Category: Family

Our bunso turned 13 today. No more kids left in the house, just teens…..

Another milestone for me….a step closer to what they call the “Empty Nest Syndrome” (sigh!)

But M2 reserved a good laugh for me at the end of the day.  As I saw him to bed and tucked him under the blankets, he told me “I’m already 13! I am now a JUVENILE DELINQUENT!”

Trying not to appear shocked at his words, I said, “Yes, you are a juvenile.  But NOT a delinquent!”

Was I relieved when he asked, “Mama, what is a delinquent?” Hahahaha……

Such are the joys of childhood…..

My 92-year old father-in-law is in town for his annual medical checkup. Without fail, Dad comes to Manila year after year, makes the rounds of his doctors, suffers through whatever tests they prescribe, and faithfully takes all his medicines . The PERFECT PATIENT!

On the day he had his blood test, I decided to have myself thoroughly tested as well. When the results came in, we both had generally normal results. His BUN and Creatinine were elevated but the doctor said it was a case of old age.

What was surprising, however, was that his total cholesterol, triglycerides, LDL/HDL results were BETTER than mine. And while I was anemic, his blood levels were just right!

Imagine, here is a 92-year old just a few months shy of another birthday! And here I am….practically half his age…..anemic and with a higher cholesterol reading than him!

I attribute Dad’s very good health condition to his lifestyle:

1. He eats a lot of vegetables and fruits

2. He does some form of t’ai chi every morning (an aunt-in-law tells me he has a Chinese poem which he recites in his head while exercising to keep him in rhythm)

3. He is faithful to his medical checkups

4. He is blessed with 7 children and 14 grandchildren (as of last count…)

5. He stays in touch with the business world and still attends Board meetings, Lions activities, and reports for at least half a day at the hardware store (even if it is just to read his Chinese newspaper)

6. He still insists on travelling with younger family relatives abroad — which almost always makes everyone else apprehensive while planning for his safety and good health while abroad. On his last trip to Beijing which our eldest son Ian also joined, both grandfather and grandson scaled a part of the Great Wall for a sentimental picture together.

7. He is just DARN LUCKY and BLESSED with a strong constitution!

One of Dad’s doctors, a urologist many years younger than him, once commented that he had patients in their 70s who were in wheelchairs and had to be attended to while Dad still walks by himself. Funny thing, that urologist himself is now RETIRED due to some health conditions while Dad is still around being attended to by the urologist’s doctor-son.

This coming week will be another round of doctors but I think Dad will pass. In fact, he already has Mall of Asia lined up as a must-see place prior to his going home on Friday. And I mustn’t forget to bring my digicam along to take a thousand and one pictures of Dad against the mall’s various backdrops so that he can add these to his ever-growing photo albums in the family library (which he personally maintains).

C2 came home several weekends ago from her Class Night in school, raving about Mango Bravo, a super delicious cake that they ate. I kind of wondered what cake could bring such raves from her.

Today, she came home from a lunch out with the family of her good friend and classmate, Angela. They passed Conti’s at Greenhills and bought a smaller version of Mango Bravo, just good for about 4 slices.

What turned out to be the SMALL version was a humongous cake piled high with about 3 layers, plus maybe 2 inches of whipped cream. One layer was caramel crunch, another layer I couldn’t make out but it had cashew nuts in them. Atop the whipped cream was, of course, the mango slices.

C2 gave me a slice which I halved with Ian who promptly wolfed down his portion in a blink of an eye.

What a treat! Yes, Mango Bravo was true to its reputation and yes, you have to try a slice even once in your lifetime. Forget counting calories for once!

One night, during the week between Christmas and New Year, our eldest daughter came bursting into our room. She was asking us to pray for a Xavier boy and his family whose house in Corinthian Gardens was on fire. Right away, we prayed and asked for protection over the family. We did not get much sleep that night. C1 was YM-ing her Xavier friends who were batchmates and close friends of the boy and she kept me up to date by text since I was upstairs trying to sleep (but not succeeding) while she was downstairs hogging the phone line.

Tragically, the boy, his Mom and younger brother (only 11) perished in the fire. The father, an older brother and an older sister (all away from the home at the time) survived. C1 later directed me to the blog of another Xaverian who was able to take sequential pics of the fire and my hair stood as I saw picture after picture until the last few pics showed the house being totally engulfed by the flames. There was no way the 3 trapped occupants could have survived the blaze.

Seeing those pictures, I began experiencing deja vu as the years fell away and I was brought back many, many years to a time when I was just a Grade One student in Davao City. My yaya had gone to the school to get me and we were riding in a jeep back to our home when, from afar, we saw thick, black smoke. Definitely a fire!

As we got closer, my yaya suddenly cried out that it was our compound on fire. We fought our way through the crowd and the firemen, all the while with my yaya crying out that my Mom and 2 siblings (all asleep at the time she left) were dead. What was a 1st grader like me to think? I was too young to lose my Mom, my family!

It was with a sigh of relief that I spotted my Mom on the street, sitting on someone’s saved sofa, clutching my younger brother and sister. The fire had started from a neighbor and crossed to our home, leaving my Mom with little time to save anything except to carry my 2 siblings to safety.

IT WAS DECEMBER THEN. My Mom had finished her Christmas shopping early that year. Everyone had a gift down to the youngest member of relatives. Gifts were wrapped and piled on the floor, neatly tagged. All gone. I only had my school uniform and school stuff on me. We lost our home. Miraculously, a Nino Jesus statue kept close to the bed of my parents survived the flames. We would always recall that years later.

But that was the bleakest Christmas for a little girl like me then. We were taken in by relatives into their homes and given hand-me-down clothes. I can still see myself in my mind’s eye walking around the house in sando and slippers which were outrageously twice the size of my feet. Dad and Mom were trying to get us back to normal life as soon as possible but we spent Christmas with very little possessions.

Fast forward to the present….

The thought of half of a family being lost in a fire during Christmas time really moved me and I could not imagine how the surviving members would cope with their loss during this season and for the rest of their lives. It made me reflect on what I myself had lost during the fire that also claimed our home years back and suddenly it all felt so trivial.

Sure, our Christmas was less than what we were used to and yes, we had to rebuild our home, our clothes, our possessions. BUT WE WERE A COMPLETE FAMILY. We had each other. And nothing was more precious than that.

It took this family’s tragic loss of 3 of their loved ones for me to realize how blessed I was then to still have had my own family intact after the fire. Perspectives sure change when seen alongside the experiences of other people.

I remember to thank the Lord for His Goodness and protection over our family then and now. I pray for strength for this family who lost their precious loved ones. I tell myself I should always try to make the most of the time I have with my loved ones for I will never know what the Lord has in store for them and for me.

Life is indeed a blessing from our loving God, every day, every breath…….

What memories do you have when the word “Dad” or “Papa” is mentioned?

In my case, it has been 5 years since my Dad passed away in 2001. But this month, as we remember his birthday (Nov. 18), I want to capture my past memories of a Dad who was not the touchy-feely type, but whose love I always felt and will always remember.

– he was the top candidate for “Dad of the Year” Award when I was in SGV. After all, what Dad was willing to stay up till 1AM night after night, killing mosquitoes in the car, while his daughter did her audit work at the client’s office?

– he was a top haggler if I ever saw one. He can really act the part of the disinterested buyer who pretends to walk away until the tindera calls him back and agrees to the price he is asking. He was so good at this, he would even try it out in malls (have you heard of anyone haggling in a mall????), to the embarrassment of the rest of us, hahaha.

– he loved sales and bargains. Once, he came home with several bunches of banana (saba). When we told him these were too much for all of us to consume, he just shrugged and said “kay barato eh (It was cheap, eh)”.

– one of his favorite places was a rocking chair. He’d plop down on it, open the TV, then fall right to sleep in front of the boob tube. But beware the person who tries to save on electricity by turning the TV set off. We tried it several times and he’d wake up insisting we turn it back on “…because I am watching!!!” Guess he had Superman’s X-ray eyes, after all!

– every time I have a chance to watch Ben Hur during the Holy Week, I will never forget Dad. This was his penultimate favorite Holy Week movie. Funny thing is, every time we tried to change channel to see other shows, he’d insist on watching Ben Hur because he claims he had not seen it all yet. We were almost tempted to go looking for the DVD of Ben Hur so he could watch that show a 100 times!

– we took our first transPacific flight together when he took me to the States. We went everywhere — SF, LA, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York. It was a great time for father-daughter bonding. And Dad was so at home with relatives he had not seen for a while. Among strangers, he would adopt a formal face; but with family and close friends, Dad would metamorphose into a “Joker” and crack us all up.

– Dad’s “pulbos” (his version of the Chinese mahu), taught to him by my grandmother, who learned it from her Chinese father, was THE BEST! With all the love, and arm muscles, and sweat (I should add), we’d see him cooking the pork bits himself in a wok, adding Kikkoman a little at a time. The finished product was carefully scooped into several bottles and given out to each of us on special occasions. We’d eat these sparingly, trying to stretch it to the max. I don’t think any other appetizer comes close to “pulbos”, not even calamares or buttered mushrooms.

– he should have been called “The Ultimate OC” (obsessive-compulsive) because everything he kept (medical bills, utility statements, bank accounts, legal documents, letters, etc) was neatly filed away in folders appropriately marked and alphabetically sequenced. He had his own filing cabinet right beside his bed! Now you know whose OC genes I inherited 🙂

– to his 11 other siblings (yes, they were a good dozen…from just 1 mother!) he was Ben or Nong Ben. And what a good Manong he was too. Being the only accountant in the family, he took care of much of the family’s paperwork needed for taxes, property transfers, BIR filings, etc. It was a bane and a boon. We all felt lost when he passed away and it took some time for many of his siblings to take over from where he left off.

Dad, just want to say again that I do miss you — we all do. But you have left us all with wonderful memories of you that we will always treasure. Happy birthday in heaven among the angels. I am sure you are cracking them up there as well.