Star student, proud parents

My eldest son Gabriel Ollivan, who turns six today, recently made it a strain for me and his Wawa to get ourselves immune from immodesty. You see, Avondale West Elementary School recently posted his photo on the wall beside the gym door along with those of other students who got a star certificate for academic excellence. Golli, as he is fondly called, is one of the two star students in Avondale's two kindergarten classes.

Caught me by suprise, really, because I thought all the while that he is a rough chip off the old reckless block. You see, it's been a frequent complaint by her teacher that Golli often has a hard time listening and keeping his mouth shut. Mine is a rolypoly kid, I know. Someone who would rather frisk around as most kids would prefer rather than study. Another thing: he complains a lot when asked to read. So imagine how pleased as punched we were when he showed us his star-fringed certificate.

It's the second time Golli surprised us since he started kindergarten. Last December, he told us that their school will present an annual Christmas play. All of my classmates are in it, or so he mentioned in passing. No big deal. We thought he would be no more than pipsqueak in the background, considering how he merely made us hear a line he had to say to someone else in the play. So we just shrugged the whole thing off, until we saw him onstage so breezy with those long lines he had to deliver! How did he manage to memorize those? Turned out his part (as Papa Snow) was one of the play's main character.

Enough tooting of parental trumpet. Which, as every father and mother would know, is as easy as stifling a post-prandial burp.

Meanwhile, keep up the good work, anak! At least all my panic overdrive while whipping up your lazybone to a frenzy every morning in preparation for school has been not for naught.

Beyond a Manny-splendoured thing

Just a sleep away, as they say. Isang tulog na lang, the Dream Match in Las Vegas where Manny Pacquiao is out to render a fellowship of the ring out of the whole archipelago. Tomorrow, we'll have our eyeballs in our throats again.

We'll hunker down in front of the telecast, and up on a toehold of hope as the weight of our collective expectation bears down on him. As if his failure would be our doom. As if his victory (let alone his millions and his legendary popularity) would be our deliverance, personally or as a Filipino nation.

For a while there, as if by magic, our mundane lives would hang by the string of his gloves as he'd do the rounds that run circles around our little corners. In our inner arenas, yes. Where we face, battered and without fanfare, our daily fights. Where we'd get lucky enough if we could roll along with the punches and at the end of the day wish for another morning when we could wink, even out of a black eye, at a fistful of possibilities.

Such faith, or grace, would suffice to knock our rundown of failures off its feet.

They're talking about my mother

If I had an epic imagination, an ode to motherhood would have been easier to render. The scope of nitty-gritty about what it takes to be tender. The utter sense of selflessness that love at its strongest is made of. Sweet, but hardly a piece of cake.

As my Mama Violeta turns 62 today, all I can do to honor her and everything that she has done for me is to become a worthy parent to her grandchildren. Apart from wishing her the best of health, safety, and peace of mind, let me echo the following words I hold true:

"Grown don't mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What's that suppose to mean? In my heart it don't mean a thing." (Toni Morrison, Beloved)

"Women's Liberation is just a lot of foolishness. It's the men who are discriminated against. They can't bear children. And no one's likely to do anything about that. " (Golda Meir)

"The real religion of the world comes from women much more than from men-- from mothers most of all, who carry the key of our souls in their bosoms." (Oliver Wendell Holmes)

"God could not be everywhere, so he created mothers." (Jewish Proverb)

"My mother is a poem I'll never be able to write, though everything I write is a poem to my mother." (Sharon Doubiago)

"A man loves his sweetheart the most, his wife the best, but his mother the longest."(Irish Proverb)

Happy Birthday, Ma. :) God bless my beer for you!

Wishes for Aegan, my youngest son

Raphael Gandalf J. Obenieta turns three today.

Just in case he'll come across his father's blog someday, this post is a prayer just for him:

Anak, thank God for just being the way you are to me, your Wawa, your Kuya Golli, your grandparents, your uncles, your cousins, your ninongs and ninangs (ayaw mo'g kalimot, uy, mga kanahan!)

May your appetite abound with broccolis, carrots, spinach, utan-Bisaya, avocados and bananas. May your scars be skin-deep only. May you grow with the grace of a Gene Kelly and a Buster Keaton. May you sway your head along a Yoyoy Villame tune. May you memorize the 23rd psalm and some of Rumi's poetry.

May you, in the wrinkled face of cynicism, persevere with the child-like carelessness to slosh around the wellspring of imagination and wonder. May you hoard superhero comics and collections of quotations. May your invectives be as genuine as your gratitude.

May you be fierce and at ease with your individuality in the company of people who may hurt or take you for granted. May your happiness be shallow, and your laughter be deeper and fuller than the tide of your tears.

May you learn to stare failure in the eye, and succeed in winking at it. May you measure your worth in the wisdom of the Golden Rule. May your learn to do CPR and Heimlich maneuver. May you be a Red Cross donor and volunteer.

May your guardian angel be your only stalker. May there be sunscreen and condoms in your backpack even if you'll be going to Iceland or visiting a convent.

When the world continues to go mad, may you find a merry-go-round of reason and rhyme. May you have the folly to make an art, an adventure, an altar out of your lifetime.

May the future, even if your sight falters in the dark, also find you gathering your own grandchildren in the light of fairy tales.

Happy birthday, anak! And thank you for giving me the chance to grow as a human being by simply striving to be father worthy of you and your brother.

And then I begin, again...

So here comes another season for shedding off old skin into this cyberspace coil. This cycle of blogging. This one more leap into yet another corner of the Web. Here, this turning of new leaf and this letting go from the virtual nest of old branches, smack into my favorite time of year.

Ah, Autumn! When trees have colors to tell about changes in its free-fall down to death --and never mind the portents of gray in the forthcoming winter--until the flourishes of rebirth at Springtime. Soon, pretty soon.

Pastilan baya! Stop this somnambulist, please, from sleepwriting what could have been a welcome greeting. You know, this is just to say, "Hello!"