chaperone

when i was in high school, the nuns taught us how to sit.

well, not really the nuns, but our home economics teacher did. and she could have very well been a nun. slightly overweight, with a low, tiny twitter that she hid behind a fan. she once told us that when having sex--oh, excuse me, making love--with our future husbands, we should always disrobe with THE LIGHTS OFF.

sit perched on the edge of the seat. legs set diagonally, one heel tucked behind the other, hands on one hip. 'like Gloria Diaz,' she says.

that's stayed with me for the past 20 years. i automatically sit like this when i'm working or in a meeting, or in a social event--then i gradually slacken and sprawl as i get more and more comfortable.

it is like this that i sit at a coffee house as i wait for simone and her friends at the mall. my laptop is in front of me, and as i look up, i see sim and her friends rush past. a group of adolescent girls, in straight-cut jeans, graphic tees, harajuku/kipling/gap bags slung over their skinny shoulders. the boys follow, ambling clumsily but trying to look trés cool behind their female counterparts.

they like to say i'm "cool", this young, happy crowd. "simone, your mom's a PRO," they say. that, in 13-year-old-speak, is "awesome".  they even add me on facebook.

my breath catches in my throat as i see them run by. if only they knew how scared i feel sometimes, how tender and worried i feel about their futures.

i am still seated that way, back straight and legs crossed like a 1960s beauty queen, as the last of them disappears from my view, and i feel like i'm going to cry.

very uncool.

simone and her secret to happiness

we are in the car, simone and i. she had just completed the Yes! course of Art of Living Foundation, a four-day course tailored for teens (meditation and yoga, as well as age-appropriate issues self-esteem, peer pressure, etc., are tackled). Simone is not yet a teen--she'll turn 13 in June--but, according to her tita dona (and i totally agree), Sim has been through much in her young life. her emotions, questions about God, and outlook surpass most kids'.

she is visibly exhausted. her hair, matted by sweat from the 36-degree-Celsius heat outside (and from doing 40 full rounds of surya namaskaras), sticks to the contours of her face. the car's aircon is a relief.

"mommy, what makes people hate other people?"

the question floors me, because the answers seem so obvious. because people hurt each other. they lie, cheat, steal. they backbite and connive to take power away from one another; they snatch away what the other loves and values; they are selfish.

what i tell her, though, is different. "we hate when we feel the other is apart from us, outside of us. different from us. not part of what we love, our experience, our life." i try to figure out where this is coming from, and i realize Sim has so much to learn.

"did they teach you about the God consciousness, that everything is One?"

"no, not really..." she says.

"that God's love makes us One. my consciousness is a part of yours, and yours, mine, and mine, Ranie's (the driver's), his, yours. when we feel apart from that One-ness, we hate."

she nods. "yeah, i think i understand."

dozens more thoughts and words run through my head, but they're too quick for me to catch and express out loud.

so instead: "what did you feel during meditation? did you cry?" she told me earlier that one of her classmates had cried.

"no."

"no? why?"

"i have no problems."

i find this surprising. i'm beaming inside, but i'm wondering: "you don't consider not knowing your dad a problem?"

"no. i just don't care."

"whoa. that's worse than hating."

"no, i care," she explains. "i'd care if he got hurt. or if something happened to him. but i just...don't...care."

whoa.

my daughter may still have many more questions to ask, and things to learn, but i think she's pretty much okay where she is.

simone, my original baby

I came home after a 20 hour workday, hoping to catch some brainless action on Facebook or Twitter to de-stress, and lo and behold--what should greet me when I opened my laptop? A small swarm of red ants swimming in and out of the keys.

Simone.

She had complained about the same thing happening to her a few days ago--that ants were invading her desk, to which I replied: then don't eat there. "But all I eat is yoghurt!" She protested. I brushed it aside, attributing the presence of the ants to the freakish weather we were having lately.

Then, an epiphany tonight: Fruit Roll-Ups.

Simone got herself a motherlode of these from Derek when I came home from Dubai. She ate them everywhere--in bed, watching TV, at the table, at the computer.

First reaction was to scream and shake her from her sleep. Do you rinse your fingers after eating your roll-ups? I imagined myself telling her. The ants were all over my keyboard. Even after I had wiped the whole thing down with alcohol, they were back in full force, just as I turned my back. F&%k!

Then I stopped.

This was a good thing. Yes, the best thing that happened to me over the past 24 hours--the incompetent lawyer from Laguna, me learning that what Ungas had givne for his capital gains tax had been squandered, the late proofs, the driver calling my sons gay, making them cry, and me firing him on the spot (more on that in another post).

This meant my daughter was still, in many ways, mine. She was not given to having crushes left and right, like her classmates. She preferred sneakers to nail polish; considered it gross when a boy had a crush on her; actually enjoyed still horsing around with her brothers. She still asked permission from me if she wanted to hang out longer with her friends, and asked me--me! not her friends--to watch 17 Again and the David Cook/Archuleta concert this coming May 16 with her. She still loved Fruit Roll-Ups. She was still my little girl.



Still tried to kill them pesky ants, though. But they'll be back.

sunday lunch with sim

The twins are staying with their tatay this weekend, which means Sim and I are all alone here (of course, Giz is here too, and the cats). I let An and Ric go as soon as I got back yesterday from Greenhills with Josh. So last night was Yellowcab night. Even Giz had a slice. But today...ah...I stuck to my plan to actually cook something instead of ordering in.
Behold:
Rib-eye with paprika/salt/pepper/garlic rub, and pasta spirals tossed in olive oil, squash, garlic, and nori.

Yeah, ok, the plating looks really lame (Derek's way better in that department than I am), but pfffft. Who cares? It was perfect. Sim ate almost half of the steak and a bowlful of the pasta. She really enjoyed it :)
I originally wanted to have the usual potatoes-and-cruciferous vegetables siding, but I only had two-and-a-half potatoes in the fridge (sad) and no more cauliflower and broccoli (ginamit ni An sa chopsuey nung isang gabi). So I decided on a pasta dish. I wanted to use pine nuts or cashew nuts to go with the squash, but obviously, I don't have those on hand (and considering my recent sensitization to almost everything remotely allergy-causing, I wouldn't imbibe any sort of nut for the next year or so...teka, parang bastos ata pakinggan yon a). Next dilemma: the coloring. How blah naman with no green! A-ha moment: nori. Salty, crunchy, it would add flavor and texture. Ok na!
The steak took 7/5 minutes on each side. It was still moist and tender when Sim and I cut through it. And she usually sets the fat aside, but this time, she ate everything. "This is so good, Mommy," she said.
Forgive my gushing. It's been almost a year since I last cooked anything (when I was kitchen-testing the kids' baons at the start of the school year! June 2008!). It feels almost as good as when I write something worth seeing print.
Check out how beautiful that steak looks, and how wonderfully the fat sizzles out while it's being cooked. Me go vegetarian? Nevah again!

one sunday night

this is not healthy. at least, i don't think it is. but edgar allan poe and ernest hemmingway resorted to the same devices, so why can't i? (uh, because you're NOT them!).
anyway.
consciously unstable again because of the last dredges of my pastis--which, i realized in horror, was not ricard, but a rip-off of ricard (but who cares)--and i sit here again, wanting, needing to talk to someone, but finding myself faced with facebook and twitter instead. pathetic.
marco and mateo got into an almost-fist fight earlier this evening, and i had to physically pry them apart and carry one off to safety (they were pulling at each other's shirts and threatening to get physical at the top of the stairs). mateo said marco wasn't giving him enough time on the computer. marco said mateo spit at the computer. i asked who was lying. each said each other's names. i asked if they were scared, and if that was the reason why they were telling on each other. each said no. standstill. dead end. standoff.
in the end, i managed to get marco downstairs to eat and bribed him with a book called "let nature do the growing." mateo, i had to cuddle and soothe like he was two years old and let him play the final 20 minutes of a ben 10 game.
"let nature do the growing" is a technical book. but you should have seen the glow on marco's face as he flipped through the pages.

he's a bit different, this boy.
after mateo had his dinner, i handed him a book on diving ("mommy, di ba ito yung corals sa isang book ko?"), rock climbing ("ayoko to"), and finally, cats ("di ba eto si Gus? si Max?").
then they both gravitated to "family gardens" and "gardening techniques," until they were both arguing again about fertilizers (organic and inorganic).
all this, while their ate Simone was upstairs, enamored with french-inspired graphic posters of revolution, and understanding the perfect blends of CMYK for different pantone palettes.
i wish derek was here to mentor her. she even has notes and everything, on percentages of CMYK. stuff i only learned in 2002.