25 January 2010 – Today, I suffered through excruciating pain on the soles of my feet. Also today I heard about yet another college batchmate passing on.
So you can imagine the thoughts running through my head: old age, dying… and then my lovely daughter sits beside me with her own thoughts about death. Specifically, mine.
Tala: So I’ll get that computer when you die, right?
Nanay: Not this one, anak.
Tala: Well, you can just give me the password before you die.
Photo by Tala Ysabel Vicente dela Pena. This photo was taken by my five-year old daughter. She and her father waited two hours for the eclipse to show up. I am so proud!!!
08 January 2010 – Dear Tala,
You were born in 2004, a year of tumultuous elections for our country. As you turn 6 this year, we again are faced with very dangerous times as the elections near. If I compute correctly, and things continue the way they are now, you will be casting your first ballot exactly on your 18th year on this planet.
When you do, I hope you keep in mind some things:
The person who will become president will not put food on the table. She/he will not put clothes on your back, and she/he will put you through school. She/he will not buy you a computer or a car or a house. That’s not her/his job; that’s ours as your parents, and when you grow up, it will be your job.
The president’s job is to put things in order so that there will be food, clothes, schools, computers, cars and houses available for us to acquire with our hard-earned money. The idea is simple: we work, we get paid, we save up, then we can buy.
Speaking of jobs, the person who will become president will not give you one. Some people are lucky enough to inherit jobs, or even get introduced to the right people who will give them jobs. Most people, though, work very hard in school or wherever else to study their craft, and labor to get to jobs and positions that they desire.
The president will not give you a job directly. Instead, she or he will need to work hard to help make our economy very good so that companies will want to come here and employ us. Again, the idea is simple: we study, we get jobs, then we earn.
I hope you grow up knowing that the president is not God. She or he cannot save you from whatever doom you set yourself up for, nor can she or he give you your heart’s desires (hell, God doesn’t even give you that). Whatever you want to be, whatever you want to have, you will have to earn for yourself.
You cannot depend on anyone, least of all the president, to carve you into the person you wish to become. Work for it, work on it.
Please remember, the president is:
NOT your father or your mother
NOT your boss
NOT the HR department
NOT the savior
NOT your God
23 December 2009 – “Nanay, when you die, do I get all your stuff?”
“Yup, I guess so.”
“I CAN’T WAIT TO GET YOUR COMPUTER!!!”
Excited, much?
16 December 2009 – Tala explains how someone dies:
“When their heart tries to pump blood but the blood is stuck somewhere.”
After all that jazz…
“See? Smarty! You’re really the luckiest mother to have such a smart kid.”
She said that. No kidding.
11 December 2009 – I miss documenting Talacious Conversations, but these days, I just can’t seem to find the strength. I know I am missing a lot, but what can I do?
There have been some, though, that I would kill myself over if I don’t share.
Sexy, Hot and Grounded
15 November 2009 – “You know, Quincho said I’m sexy, and Jake said I’m hot!”
Texted this to Tatay and received the following reply:
“And you’re grounded for life.”
Ilonggo Instructionals
29 November 2009 – “Nanay, what’s rice in Ilonggo?”
“Kan-on.”
“Okay, can you pass the ul-am?”
How Come?
10 December 2009 – “Nanay, how come Ninang Suzi has lots of kids but she’s not….. big?”
Babatukan ko na tong tyanak na to e.
24 November 2009 – This is where Tatay is tonight. He left this morning, after having arrived from his Miss Earth coverage in Boracay last night. I swear I didn’t marry a soldier or a policeman.
14 November 2009 – In grade school, we would line up for morning ceremonies at 7:30. We were frequently and consistently told to keep an arm’s length away from the person in front, and to reinforce that, the teachers would tell us to raise our arms to the shoulder of the person in front (but do not touch!) for a couple of seconds. That was the way I was raised.
Years later, while lining up for movie tickets, I abhorrently wondered whether this practice still goes on in schools today. The teenaged girl behind me kept playing with the straps of her backpack and swaying to music I couldn’t hear, grazing my back a number of times with her fingers.
Now, most of you who personally know me would know that I hate being grazed. I DO NOT LIKE BEING TOUCHED BY STRANGERS.
At first I tried to be patient, which, seconds later, I realized would not work. I tried the looking back in an obviously irritated fashion, but apparently she didn’t get it. Then I called Tati, who was with Tala in another line, to very loudly ask if we could change places as I was experiencing social distance issues (I knew I was being loud because the old guy in front of me began to notice. The term seemed alien to the creature behind me that I wondered whether she went to school to learn the rudiments of lining up in the first place.
When finally I just couldn’t take it anymore, I turned toward the teenager, glared at her a little bit (didn’t give her the maximum, just enough to make her think about her mother holding a thin belt), and asked,
“Do you mind?”
I heard a mumbling of “I’m sorry” as I turned back around. Her friends, a cluster of teenaged girls and boys who looked like they were always ready for a fight, couldn’t say anything. They probably thought I was old enough to send them to jail if I wanted to. And I could too, I guess.
Perhaps I exhibited the same kind of behaviour when I was a child. That is, being nonchalant about my surroundings, thinking that I was the only important creature of this earth. But one thing is for certain: even as a child, I did not like to be touched, most particularly by strangers, and I would have been very careful about that in public back then.
Slap, slap. Spank, spank.
09 November 2009 – Thank God I only have Tala. It must be extremely difficult to choose between one’s children.
My Sister’s Keeper is a story of a family of five struggling with one child’s leukemia. The couple initially only had two kids, a girl and a boy, but as their eldest was diagnosed with cancer at a very young age, they decided to genetically conceive a third child, the purpose for whom was to provide spare parts for the elder sister. Upon birth, the youngest daughter already had to endure an onslaught of attacks against her body, beginning with doctors taking blood from her newborn body.
And so at 11 years old, the youngest daughter decided to sue her parents and demand medical emancipation. She wanted control over her own body, over whether or not to give her sister the gift of the extension of life.
(SPOILER ALERT) At the very end, it turned out that the whole thing was the eldest sister’s idea. At fourteen she had had more than a decade of medication, hospitalization, and whatever else. She had lost a boyfriend to cancer, and she was slowly losing herself as well. So she taught her baby sister what to do, what to say, in order to save them both.
Here in this move I watched Cameron Diaz in what is to me the most powerful role she’s had in her entire career. Imagine being a mother who has lost the ability to see the line between saving her eldest child and protecting her youngest. Which is the most important: the eldest who has leukemia, the second who was dyslexic, or the third who was the most “normal” of them all? I can see how the line gets blurred.
How do you choose?
And when do you let go?
07 November 2009 – Tala and I watched Michael Jackson’s This Is It during the November 2 holiday, and the concert-in-the-making flick stirred up the performer’s blood in my daughter.
Good thing we didn’t have anyone sitting beside us in the moviehouse, as Tala would have posed such an annoying distraction with her gyrating. She was dancing and moving about the whole time we watched, asking questions from time to time, like “Why is Michael Jackson still dancing even if he’s dead?” You know, questions that anyone, no matter how high the IQ or how in-depth the understanding of the world, would find difficult to reply to.
We haven’t listened to anything but our compilation MJ CD since then, and whenever we change cars the CD gets transferred to the vehicle in use. She would sing MJ songs in the car, in the bathroom, at school… EVERYWHERE. Tala’s also now learned how to grab her crotch and she does it in public, even when not dancing to MJ music.
Over the weekend, daughter dear tested her dance moves on a very forgiving audience: her father’s family. She said she was going to dance all 17 songs on Disc 2 without breaks, and she would only stop if she gets paid (this was all her idea; I swear I had nothing to do with it). Well, let’s see: first she got rave reviews, strong applause… and after 4 or 5 songs, she got 600 bucks.
Enterprising, my daughter is.
Speaking of enterprising, Tala also got her first salary: the audition fee from Ad Farm. Obviously, all her professional income – a total of P1,600 (plus P500 from the recent garage sale… P2,100!!!) thus far – goes straight to the bank. I’m not about to allow her to spend it all on toys that will only eventually go to the garage sale or the trash, depending on condition.
So anyway, what do I like best about Tala’s new found love for dance? The activity makes her hungry enough to eat two servings of rice and ulam, and sleepy enough to go to bed early. Nyahahahaha!!!!!
