Not a very good bday postscript
I must have caught a virus somewhere on the way to Diliman last Wednesday. I started to feel it an hour or so after lunch, when I started yawning almost uncontrollably while waiting for the coffee at Khaz. Sam had stood up to greet his friend Rasti who was a couple of tables away with another friend, and in the few minutes that he was away I nodded off.
By the time we got home I was close to catatonic. I didn’t even bother to have dinner. I didn’t have a fever, but everything ached like hell. I didn’t have a temperature, but it got so bad I asked Ate Beng for a hilot.
This is one of the Cebuano words I have trouble with translating into any language. The word “hilot” is closer to acupressure than to massage, but I’m not sure if there is an actual equivalent. Hilot is applied so that “panuhot” can be expelled from one’s system, the word panuhot translating loosely into “gas”. But while gas can only be in the stomach, panuhot can be in joints and muscles, and it is expelled either by sweating shortly after the hilot or by passing gas by burping or through the other end.
After I put myself under Ate Beng’s hands I retired to our bedroom, turned the lighting down and slept. When I woke up in the morning I felt too sick to work. I informed the office and then went back to sleep, and stayed asleep the whole day. My little girl Maia came into the room and was told that Mommy was sick.
She went back to her room and got her play doctor set, stuck a plastic thermometer in my mouth, listened to my heartbeat with her plastic stethoscope, and tried to pull out two of my teeth with her plastic forceps. Then she asked “Are you fine now, Mommy?”
I told her I was, after which she put her toys away and lay down beside me. A few minutes later she was asleep too.
Behind the camera
Off from work again tomorrow, to attend brother-in-law Rowley’s wedding. That’s two 4-day work weeks for me in a row (was out Friday last week too for something less auspicious but required time away from the office nevertheless). That is something that should appeal to a few House Representatives who are pushing for a 4-day work week for government offices. Yeah, right, like they didn’t have them already. Anyone who has made it a necessity (or a habit) to visit the house on Batasan Hills knows that Friday is a day of rest for most people there. And Saturday, and Sunday and Monday if there is no session, and so on …
But enough of the ranting about politcs, and more of the wishing I had a hi-def camcorder for occassions like this. Been spending more and more time behind the camera than in front of it, proof of which is Ate Beng now has more pictures with Maia than I do. Here’s the two of them at a co-worker’s celebration of his first daughter’s first birthday.
The Nanny Diaries
Having been raised by a yaya (nanny) I had at one time promised myself never to get a yaya for my kids when the time came. This was not because I had a horrible experience with my nanny, on the contrary. My aunt, the one I lived with for most of my childhood life, worked full time as a government employee and when I went to live with my parents my dad worked full time as well. My yaya WAS my mom for most of my waking hours, and this was a sort of love-hate relationship that I guess most daughters have with their own mothers.
This is why I always either gape in horror or shake my head incredulously when I hear about yayas being cruel to the kids that they look after. Some parents, to avoid incidents such as these, go to agencies to hire their nannies and even install a nanny camera in the house just to make sure that the nanny isn’t maltreating their kids. I think that’s a bit extreme, becoming necessary only if the parent(s) have not had enough time to personally assess the new nanny.
The thing is, my first yaya was my father’s yaya, she was fourteen when she first joined my grandmother’s household, and she took care of my dad, the youngest in the brood, because my grandmother worked full time as a modista (fashion designer/dressmaker). This was a time when no one had even imagined the existence of a nanny camera. Moms knew their nanny personally, and usually she was either a younger sibling or cousin, and part of her salary would be her tuition in a nearby school. My yaya took care of me for everything, she even slept in the girls room with my sister and me. She made me breakfast, dressed me up for school, had merienda ready when I came back from school, made sure I was at the table doing my homework when my aunt arrived from work.
When I had to work full time I had to get a yaya for Maui, who was then 5 years old. I had the good fortune of finding someone who knew how to deal with kids and was quite likeable. In fact I have always considered myself lucky when it came to finding someone who would look after my kids, which is something that is apparently not shared by other moms I know who have had to find nannies. I had quite the same luck with Ate Beng, whom I have blogged about a few times, and who is practically Maia’s second mom. Nope, a nanny camera won’t be necessary for me, thank you.
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