Tristan’s gift

I think it was sometime in November when I saw delicious looking galantina on Facebook.  It was not like my grandmother’s galantina, which was steamed.  This one looked more like my mother-in-law’s roast chicken.  It roused my appetite.  I ordered one to be delivered on Dec. 23.  They assured me it would be delivered on that date at 11 a.m. Great, I thought, knowing that I had deliberately ordered it a day ahead because you know how we Filipinos are about time.  One always has to make allowances for things to go wrong.

Another thing I know is that something always goes wrong with text messages.  Sometimes they are prompt, other times not.  Or they arrive promptly but you are too busy doing something else and you don’t notice the message until later. Especially for people like me.  We are busy taking care of others or fixing the house. I cannot assure anyone that I will receive their message the very minute they send them.

Anyway, that’s what went wrong with my galantina order that I had paid for much earlier. I thought I had given them my address but apparently I had not. So they texted me asking me for it but I hadn’t seen their text immediately. By the time I replied it was already after 11 a.m. After a while I thought maybe they didn’t get my text. I called. A man answered. I identified myself, asked if they received my address. “Yes,” he said crankily, “but you didn’t send your cell phone number.”

“I texted you my address on my cell phone. You have my cell phone number.”  “No,” he snapped, “you should send it in yourself. We have so many orders we get confused. It’s hard to keep track.”  “Okay,” I said and I did.

I got the galantina around mid-afternoon. I wasn’t too happy with it — not because of how it was, but because of how irritable that man was. Also, their galantina was not as wonderful as the photo. It was mediocre at best. They taught me a lesson on ordering food through Facebook: Buyer, beware! They do not inform you of the potential crabbiness of their phone person.

My husband and I have two families. On Christmas Eve at around five we went to his daughter’s place. I told his children I was taking the night off from my husband’s care. They were to be responsible. They gladly accepted. I poured myself a cold glass of sauvignon blanc, hit the caviar cake and wonderful oysters as aperitifs. Had maybe two more glasses of wine on the porch, then was cool enough to see how my husband was doing.

He was lying in bed wrapped in three thick blankets, surrounded by his youngest granddaughter, her older sister and his oldest son. He didn’t look very happy. At around eight he decided to go home. We live only a block away. There he had an ensaimada and went to sleep attended to by his caregiver.

I made it home by half past 10. If I had been slightly tipsy earlier I was now stone cold sober and very sleepy. This is what it feels like to grow old, I thought, slightly dismayed, missing the joyfulness of Christmas Eve when I was much younger.

The next morning I got dressed and wore beaded ethnic necklaces I received as a gift from one of my daughters the night before. My son picked me up for our traditional Christmas lunch at his house. My oldest grandson Pow, his wife Ding, and little baby Tristan (so far my one and only great-grandson) were going to be there. They had flown in from California to spend Christmas with their families here. I was concerned that Tristan, who my daughters call Moo, would be mangingilala, and would cry when he saw me. No! He was the most charming little baby in the world.

He smiled when I went to greet him hello and leaned towards my arms so I would carry him. He loved the little aqua unicorn I gave him as a present. He wouldn’t let go of it. But most of all I couldn’t extricate him from exploring my ethnic necklaces. He adored playing with them with his tiny chubby hands. He discovered how to ring their little bells and would always look at me with surprise in his adorable eyes. Finally he loved putting the long beaded tassels in his little mouth where he pretended to eat them, then pull them out, then look at me and grin mischievously as if to say how delicious they were.

Little Tristan brought me the joy of Christmas.  A lovely innocent baby on my lap looking and laughing playfully with me, making me grateful to be alive and giggling merrily with him.  He was my finest, my only real Christmas moment that made me overflow with love.
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