Then I asked her if she was missing Ate Bebing, who she always referred to as her best friend. She nodded, and almost started crying, but then I told her that we were going out in a while to get Ate Bebing’s ticket so she can come back to us. That made my little girl smile. Actually I had really planned to get the ticket today, it was just a good thing it cheered Maia up as well.

So off we went to the 2GO outlet at SM Sucat, where a ticket from Iligan to Manila cost a little under P2,000 including travel insurance. Not bad, I thought, since the ticket going to Iligan cost a little over 2K. This is the longest time Ate Bebing’s been on holiday, but I am glad to report we suffered no ill effects like the other year when she went home for a couple of weeks on Christmas. No hunger strikes this time, and no stomach flu.

Maia and I must be getting older and more mature

I suppose it’s better now because Maia’s older. Being the only child in a house full of adults can’t be easy, but she’s doing rather well these days. What I’d like to find out is if Maia can do without her best friend for an extended period, say for the time it takes to go on one of those Orlando vacations (as if I could afford one), and be the well-behaved big girl her mom would like her to be.

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.

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.

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.