The veranda is cloaked with the day’s last rays of the sun. Clementine leaned on the baluster feeling the dolour slowly creeping in. She closed her eyes listening, waiting for a sound from the empty road across the 30-year old bungalow where she stood, telling herself to stop counting the hours. It’s silent. The house stands at the far end of the road, its facade boasting of senescent beauty. It is no home to her but a refuge from years of mislaid youth. It’s where she embraced age and began to understand that happiness does not always present itself as an ally. Most of the time, Clementine even failed to understand what it stood for. Happiness, like love, would come and leave at every command of the earth.

The sun behests everything it touches. Plants bow down to kiss the ground when the sun starts to hide, and people become leaden near dusk. Nothing and no one is spared. I would like to know though, how it would be like to be free. But be free from what? My despair is unknown. It has no name, no face. It has been there ever since I can remember. It’s like a story where everything is the same even after the hundredth time you read it. How you begin it or how you end it is how you want it to be. But what happens in it is like the sun; always setting the moment it gets its cue. How did all this begin? She thinks to herself as she does every single day.

“It’s here again,” she tells Benedict.

“I know. Pushing the rays to one side again, yes? You like to think of the impossible,” Benedict teased.

Clementine picked up a tiny orange santan before answering. “Reading my mind again?” She smiled at the thought of Benedict knowing exactly what she wanted to say. Reading each other’s thoughts happened too often that every bit of excitement in those unlikely coincidences had been exhausted. When arguments erupt between them they quickly turn to silent rage and allow voicelessness to bind them back.

Benedict moved a pile of papers away from his desk and blankly stirred the mug with stale coffee in it. He’d been staring at the dummy of the magazine the whole morning. Benedict could not deny that the odds worked overtime against him. He had been working on every section of the magazine with unceasing ardor for four six weeks when the publisher called him up to tell him she had changed her mind about publishing it.
  
"Budget’s gone awry and we need to cut back on expenses. It’s not something I can or want to deal with at this time," the sonorous publisher told him. From the other end of the line, all Benedict could hear was a mumble. He knew the product of his hard work had faced its demise even before Benedict got to the last page.

He had waited two years to leave. I can’t sit hit here and let time to go by, Benedict thought to himself. Clementine’s sunset has come again, he said with finality.

Attika woke me up at five in the morning, as usual. We went about our usual routine: feed, burp, sing. No, we don’t just suddenly break out into song like they do in Glee, not especially at 5 a.m., but she likes to make these gurgling little noises that ascend to many different high pitches. On days when I’m kinder I bring her outside so she won’t wake her father. But on some days when both Attika and I let lose our whippersnappers, we go to the bed where she instantly jumps towards her Dada (or Papa or Baba) and lunges for his dreadlocks. It must be a delight for her to see a big ball we adults call ‘hair’ because everytime she gets her hands on this black thing and tugs it, the man who owns it screams in pain, opens his eyes, smiles and gives her her morning kiss.

Watching the sunrise is also part of our daily routine. The picture on the left is what it almost looked like – my 13,514th sunrise. It’s not much of a photo, I know.  But with a curious seven-month old huddled in one arm, what kind of photo could a mom like me take? Since the day Attika was born, any phone camera within my reach has been my documentary assistant because my professional camera (camera – professional, me – not, husband – yes) impossible to handle with only one hand. Neither can I play paparazzi because I have gazillion chores to do. Besides, the best “Kodak” moments are ones never captured on camera. It’s these lightning-speed, spontaneous reactions a baby makes that no fast-speeding camera could take if a professional photographer was paid to do it.

Mythbusting Cole 
One of Cole’s favorite episodes on Discovery’s Mythbusters is “Diet Coke and Mentos”. He’s watched it four times and still gets amazed every time. My birthday was a perfect time for him to finally get his hands on this experiment. “Hurry! Hurry!” I’ve never seen him so excited to do something. He was almost hyperventilating when he got everything ready. Then he did the drill. Shake the bottle just a little (because he just wanted a birthday fountain for me and not an explosion), drop mentos in the bottle … and there it was, a pretty birthday fountain. It was a beautiful 30 seconds. Even Attika looked really pleased with Uwa’s (Frannie's baby talk for kuya, meaning big brother) fountain. 

Needing kneading 
It’s a Saturday and the day went by really nice and slow. The boys took care of the little girl, who cooperated and did her part by behaving the whole day. By “behaving” I mean she did not whine for me until it was time for her to go to bed at 7 p.m. 

After lunch, my not-so-reliable psychic self sensed a surprise was coming my way. True enough, when I went out of the den a lady from the spa was smiling ever so brightly at me. I always make this fantastic schedule of spending a weekend at a spa to get a good body scrub and a massage. But whenever weekend comes, the loafer in me kills the idea of spa, so I go on to do other things instead – like my Zen laundry. I’m not being sarcastic. I honestly find the laundry a Zen-like experience, something that the dreadlocked one will probably never understand about me. He has been pushing me to go for a me-time. But I’ve never felt a need for a me-time. It’s the us-time that I look forward to at the end of the week. So since I would not budge to go to a spa (and to think The Dutchess Haven Salon and Spa is just downstairs), the boys had the spa come to me. 

Ah, the 13,149 day old me got some good loving with a lot of scrubbing and kneading. Then I realized that my tired muscles really needed some kneading (Shiatsu it was). Maybe I’d go for another one next weekend. 

Let’s see if the Zen laundry won’t kill it. 

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Cure for Mondays

So I quoted one of my favorite writers, Franz Kafka, and went intelligibly about and posted: “Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.”
 
I left the computer and made myself some coffee, watched the sunrise, and felt good about myself. I went back about an hour later and saw what was on my computer screen and yelped, “Who the hell is Sancho Panza?!”
 

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And so I wanted to be perceived as someone who knows more than the average person. And so I wanted to feel good. And so I wanted to be seen as one having no worries. And so I wanted to deceive myself. What a shame. 



Then age happens and it somehow manages to knock some sense into you. Suddenly, the pressure of how other people perceive you is not there anymore. The desire to become popular (no matter what the cost) is a silly thing from when you were 20-something. You’re happy for the success of others, and you feel genuinely blissful even at the knowledge of other people’s fat bank accounts. Now you know better realizing (or accepting) that success is a subjective thing to define; and the one who has no cent to his or her name but enjoys the luxury of an eight-hour restful sleep every night may be just as successful as the high-earner who is publicly flaunting his or her itinerary. The former is sometimes called inner peace.

Happiness – it’s a crazy thing, really. It can be temporary like a status message in social networks; misused like the word “epic”; and abused like my coffeemaker. You never argue with a person who insists that his life is a synonym for “happy” even if his eyes say the complete opposite because you don’t own the word “pretense”, which means anyone is allowed to practice it as long as it pleases them. 

happiness is a choice

So they say. I like the sound of that and that has been my life theme in  the last few years. It doesn’t come easy though and you just don’t wake up to think that happiness can be clicked and “liked’ the way you do a fan page. Happiness is an everyday challenge. In my case, I hired “happiness” by the hour so I can pounce and work on it in small scales.  

Unfriend 

If happiness is a choice, why not choose it? I asked myself that and it got me here. I thought, if somebody paid me to find ways to make myself happy everyday, I’d work hard for it because it’s human instinct to work hard for a reward. To achieve that, I had to employ allies. So I did. My bestfriend and I moved in together, and since then he’s been paying me to be happy. He pays me everyday with something that I can’t keep in the bank. He’s even paid me two beautiful little people called our children, now employed as my newest allies.

When the big 36 came flashing right before my eyes, I quickly reviewed my life because I had to make a quick decision whether to let pre-midlife crisis, or any other kind of psychological and emotional crisis, in. It was a rather easy decision.

I then looked at the enormous virtual screen inside my head, pointed the cursor at “crisis” and clicked “unfriend”.  

Read first part here: Unfriend Life Crisis

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Cure for Mondays
Thirteen years ago (or earlier – who remembers these things anyway?) I wrote in my column for The News Today about my encounter with the quarterlife crisis. I can remember being overly descriptive about the so-called crisis which now I think was just the direct effect of self-caused stress. When you’re young-er, going ballistic is as real as the everyday meal. But that also made defining the quarterlife crisis easier. You just put sleepless nights and loads of unfounded insecurities together – that makes a good definition of confusion.
 

Status update

I’m turning 36 in a couple of days and this is what psychologists refer to as the pre-midlife drama (or crisis, or insanity). It’s good that they have a name for it and that they provide comprehensive explanation for this inevitable phase of life. But standing between pre-something and post-something can be a confusing spot, so you get caught trying to decide what kind of crisis you’re in so you can hit Google and find a plausible explanation for things that are happening to you. They may include a nagging feeling bordering on insecurity because everybody else’s lives seem to run on grand pavement, while yours remains on a less noticeable road. Strange, because if you really look at your life it is running on flawless pavement, but being the human that you are you can’t stop complaining. On many occasions you’ve been told by people that they wanted to have your life – yet still, the vexing between your ears go on. 

While having strawberry tea yesterday afternoon, I started wondering if it was possible for people to defy these pre-structured life crises. Three sips later, I voted yes. That was my zero hour.

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Lately, talks about the apocalypse have been upsetting my son. When you’re ten and have all these fantastic ideas about your future that looks something like getting married to a British woman, becoming an archeologist, and becoming a world-famous skateboarder, you’d be upset if there are people around you who actually believe all that may never happen because the world will end soon. So I told him the story of my aunties who hoarded all the food and candles they could get their hands on because the three days of darkness or the end of the world (whichever served the fancies of the superstitious person next to me) was going to come. The first time I heard it was in 1984. Then “the end of the world” never happened. Two kids and a 30-inch waistline later, people still swear the world is going to end. And soon.

I told Cole that had I believed the superstitious people around me then, I would have stood in one corner holding all those candles and letting my life slip away while waiting for the world to end grimly. To be honest, I don’t have a grasp of how this “three days of darkness” is going to look like. Would it be like the curtain closing after a play – slow and dramatic? Or like the finale of a rock show – still dramatic but with a loud bang?

Some people will continue to believe that the world will end (again, soon) and the question of how depends on which ground one is standing on. There are also people like me who say, bring it on. I want to know what the next me will look like.

Read the second part here.

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Sinigang na hipon

 

Wednesday night, we decided to eat out since nobody was up to preparing dinner after the long trip we made to and from Marikina City. My sister and her lovies moved in to their new home, which meant Eeyore had to finally come back home to us. He’s five feet tall and about 180-inch plump around the middle. So you see, he does need his space — and a lot of it. We don’t really have the luxury of space in our home, but a big, big friend has got to come home, doesn’t he?

We’re all happy that Eeyore’s home, but the two-hour trip was a theatrical interpretation of a kilometric car wash where there was an alternate play of rain and heat — a calculated prelude to a migraine. So, the enervated bunch that we were decided to march to the nearest diner so we could be served and fed.
 
We went to Burby’s Grill, at last. We have been planning to have dinner there since last year, but when a restaurant is a two-minute walk away from your house, you start believing you’ve actually been there. Visual psychotic repetition is what I’d like to call it.

Now, the menu
The dreadlocked husband and I wanted something we’ve never tried in other restaurants. Unfortunately, kare-kare lechon was the only novel thing to us on the menu. It wasn’t entirely new, just the concept of putting both kare-kare (an elaborate Filipino stew, with a complex history, made with peanuts and mixed with different kinds of vegetables) and lechon (roast pig) in one dish. Kare-kare is one of my favorite dishes but I often get disappointed because there are only a few people who can cook the dish the way (I deem) it should be. Most fail in the stew itself, maybe because “getting it right” with peanuts in a stew isn’t nearly a cinch unless maybe you’ve been cooking kare-kare for a long time and have finally perfected it after a hundred tries. I’m happy to say Burby’s did not disappoint. It wasn’t the best kare-kare but the way the subtle taste of peanut blended in the thick curry-like sauce was a treat to the palate. The eggplant could have been a little more tender but clap, clap nonetheless.

The tuna kinilaw (ceviche or seviche) was also a happy experience. Fresh fish and good vinegar are a perfect marriage in the language of food. Burby’s sinigang na hipon was the right kind of sour. Hubby is not entirely a sour soup fan but Cole (my ten-year old) goes crazy over it, and since I haven’t had the time to cook sinigang for him for some time now, it was his call. Sinigang may be a simple dish to make, but it has to be a perfect combination of sour and salty. Most of the sinigang I’ve tasted from carinderias (food stalls commonly found at street sides) did not have the zing because they’re usually too light for the kind of sour we hanker for. What made Burby’s a bit different also was that the soup was thicker than usual. Cole gave it a thumbs up and added, “A few more notches and it will be as delicious as yours.” Loyalty is still on top of everything.

The wrap up
Overall, the dinner was good. I would definitely go back to taste the others on the menu. I just have to say though that the servings did not quite match the price attached to them. A platter that was supposedly good for four really turned out to be good for only two persons. So if you’re planning to dine at Burby’s Grill, you either double your order or go when you think your appetite won’t get bigger than their plate.

Nope, no to-go for us that night. 

Kare-kare lechon

Tuna kinilaw

I like my magic sambo marble-like

1. In a bowl, mix condensed milk and all purpose cream. Set aside.
2. Dissolve ½ cup chocolate in a cup of water. Pour it in a skillet and allow to simmer over low fire. Stir slowly until it is ready.
3. Slowly mix chocolate over your bowl of condensed milk and all purpose cream.
4. In a cup of water, melt three packs of Knox gelatin.
5. Gradually add the gelatin mix to the other ingredients and mix them thoroughly. Remember that your gelatin will hold your ingredients together so it is crucial that you are able to mix them well.
6. Once your ingredients have been mixed thoroughly, pour the mix into your desired container. For my magic sambo, I like it in a flat bottom glass bowl (Pyrex).
7. Place in the freezer. It will be ready in 30 minutes.
8. Savor every bite!

You might also want to check out my recipe for trevally in butter and garlic.

Cole shops for Attika

We dropped by the baby store after we had lunch at Sushi King last Saturday because the little lady of the house needed a few things. The short list included shoes.  Time went by so quickly—it literally zipped and zapped right before my eyes, and those lovely feet significantly grew bigger without me noticing. I get kicked here and there, alright, but until I tried to put on her Carter’s canvass skimmer pre-walkers, they looked the same to me.  
 
So the pairs she had on her shoe shelf suddenly became yesterday’s fashion. I had to hold myself while looking for a good pair of shoes because those tiny little things make me go crazy and I’d want to buy all the cute ones I’d see on the shelves. But a budget is a budget is a budget is a budget… That has become my mantra since I became a mother, which is why we try to stick to what is essential, if we can help it. We’re not big spenders; we just think a lot of things are important. Ha-ha, ten fingers pointing back at me — silly me. And well, hubby. 

Sole search
We let Attika try on a few pairs. The doting dad wanted to get all the pinks and I wanted to get her boys’ shoes so we had to ask Attika which ones she liked. She responds by pointing when she’s asked to make choices. It’s an exercise Cole taught her. You hold two things up to her then she’ll point or touch the one she likes. 
 
Turns out Her Majesty fell for a pair of pre-walker Mary Janes and a cute pair of sandals. The two pairs were thrown into the shopping basket along with baby wipes and a trainer cup. With the sippy cup, Cole made her choose between the elephant and the giraffe. She looked back and forth between the two for about a minute until she decided the giraffe was more like her style. 

Values for money
When it was time to pay, Cole suddenly got the shopping cradle from me. It’s really like him to be helpful so I gladly gave it to him, but then he suddenly set it down on the floor, knelt down beside it and got something out of his pocket. He took out his money (which I did not know he had) and started counting. When he finished he got up and said, “I’m paying.” 
 
That very moment I was almost moved to tears because any other 10-year old would rather buy stuff for himself. We knew he was saving for an additional video game but he unselfishly offered his own savings for his sister even if it meant he might need to start with a zero balance all over again. Honestly, I don’t know how much money he’s keeping. All I know is that he knows how to save money and he does it well. 
 
Attika went home with her new shoes; my husband and I went home with newfound pride. Kids do listen. That’s one thing we learned from our son—the ever loving brother. 

Photo courtesy of PSOD

February 29 is World RARE Disease Day. 

A whopping 7,000 rare diseases have already been identified affecting more that 350 million people worldwide. According to The Global Genes Project, 75% of those with RARE disease are children.

On the global front, The Global Genes Project has been raising awareness about RARE disease since 2010. Mom Bloggers for Social Good is an active ally in this effort to raise awareness. Reaching out to more people means getting more support, and hopefully, sufficient funding for the development of treatments and cure.

Please help us in spreading the word about RARE disease by doing the following:

1.)    Join the “1 Million for RARE” movement and like the
        Global Genes Project Facebook  page: 1 Million for RARE
 
2.)    Tweet @GlobalGenes. Use #1Mil4RARE
 
3.)    Forward to a friend!

In the Philippines, the Philippine Society for Orphan Disorders (PSOD) is also seeking for help for those affected by RARE disease. It is the sentiment of the people behind PSOD that people with RARE disease are orphaned by society because very little is known about their condition. Since 1991, a group of doctors from the University of the Philippines, National Institute of Health, and Institute of Human Genetics have been dedicating their time attending to patients, and have also been continuously undertaking clinical trials to find ways to improve the health of Filipinos affected with the difficult condition.

Some of the rare diseases in the IHG-PSOD registry are:  6 Pyruvoltetrahydropterin Synthase Deficiency, Holocarboxylase Synthase Deficiency, Maple Syrup Urine Disorder, Mucopolysaccharidosis, and Tay Sach’s Disease, to name a few in a long list of diseases we may never have heard of before. You can learn more about them through PSOD.

There are patients who are appealing for help for their medication, treatment, life-saving therapies and medical equipment.
 
Spread the word by forwarding this article to everyone you know. Please help save a life today.

 

 

 

Villa Mercedes, our ancestral home in Bohol Photo courtesy of Jenny Dawn Beldia

Happily anticipating her first "bite".

You know what they say about the power that babies have to change the lives of those around them. Now everyone suddenly wants to be named household president after the coming of our baby girl. Frannie, my sister’s daughter and my namesake, is now in her terrible twos, which means the limelight for the celebrity baby has shifted focus and has been turned towards my six-month old Attika.

They say mothers know best, but then the females of the species in our family have grown up and all of us have become mothers ourselves (I have two sisters and we have cousins closest to us who are also an all-girl bunch).  Sometimes, discussions about raising children become exasperating especially if you’re a mother who likes to think that you have to think you know everything. I raise my hand and declare myself guilty. But then, my foolish pride simmers down at the realization that the people around me only want the best for the little ones in our family.

Seeing the signs
When Attika was only three months old, I started researching about the introduction of solid food to babies because I wanted to know when the right time was to do it. I stumbled upon so many articles that said mothers who breastfeed should not be in a hurry to feed their babies solid food because what they get from breast milk is more than enough to keep them growing healthy. Some of the articles even suggested that breastfed babies could be given their first solid food much later, like when they’re 12 months old. There were also others on the other side of the spectrum that said babies in general are ready for their solids anytime between four to six months old. So my question at that time was: should I start feeding Attika her first solid food on her fourth month?

When she turned four months old, she could hold her head upright in a steady position, was always chewing and was making noises with her mouth, and could sit well on my lap. All of these were signs that she was ready to go a notch higher on her diet.

She said, she said
Besides the information that I got online and from mommy books, I also give my mother and my younger sister credit for their contribution to my confusion.  My sister said I should feed Attika at four months just like what she did with my niece and my mother thought it was best for me to give her solids at five months old. I became one of the millions of mothers who was drowning in an overload of information, so I let my instinct as a mother lead the way for me.

I was breastfeeding Attika full time up until about she was four months old, and my instinct was telling me that our mother-baby tandem was on the right track as we were taking things in a graceful stride. The fact that Attika was getting the healthy amount of proteins, fats, vitamins, and carbohydrates from my breast milk made me a very happy mommy, not to mention proud. (I failed to breastfeed our first born because I was a misinformed 25-year old. This is totally a different story which I know I will talk about anytime soon).

Bringing out the bowl, finally
Attika turned six months old in January and it was around that time when I felt that I already needed to introduce solid food to her. My first choice of baby food was avocado which is known as the super food. It has Iron, Folate, Potassium, Phosphorus, Magnesium, Calcium, Sodium, vitamins A, C, B group vitamins, and small amounts of other important nutrients that every baby needs. It is loaded with the good stuff so you don’t need anything else if you want to give your baby the healthiest food there is. Unfortunately, I could not find avocados last month so I turned to a family favorite; a staple in our cupboard — Cerelac. Yes, everybody in the house eats Cerelac so it’s a plus one now that Attika seems to love the cereal too.

Our very first feeding turned out to be a major success. She swallowed most of her food and was always excited to get her next “bite”. I can’t say she has completely lost her extrusion reflex (the reflex that make babies push food out of their mouth) but it certainly did not get in the way.

Here's a look at our first feeding experience.