tatay finally arrived and we piled into his car for the drive to our refuge-for-all-seasons, my parents' house at Bata, and we spent the rest of the sleepy afternoon doing nothing in particular.

Totally unproductive, Atch would have said. And he would have been well-vindicated: the power failed at Bata that night and we were duly chauffeured back to our tiny apartment where the electricity died exactly 10 minutes later. Payback time for missing Sunday Mass, Atch would have smirked.

So there we were in the family bed, the boys in their 'jamies, writhing and sweating miserably on the sheets. I sat at the foot of the bed, fanning them with the sturdiest cardboard folder I could find while the single candle cast grotesque shadows on the walls.

Woog, ever resourceful, had taken off his shirt and lay on his back spread-eagled, looking for all the world like a lab frog awaiting dissection. Eli just wailed. The heat was stifling, even with all the windows open, and he refused to be divested of his pajama top.

And so I fanned and fanned, sweating rivulets and swearing silently at the local power company that gifted us with cringe-worthy per kilowatt rates and consistently unreliable service.

Woog lay in silent resignation. Eli wailed. I fanned and fanned. We all sweated rivers. An hour and a half’s worth.

Outside, the neighbours came out and loudly cussed the power outage, perhaps in a bid to drown out Eli’s cries. He crawled towards me, my poor hot baby, and pressed his clean sweaty self upon my dusty sweaty self while I tried to manoeuvre my aching fan arm to get some flurries of air into everyone’s faces.

Atch was, post-conference, relaxing with bottles of beer in some snazzy Cebu bar with a live band and arctic air conditioning. He texted me a cherry “how are you”, and fanning the boys in a frenzy, I bitched back that he could’ve at least stayed. He maintained infuriating text silence after that.

Finally, just when I thought my arm would fall off and Eli would lose his voice, the lights came on. My younger son’s bawling was suddenly cut short like a guillotine falling on some 18^th century French noble’s neck. He chuckled through his snot and tears and clapped his hands like a toddler possessed. Woog merely sighed like a long-suffering martyr whose trials and tribulations were finally over, and wriggled back into his shirt.

The hell with the electric bill, I turned the air-conditioning on full blast.

_________________________

All of this I confided in a muffled voice into Atch’s armpit during a family hug when he arrived the following night.

“Poor Aif,” he said as he stroked my hair, not sounding very sympathetic at all.

Fast Facts

• Woog has yet to meet a dinosaur he didn't like.

• I'd like to try for a girl-child. But each time I see a pregnant woman, I feel nails-scratching-across-a-blackboard on my belly.

• Of all the people to end up together, Atch and I are both sulkers. It takes me a couple of hours to get over a snit. Atch takes two days, minimum.

• All four of us have cowlicks and curly hair. All four of us have terrible tempers. In a fit of rage, Woog once trashed his room. He turned six this year. I'm scared to think of what he'll be like as a teenager

• We've been married seven years. Some days it feels more like seventy.

• Atch promised to quit smoking by the time he turned forty. It's been 129 days since that day. And I'm still waiting...

• Despite his rep, Eli is one of the sweetest, most engaging toddlers on this earth - once he gets over his temper and sheds his I'm-mad-at-everyone take on the world.

• Atch hates cockroaches to the very depths of his being. When he sees one, he screams for me to come and kill it.

• Woog has three albums full of pictures that date from age zero to three. There are even more photographs of him still waiting to be organized. Eli has not one single printed picture to his name.

• I see dead people. I have horrible terrible visions of my sons getting into various sorts of accidents and dying in mortal pain, calling for help, and me powerless to do anything. I realize everyone goes sooner or later and my daily prayers include pleading with Papa God that when He does take them, to please whisk them away painlessly and very quickly. Morbid, I know. But still...

• Woog knows his way around a laptop better than I do.

• I am vain about aging. I dragged Atch to a derma clinic two weeks ago to have our first diamond peel together. I still can't get over the fact that his face looks better than mine.

• Woog is one of those shrill annoying kids who won't quit talking. Eli doesn't talk. At least not in sentences.

• I am guilty of letting my kids watch too much tv for their own good.

• But they eat loads of vegetables. Ha!

• Our idea of happiness is to pile all over each other at night in the family bed.