My amore
For the past four weeks the first question I’ve been asking upon entering my front door was “Gising or tulog si Demi?” Is she asleep or awake? For a month I had been anticipating her arrival until finally I saw this exhausted little child looking about her surroundings with droopy eyes. She must have felt her mother’s eagerness to be on a plane back to the Philippines that Demi slept only for two hours during the 16-hour flight from Europe.
Demi was my 4:30 a.m. companion as she suffered from jetlag. Caring for her always made me late for office but I couldn’t detach myself from both mother and child. Demi lay with me in bed as she played with my Otrivin nose drops, both of us surrounded with pillows. We danced a slow drag number to Rod Stewart’s Time After Time, and then both of us crowded on the divan watching television but never cartoons. She must have found the noise jarring to her ears as she’d press the remote to other channels. Like any chip off the motherly block, a wawa like me read to her and I myself was entertained. “Demi, touch the soft lambskin on your book.” There, she did it and chose the right animal’s picture. Next page, “Demi, smell the flowers.” She’d lift the book towards her nose because the pink blossoms smelled like jasmine. “Turn the page…look at Demi in the tiny mirror.” Wow, she just smiled at herself. She performed skillfully all the time. Her mom has taught her well.
Demi was named after her mother and my mother-in-law Demetria. If there’s a trait Demi should inherit from Mama Metring it should be being thrifty. My husband nods approvingly as he recalls his mother, a cashier at Cojuangco Paniqui Mill, as a young woman and in her later years leaving their Roberts residence early morning in her Jaguar to drive to Rizal where she had a two-story wooden house to clean and bide her time enjoying her farm looking for more land to buy with the bayong of money from her savings.
Antonia, Demi’s second name, comes from Mai’s devotion to the holy monk from Lisbon, St. Anthony, who’s my guardian, too. That evening of May 6 when her birth pangs were unbearable, Mai prayed, “Make my daughter Demi come out now!” It had been her third day of labor. “One more push, Demi, please get out of my tummy…I don’t want a caesarian section, St. Anthony.” Finally there emerged my chubby, white complexioned granddaughter, now a year and two months, 26 pounds, with curly hair, miniature baby teeth, square toes and strong fingers.
Demi my love has a ready, wide grin and doesn’t cry or choose whom to kiss on the cheek so we tell her “flying kiss, Demi,” and the kisses fly assuring us she understands what affection means.
For one so young she doesn’t pretend to throw away alluring kisses like beauty queens on stage. So, fast as a bullet like — like a fraction of a second — she smacks her palm on her lips with her left and right hand simultaneously. I think it’s to get rid of us so she can watch the five Jack Russells roll on the ground. With her tongue and teeth, “tsk tsk,” she calls them and tries to snap her index and thumb fingers to make a sound to catch their attention but the hyper dogs don’t mind her because there’s no sound to hear from her uncoordinated fingers. Finally, the lazy Jack Russell Sweetie takes notice and advances. Sweetie stands on her hind legs to give Demi’s dangling chorizo legs over her yaya’s arms a lick. Demi wrinkles her toes to avoid Sweetie. Her instincts are rapid and her beautiful eyes flash at success and she giggles at her victory, as though saying, “Are you laughing at me?”
Oh no! She just thrust a tiny speeding arm boxing her yaya’s chin. Mai squints to show disapproval, “No, Demi, that’s not kind.” Demi’s eyes look downward in repentance. Mai puts her cheeks next to Demi’s lips and gets a kiss.
My drooling over Demi doesn’t mean I’m excluding curly-top, chinky-eyed Pablo Guingona, who lisps and eats a cup of rice every meal, or the fair and handsome Renzo who kisses his mommy Mikee again and again and again, 10 kisses at a time. Both boys could be toughies and Demi is a fragile girl, far from her Pinoy lineage and we don’t know who’ll be her playmates. That’s the downside of having a child who lives abroad; the upside is I have a daughter who has made her own choice to live where her heart has led her. And their happiness is mine, too.
I observe Demi’s perfect face. Well, don’t you think your grandchild’s super-looking, too? I am reminded pretty babies don’t turn out to be very beautiful adults! Ugly ducklings become beautiful swans… Oh… oh… even if they love grapes, papaya, banana and yogurt for vitamin C like Demi.
I reach for Demi sitting on the floor to put her in her high chair. Removing my sandals to squat with her, she leans towards me to get my shoes to put her fat feet into them. She misses and her feet fall out on one side. She tries again and the slippers are inverted. Its time I teach her the proper way. “There Demi, that’s the way,” and she smiles and smiles slipping her foot in. She learns so fast! “Hoorah,”… I say and she claps her two hands in delight like I do… I miss her.
Telephone, telephone, I run to answer my cellphone and she mimics me with her rubber spoon. “Hi.” She copies my tone so that I hug her in delight and she grabs my gold shiny necklace. She wants me to rescue her from her high chair where she eats miniature spaghetti packed by her mom from Italy with bread sticks. Although she loves to eat my Maranao wooden cheese pawns. Surprise, here’s Demi’s spaghetti recipe in English I kept and hold close to my tummy.
Boil the chicken, put in the carrots, potatoes and celery. When all are tender, remove the casserole from fire; put its contents in a blender. Put the baby pasta in the broth where the chicken and veggies were bowled. Remove from the fire when the pasta is soft. Put with other items in the blender. Add olive oil and parmesan cheese. There you have it: fresh, not bottled, baby food.
