There are times I marvel at my five children and think, “Who would have thought these girls would be mine from my high school days to college?”
They were maturing with me as we explored scholastic years together from college onward. With the second batch of girls, it was another type of responsive environment to create; with them it was back to nursery rhymes and pediatricians.
In any case, a balance was needed to instill in the younger ones discipline and coping skills while the ates learned to master leadership over their little sisters. My two curly tops lived a leisurely life on the farm in the ‘60s and felt the sad years of the ‘70s and martial law. In the ‘80s they were participants in the glory of freedom and in the ‘90s they were my campaigners for public office. Victorious, I left all five girls on their own during those years and we became one solid unit in the 2000s as they cheered for me during my oral defense. Today, they are all relieved that I’m a GMA appointee with my super energies having a direction. With the exception of two girls, all of them are parents.
The years have zoomed by faster than the swish of a ponytail!
I take a look at my littlest child Liaa whom I overheard last week complain to her daughter Martina that she stopped growing at 12 years old. Liaa’s birthday is coming soon and she’s the inspiration for my baby books and diaries. Liaa gave me my first birthing experience…the most painful delivery through the normal eruption.
Back then the topic of sex was a secret. It was kept at home and in school, and we only saw storks with a baby hanging inside a diaper and it all depended where he’d drop his package.
My pregnancy kept for seven months with a threatened loss and my tummy growing even as I was immobilized. Liaa’s doctor-colleagues and classmates, Dr. Mike Wassmer and Dr. Sochi Caedo Lim, tease me that I lay in bed five years of my life.
Finally came the labor pains after red spots and rush, rush, I was pulling my hair and assumed a fetal position and then got knocked out from exhaustion. The immeasurable pain only a wife — no, every woman now, regardless of age and status — go through. Giving birth is a bond that females share anywhere in the world and makes an excellent starter for even formal dinner conversations.
Seeing Liaa early morning — what a puzzlement it all was. She from me? That pain? Never again. Never. Two years later, in a bid to produce a male heir, came another female, the third Josephine in the family, aside from Josephine Murphy Cojuangco and Congressman Mark’s grandmother and Josephine Cojuangco Reyes, Marisse’s mom.
Campaigning every day, morning to night, up and down bamboo stairs, riding on a carabao sleigh and the Visayan I spoke being replaced by Ilocano, I gave birth to Pin. She came into the world like a swish, a ghost’s breeze — and then I boasted I could go through all that again even if the doctor came late and the nurses sat on my knees to keep Pin in. But she was thin and she poohed green. In a week she was baptized at Far Eastern Hospital. We were fearful that we would lose her. We couldn’t find the correct milk for her delicate state. Finally, after nine tries someone suggested Carnation milk and Pin survived her first trial.
These two girls are today constant friends. Fortunately and unfortunately arguments end with this reason: “I’m the ate.” Pin calls me up and complains, “Just because she’s the ate doesn’t mean she knows everything and has the last say.”
That’s the way her parents — her father and I — were brought up. I’m the eldest child so I’m better off than Peping.
Like all girls, I played with dolls and changed their clothes with my two daughters. One had light brown hair, the other dark brown. I’d put fresh red flowers in both Liaa and Pin’s hair even if just to race down a knoll together. Both had natural curls to show off until Pin placed her chewing gum on Liaa’s hair and we had to cut it short.
One got a green station wagon, the other a huge police dog as a surprise present. Pin learned to love dogs and short hair. See what one can inherit from an environment? To get back to pets, her Alabang neighbor gave her a wild dog and Pin took him in and tamed him. He’d lie on her front step and we’d just walk over him as he would stare and then go back to sleep.
Pin was my lucky baby — she made her daddy win a re-election. There’s a belief in Tarlac that pregnant campaigners make their spouses win. And the old folks were right.
I see my old notebook — at 11, Pin is baking with Karen Cancio and Liaa is eating the cakes. Both Karen and Pin baked in our kitchen, filling orders. One day Liaa stuck her hand into the bowl that had a mixer in it. She cut her finger and on Pin’s flour and sugar dripped blood. A hailstorm of screams ensued.
Hot days meant swimming in rubber pools or in the deeper swimming pool. Fun was never-ending while I tanned myself beside my frolicking girls with Coke or beer on my body listening to Broadway hits like Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, the Mary Poppins song. Evenings brought a TV program from Clark Field so we gathered to hear the news on the Vietnam War, the reason why Liaa acquired a scar below her eyebrow. Jumping on my bed behind me next to a can of Piknik, she fell right on it without its plastic cap. She reprimands every child now: “Only monkeys jump on the bed…You a monkey? Stop that!”
On another occasion, she got her dad’s tiny gun and, sitting next to her Nana, pointed it at her head and said, “Bang, bang.” I turned to stone and Nana slowly made a grab for the gun! “Dangerous lessons to learn from it,” it says in my battered book.
I remind Liaa now, with her birthday coming and Pin with her little Pablo and all other mommies, to begin a diary of sorts. One word, three sentences to remind them of how their beloved offspring behaved then and even now. This becomes your family’s history.
Let me continue from my kodigo…growing older. As reported by ate Liaa to me, Pin was so happy that Peping and I had left for the airport on those then 6 p.m. or 8 p.m. PAL flights to San Francisco. Pin got dressed to sneak out on a date while we were flying. Dressed up to leave the house, she missed one of four steps. Stumbling down in the dark she ended up at Makati Medical Hospital and the no-dates policy took effect the whole duration of our three-week vacation with Pin wearing a cast.
Holidays remind me of summertime, to Disneyland in Los Angeles where all 20 cousins yearly traveled with their grandparents. The last leg of our summer adventures was New York for Liaa’s operation to correct a scar 4x6 inches long. She had gotten her tiny hand painfully “squeezed” into her Lolo Pa’s exerciser. If it were not for Pin’s alertness, Liaa’s bones would be in shreds. At five years old, Pin pulled the plug from the wall, stopping the treadmill. Till now Pin likes doing handyman duties.
So many memories to reminisce over with our diaries, the nearest link to our past.
My inaanak Nancy Chongbian’s daughter lives in Canada, but the baby pictures of Liaa’s party makes me closer to my kumadre. Cecile Mitra has a congressman son, Abraham. Minnie’s Stephanie shuttles between London and New York and glamorous Samantha was Tita Elvira Manahan’s joy. Everyone’s on the move. No one stays in one place anymore! And we hardly know where our children are even right now. All we really know about them are their baby years…and off they go…