Manoling: A story of second chances

One of the best things about every new day, every new moment, is the opportunity it gives for a second chance.

Life doesn’t all deal us the best cards. Life isn’t always fair, and in life, we, too, aren’t always fair.

But each new moment gives us the gift of a second chance — a chance to right what is wrong, a chance to be better, to look better, to feel better. A chance to make up for lost time, a chance to buy time.

A chance to call someone Dad and Mom. A chance to be called “Dad” and “Mom.”

* * *

Manuel “Manoling” Rodriguez’s second chance at happiness came with these two words, “Mommy” and “Daddy.”

Three years ago, my high school classmate Sandy Lamb Moran went to one of our reunions with the story of a little boy who knocked at her door, and upon seeing her sister Patty Rodriguez, asked, “Mommy?”

Sandy lived in the same building as Manoling’s foster parents, and so when it was broached to Patty and her husband Mike that they might be interested in adopting him, Sandy’s house was the meeting place.

Manoling was accompanied by a yaya from his foster parents, and when he saw Patty, Mike, Sandy and their mother Mary Lamb, he took Patty’s hand and called her “Mommy.”

Sandy remembers Patty melting in Manoling’s hug. Sandy and her mother Mary were also teary-eyed. Mary, according to Sandy, told her daughter Patty, “If you’re not taking him, I will!”

But Patty never let go of Manoling. Ever.

* * *

I knew Patty’s husband Mike Rodriguez  from college, and on his Facebook page are chronicles of the joy that Manoling has brought into his and Patty’s lives in the past three years. There were accounts of the difficulties of the adoption process, but one post I could never forget was his proclamation, his declaration, that the adoption process for Manoling had been completed.

The last time I met up with Sandy, she was again teary-eyed. This time, she was telling us the story of Manoling’s christening and how it had brought together all the people who had made the boy’s second chance, perhaps ONLY chance, at happiness, possible. You see, each person there, not just Patty and Mike, was a link around him that gave him the warm embrace of love.

* * *

“We came to know Manuel because his foster family at the time was looking for a new foster family. This adorable little boy -— he was just over three then — was at that stage where he was ready for adoption and the hope was that his next foster parents would want to eventually take him under the government’s policy of encouraging foster parents to adopt their wards,” recounts Mike, a businessman. “For Manuel’s former foster family, it was a case of either giving him up blindly or surrendering him to the system, or taking an active role, in coordination with the DSWD, in helping him join a loving Filipino home that they would have some prior knowledge about, directly or indirectly, through their network of friends.”

Manoling’s case came up in a conversation with mutual friends of the couple and after some deliberation, and clearance with the authorities, they decided to meet him. 

“The experience was so positive from Day One and we bonded instantly with him — it’s as if he truly was the son we never had,” says Mike. He even looks like the perfect cross between Mike and Patty.

Fostering quickly led to adoption, which was harder than they thought.

“The biggest challenge was maneuvering through the bureaucratic and judicial maze. Processes just took much longer than anticipated, and often required excessive documentation.  It was difficult, costly and took too long, almost three  years in the making!” recalls Mike.

But they were heartened along the way by so many supportive people, “especially our friends and the staff of the NGO and DSWD responsible for Manuel, who were genuinely concerned and helpful.” 

When he met the Rodriguezes, Manuel was at that stage when he was beginning to reason and communicate. 

“He was clearly questioning who his parents were, as he had no one to call Daddy and Mommy until he met us, unlike the other children around him.  His foster family kept on telling him that his Mommy and Daddy would come one day for him.  In his little mind, he was therefore getting confused and angry at times, making him irritable and envious of other children,” says Mike.

Manoling was reportedly aggressive and rough toward his playmates, and some protective parents actually kept their children away from him. 

All this changed after he met his Daddy and Mommy.

* * *

After a few months under the loving care of Mike and Patty, Manoling’s behavior and relations with other children changed “dramatically.”

He became a much calmer and friendlier, sociable child.  Further improvements came when he started going to school. People like yayas of his old playmates who knew Manuel before he came to the Rodriguez couple often remarked that he had become the complete opposite of the child they knew previously, “like night and day.”

“We have no doubt that genuine parental love and attention made all the difference and changed Manoling overnight,” Mike firmly believes. 

* * *

Of course, it wasn’t just Manoling’s life that changed for the better — nay, for the best. Mike and Patty’s life was never the same again, too.

Asked how being a mother feels, Patty says, “Super! That’s all I can say.”

“The principal message to us in all this is to trust in God’s plan for us,” shares Mike. “We really thought that we would never have a child of our own. But all this time, there were signs and that certain nagging feeling, very difficult to explain, that someone would come into our lives. We found out later from each other, that there were instances when we would, individually, be moved to secretly pray for a child, even if we knew full well that that was physically impossible,” Mike shares further.

Adoption was always an option, but the couple thought it was just too difficult given their life marked by busy work schedules, constant travelling and changing domiciles. 

“In the end, all caution and angst melted away when this little boy came into our lives and whose first act was to look at us with that yearning…and uttered his first words, almost questioningly, ‘Mommy?’...‘Daddy’?”

Of that day three years ago, Mike remembers how they responded to Manoling’s shy question.

“A resounding ‘YES!’ welled within us, and we knew at that instant that we were, finally, and by God’s grace, a family!” (You may e-mail me at [email protected].)