too clean to have alcohol withdrawal symptoms, and yet...

have you ever tried searching Google images for abstract or invisible things like air, wind, love, etc? i did and ended up disturbed by the volume of results i got. there were so many images attached to these words!!! i know, i know, i’m being naive to think that i would find blank squares on the results page - the whole thing just bothered me.

["choke me in the shallow water before i get too deep.."]

so now i’m back to searching Google for “house wilson,” “anne dudek’s legs,” “i hate meredith grey,” “george o’malley is sexy,” “jack bauer” – and by that i give away the status of my nightlife for the past months. the closest i get to beer is the smell of it on my hungover friends at work.

i AM a mother.

i’m a mom now.

stuck

I finally submitted my application for graduate studies on Monday. I'm not very enthusiastic about the program, though.. My heart is still on the MA English Studies (creative writing) at UP Diliman, to which I got accepted in 2006. I did not go through with it because of the crazy class schedule - a 4x a week commute to and from Quezon City that meant I had to make up like 20 hours of work every week.

I have put off taking my masters, despite having worked in the university this long, because there are only two programs for a writer here. One of them is a continuation of my undergrad program, which doesn't interest me anymore, and the other one is a shadow of the MAES in UPD and - who would want the shadow over the real thing? (I hope my evaluators for GS do not come across this entry..)

But now I have a baby who means the world to me and I am not about to become the mother who leaves at dawn and comes back late at night smelling like the city and going straight to the computer to get some work done. I want to LIVE motherhood. So, I finally rest my flailing arms and applied for grad studies right here in Los Baños.

There is a window, though. The program I applied for allows nine units, ergo, three courses, to be taken at UP Diliman. Which means I still have a chance to study under the greats of Philippine lit. Yey.

terribly homesick

first storm with baby

What bothered me was not so much the winds that howled that night but the fact that typhoon Frank came and went without my having a clue as to its direction, size or strength. I mean, I track storms. I have almost never been through a storm without three sets of projections in my head.

The downpour was already heavy by Saturday, and, since the power was out we went up to bed early. The power came back on at 8PM. The winds began to whirl violently past midnight, and the power went out again shortly. That’s when I realized it was Frank.

I could hardly sleep after that. It was my first storm with a baby and we were riding out the storm “blind.” I had no information to base decisions or hopes on and I felt helpless.

My mobile phones, my only source of light to check on the baby, went out of battery power before dawn. The windows were all shut except for the small window in the bathroom downstairs, but with almost no ventilation I was worried the four of us would use up all the oxygen upstairs before morning. I feared so much for baby, who was very quiet during that night. She must have been lulled by the rain and howling outside.

All that, and I go to work this morning and read the news about a ferry sinking in the Visayas the night of the storm. 700 were feared dead, including children.

Children. In my mind, while reading that news story, I could see fifty-foot waves (images from Perfect Storm) and the ferry sinking while the rain poured. I could see the ferry sinking, and the faces of the children. And every one of them is mine. They all had my baby’s face on them, as I imagined how the parents who were grieving right that moment felt. It was too much. I ran to the bathroom just in time, and burst into tears.

kid-crazy

Motherhood has opened much more than my cervix (well technically, my cervix did not open, but you get the point). I am all for children, I love them. But now I look at a baby and I know, as in cerebral-know, him or her. How soft, how warm, how wiggly. Suddenly, there are no ugly babies. Suddenly, I am the mother of each infant I see. Each one is special and beautiful — this phrase is no longer air, but hard concrete.

Kristiyano dana si Sarai!

We had our little lady baptized into the Catholic Church a week before her second month birthday.

Meet Sarai Malaya Isabel.

hairy putter

I have a rather small zone of comfort, at least for certain things, such as who cuts my hair. I keep going to the same girl, who no longer seems happy that I do, as I can be really fussy. I am fussy. I always either bring a photo or point to something in the salon magazine, and mess it all up for her by my elaborations.

gayahin nyo po ito, pero gusto ko soft ang layers tsaka yung kahit san galing ang hangin ayos pa rin. tsaka wag masyadong bawasan sa harap at gilid. yung sa likod, bawasan nyo po pero wag nyo po gugupitin ang mga maliliit na buhok sa batok ko..."

when she's done, she holds up a mirror behind me so I get a full view of my new cut, and asks the perfunctory question: ok na po ba? I say, hmmm.. and start on a whole new verbage:

medyo ok na, pero pakibawasan yung gitna sa may batok ko. hindi yung iiklian. ninipisan lang ng konti blah blah..

maam, hindi ko po maintindihan..?

so I go at it again. I notice lately she no longer smiles and I go hoping it's just her hormones because if she gives up on me, I have no other suki.

I think it is only a matter of time before she starts keeping a lookout so she can flip the "OPEN" sign on the door when I come sauntering.