About a boy
He has a baby smell uniquely his, a smell that lingers on you even when he’s no longer in your arms. He will throw tantrums over everything, sometimes for no reason at all. If he can’t find his favorite toy, he will crouch into a fetal position and make unhappy little gurgles. When there are no more tears left, he will hug you with all his little sorrow.
No, dear boyfriend, this is not about you. This is about another boy I loved, Michael (not his real name). I was 19 and he was barely two. Every Saturday afternoon, I would find him peering outside the window, absolutely certain I would come like clockwork. With his surprisingly strong little calves, he would try to climb into my arms. He would rest his head on my shoulder, with the contentment of a king who has the whole world at his tiny feet.
You see, I have been a volunteer for several years now. Along a sloping street in one of Marikina’s buried crevices, there is a small orange building with equally citrus-colored gates. CRIBS (Create Responsive Infants by Sharing) Foundation is a non-government organization that serves as a temporary shelter for surrendered and neglected infants aged only several days to 2 1/2 years old. The center facilitates future adoption of the babies or, less frequently, reunification with their biological parents. There are excellent professional caregivers but due to inadequate staff and funding resources, they can always use a helping hand from volunteers.
Michael was the first baby I ever took care of. He’s gone now, taken in by a French family who fell in love with his spiky rock-star hair. They told me he would have an older brother, someone to terrorize him and nurse his wounds like all siblings do. Every time a new baby tries to climb up my legs, I savor a split-second memory of him — the baby who taught me to love babies. I wonder if he’s still scared of lizards, or if he still points at blue cars.
Sometimes I hope he remembers me too, but most of the time I hope he never does. That’s the role we agree to play, after all: caretakers in transit — someone to hold them in the shifty ground between a cruel past and a hopeful future. I know I will always belong to the miserable half, to the past I hope he learns to forget.
People either love or hate Valentine’s Day for a single reason: we surprise each other with the many embarrassing ways our raw emotions manifest themselves. Tomorrow, a friend will gush to you about how the boy she met five minutes ago happens to be her soulmate, or about the girl he would cross oceans for if only she would stop calling him a stalker. There is so much misplaced affection that remains unaccounted for, and we often witness more of it than we care to see.
This is why Valentine’s works, despite the criticized marketing charades. We are all seemingly desperate to find a real, graspable connection with the rest of mankind — which, ironically, is just as desperate as we are. It’s not so strange that I write about babies on this particular holiday. Of whatever nature it may be, the human affection we all crave is never really so different: we look for somewhere we can bury ourselves, basking in the warm delight of a familiar scent. Nowhere else in the world is this more true than with one-year-old infants, forsaken by the very people who should have kept them safe.
From the moment we were pushed out into the world, we’ve been soaked in the need to hold a hand that will hold ours back. As we grow older, we learn to tame that need, to understand the difference between strangers and friends. For these little souls who are left to fight the world on their own, the need becomes unprejudiced, shameless, and reciprocally generous. In that little room of milk-stained pillows, only one thing is more primal than the need for human affection: the ability to give it back.
I have many reasons for wanting to be a writer, but none could be more important than this: so I could tell the story of a little orange building, where babies poke their heads through the window, pointing at blue cars.
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For donations, volunteering and other forms of assistance, CRIBS Foundation may be contacted at 647-1329 or 681-5921 (ask for Liway Flores).
