Reminiscing under the Tuscan sun
I’m looking out the louvered windows of Andrea and Mai’s Tuscan home. On one side is the town church with a plaza where on every Sunday a flea market appears with vendors under tents selling bags, accessories, clothes and furniture. It’s the Italian version of ukay-ukay. Carts sell yummy salami and prosciutto ham with all kinds of bread. From another window, a glimpse of the Tuscan’s natural beauty is awesome with its rolling hills and olive and grape vineyards. And the air… ah, it is medicine for the lungs. Every afternoon and very early morning — the whole day, actually — my heart sings as church bells ring in this Tuscan province, one is Florence, the others, Milan, Venice, Palermo, Turin, Genoa, Bologna, Tuscany is a region in Italy, where Etruscans first lived and birthed the Renaissance movement with its artistic heritage of astounding architecture, paintings and monumental sculptures. Perhaps the best-known tourist attraction is the Uffizi, the Academia and the Bargello in Florence. Tuscany was the birthplace of Dante Alighieri, the poet-philosopher, considered the father of the Italian language — Dante, whose residence anyone can visit right in the heart of Florence. Remember Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Galileo Galilee and Botticelli? All were from Tuscany. So are Prada, Ferragamo, Pomellato the jewelry store, and Dodo its youngest jewelry label. And the historical Medici family of the 1400s who ruled Florence.
I have time to reminisce now. The house is quiet. I can’t touch anything on the lower floors as the burglar alarm is on. The night posts are still lighting the surrounding bushes but I see the black-haired Lauren, Andrea’s huge, hairy female dog, biting her brother Ralph’s ears, taunting him. They each weigh more than me — in fact, three times my weight. Watching them makes me smile. Dogs are like humans — friends, enemies even among relatives, some are scruffy, some are handsome, some are obedient and some are incorrigible like Lauren.
Today I’m forever 50, I like to think. I’m forever a dreamer, a historian who records memories with a pencil writing in long hand, grateful for secretaries who are English majors and would-be pharmacists (maybe) deciphering my handwriting. Lucky me. Lucky me that Yaya Sally is rewriting this for me. We don’t have a fax machine. So, I read my book on the Mossad yet I flash backward with a photographic memory of pregnancy: a bulge, birthing, breastfeeding a perfect healthy human being. Imagine in just nine months a human being with a heart and soul and body can become a child of God.
Before I was a mom I was caught between the myth of the stork and natural childbirth. But that latter truth I learned much later. I just never dared question how a child left her mother’s stomach — or even how the tummy bulge ever got there. School never taught us about intercourse, just marriage as one of the seven sacraments. Marriage then was, for me, a wedding in a white dress, a gown like Snow White’s and a honeymoon night with the moon shining above. And that made me recall the song my parents used to hum and sing. It was from a movie, By the Light of the Silvery Moon. The words went, “I want to spoon… honeymoon, keep a-shinin’ in June…” Something like that.
Suddenly, ending that sentence, I recall that, like Mai, Peping and I had waited three years to conceive. Everyone — just everyone — nagged us, from the barangay to my old classmates to relatives. All of them posed the annoying question: “Wala pa ba?” When I got engaged many thought I was pregnant already and the rush-rush marriage had to be consummated. When finally, after several check-ups, because it’s always in the female that there’s something wrong, not the male (anyway, he’s the one who refuses to be examined), the announcement came of our impending pregnancy.
Mai-Mai was besieged by questions — not from the Italians, but from us. She would answer: “If she comes, she’ll come.” “She” — because this couple both agreed they wanted to have a daughter and chamba they did. Every nine years I have a granddaughter. My other grandchildren are six boys. God’s way of controlling His population problems, after He gave me five daughters.
A birth is tremendous happiness but this week we had a death in the family. My mother’s younger brother Ramon Hernandez Manzano passed away. Generations come and go; we all will go through perpetual rests and celebrate births. Its God’s cycle for coping with the size of the earth He created. My uncle died, and little Demi was born.
Before I left Manila I received an e-mail from Lin Ilusorio that she sent Mai as well, on motherhood. How appropriate it was for Mother’s Day. “Before I was a mom, I never tripped over toys or forgot words to a lullaby. I didn’t worry whether or not my plants were poisonous. I never thought about immunizations.”
Right! I nearly fell over a toy train in Liaa’s room in the ‘70s. I learned through Liaa, my firstborn, about B.C.G. and D.P.T. shots, hepa and polio injections, measles shots that gave her fever. I kept doctors’ records on hand like flash cards. I’ve kept them through the years, even until now! Mai is learning all about that from little Demetria Antonia Zini’s natologist-pedia.
Again — going back to before I was a mom — I never combed a doll’s hair except for one tiny four-inch doll with blond hair my grandmother Lucia bought in Spain. I put her on a hammock made from my grandpa’s handkerchief, tied it to the bed’s posts to rock my doll to sleep. I pushed her too hard and she broke into a hundred pieces, my porcelain doll. In time dolls got taller so when Liaa was four years old the two of us dressed her 24-inch-tall doll and we both combed her blond hair. Unknowingly, I was developing her motherly instincts along with mine.
I sang lullabies to every child in a rocking chair until my fat baby Mai fell asleep. And Liaa, when she had colic — oh, my gosh, what screams she belted out that made our rocking chair fly higher and higher. When it didn’t work I laid her on top of me to squash her tummy. Thanks to Dr. Martin Pacapanpan, he instructed me to get the thinnest, longest rubber tube available at the drug store, insert it inside her anus and put the other end of the tube inside a kidney basin of water. Blurp, blurp… all the gas disappeared from Liaa’s tummy into the water and she fell fast asleep. That isn’t done anymore, I’m told, because the thin tubes are not sold in our drug stores, but in Italy this baby’s immediate relief was recommended to Mai for Demi.
Doubtful if Demi will use it. She’s different. She hardly cries. She eats a lot and smiles at her angel all the time and she’s made her daddy a St. Anthony devotee. Children have great influence over their parents. They can manipulate us around their little fingers — sometimes.
On the other hand, Liaa learned the prayer “Lovely Lady dressed in Blue” from me. It’s a prayer that I recited during grade school days at Maryknoll, on Pennsylvania Street in Manila. What is taught us at an early age we carry with us for a lifetime. I can even recite some Latin prayers from Mass learned during high school days in Maryknoll Diliman. I can pray in Latin till now, but there’s a catch: a priest has to say the first word to get me started. I foresee, though, that Demi will be taught by Mai to pray to St. Anthony in Italian. Tonya, Andrea’s seven-year housekeeper, is Ukranian. Their nanny is Peruvian. I will have a multi-lingual granddaughter praying.
Women are the first teachers, really. All women are. We carry female and male unborn children within us. Deliver them with great pain. Forget the pain and rear them to adulthood in a never-ending cycle of sacrifice and love. We can afford to love other children who aren’t even ours. We’re forever worried about our brood. We’ve extremely vigilant of accidents and injuries that haven’t even happened but reside in our imagination.
We’re never distracted when we’re watching over children. I watch little Demi’s every move as she turns her head from left to right or right to left and looks upward and kicks with her lean, long legs. Her arms and fingers open up in sheer surrender. I check to see she’s not being smothered by a blanket or her hood. Is she breathing? All mommies are the same.
I can’t wait for this new child to grow up and call me “Wawa.” Growing up — that’s when parents raise their voices, fling their arms high in exasperation. I see Andrea buy rubber cover guards for he corners of glass tables, cover their grilled staircase with wooden gates when Demetria started to walk. Ashtrays left sitting on tables would be stored away. More protective grills will be placed by fireplaces. Sharp instruments like scissors will be set high above reach. Marbles, safety pins, and any small swallowable items disappear. Even buttons, medicines and poisonous detergents, cleansing materials, jewelry beads, mothballs, shoe polish and perfumes. They’re all toxic. I’ll have to hunt for them in this household whenever I need them.
I hope Demi will love pasta and veggies, like Pico and Robbie. They’re good for bones and the immune system. We were laughing as a family on a Sunday recalling how Liaa hated vegetables when I served them for meals, so she forced Pin to eat her share and I never knew that. If Pin didn’t eat her vegetables Liaa would hit her! And all the time that was a secret, until it was revealed on that Sunday, June 15.
Having five girls reminds me of this story that makes me laugh. When I gave birth to my last two girls my maids called Liaa and Pin in school. “Nanganak ang mommy mo, girl na naman. Aye mamaya na lang we will go to visit, both older girls answered. By the last child, China, “ay maghintay na lang kami sa bahay when Mommy comes home from the hospital.”
What childhood secrets reveal. Isn’t life fun and aren’t children so smart?
