Now 16, Forever Sweet

Today, Alphonse turns sixteen.

It never ceases to amaze me when I look at him, now almost grown up. He stands three inches taller than me, fits into men’s clothing, and sports a slightly disheveled moustache which matches the smattering of hair in his armpits. Everywhere I look, I no longer see a trace of the baby or the child he once was. All I see is a man.

The truth is, I miss my baby. I miss the sweetness of his breath in the morning. I miss the softness of his unblemished skin. I miss being able to carry  him in the crook of my arm to sing him to sleep.

 I miss the way he fits in the side of my body when he curls up in bed with me.

I miss his chubby cheeks and his round, heavy body. I miss the hibernating porkchop and his pouty lips.

I miss his childlike smile, the one that erases all my fears away. 

But even as I miss those mementoes of his childhood, I marvel at who he has become today. Almost a man, but not quite. Loud, quirky, opinionated, determined. Headstrong and bullish. Sweet and trusting. 

It has been a long journey from then to now. There were many days of pain and heartache, and of grief and despair, but for each one of those miserable days, our lives were blessed a millionfold by what we have learned living with and loving him. Alphonse has taught us patience and tolerance, forgiveness and acceptance, gratitude and surrender. Most of all, he has taught us how to love without hope or thought of reciprocity. We love him because we do, and not because of anything he does to make us love him. It’s as simple as that.

Happy birthday, our dear sweet child, our Alphonse.  Papa, Mama, and Kuya Alex love you so much.

~0~

While on the subject of birthday celebrations, this blog also turns a year older this month. Happy 3rd birthday to Okasaneko Chronicles!

In 2007, when I started blogging, I was lucky to get even just ten people a day to read my blog. Three years later, despite the lack of promotion (I’ve never really been very big at that) and the freedom to express myself, those numbers have multiplied exponentially. In this little corner of the Internet I call Kittymama’s home, I have made many friends. I have also become part of a larger community of people I would never have met were it not for this wonderful experience. Thank you to all those who have come, visited, read, lingered, commented, returned, or even just glanced at the pages of my life. I am humbled by your kindness and love.

The Okasaneko Chronicles’ 3rd Blog Birthday Giveaway starts today so please be sure to leave a comment in this blog post to join. You can read the mechanics here for the full details on the giveaway. Many, many thanks to all those who have helped make this giveaway a reality: Sanrio Gift Gate Philippines, Ban Kee Trading, Inc., BusinessWorld/HerWord.com, Autism Society Philippines, The Fairy Godmother, and Alphie (who is none other than Alphonse, the birthday boy who wishes to share his birthday blessings with his Mama).

 

Herword is Our Word

Today, I am featuring the gift sent in by Ms. Judith S. Juntilla, my editor at HerWord.com, and Ms. Melody Bonus, the site’s webmistress, and it’s a beauty!

CH Carolina Herrera eau de toilette 1.7 fl.oz (50 ml) natural spray 

I’m not a big perfume person (I live on Philosophy’s Baby Grace and Amazing Grace, with the occasional spritz of Clinique Happy or Estee Lauder Pleasures Exotic) so I feel totally unqualified to review this. Instead, I will let the experts speak their mind to you:

The new Carolina Herrera perfume is floral, with a fresh start and an oriental finish. The composition is opened with fresh notes of bergamot, orange, grapefruit and a juicy melon. In the sweet heart there are Bulgarian rose, jasmine and praline. Cinnamon, woody notes and leather lock the composition down. (source: www.frantica.com)

Carolina Herrera CH features bergamot, orange, pomelo, melon, rose, jasmine, praline and cinnamon over woody base notes. (source: www.nstperfume.com)

I don’t know about you guys but I am just about sold on this. Were this not sealed new in cellophane, I’d be tempted to take a whiff or two and let my senses soar with the pleasure of a deeply luscious scent. Moreover, I love the aesthetics of this bottle. Deep red, in leather and metal, this bottle plays upon the imagination as well.

CH is expressed in leather, metal and intense red. A fusion between classic tradition and contemporary innovation, the fantasy and romanticism (source: www.carolinaherrera.com)

There’s a great review of this scent on the net and you can find it here. Check it out if you want to know more.

I am deeply grateful to HerWord.com for their support. As a voice of the Filipina woman, HerWord.com has advocated for the Filipina’s many roles in society. HerWord.com is also my home, where my writings have reached an audience of similar interests and passions.

If you want to win this beauty, be sure to come back for the 3rd OC Blog Birthday Giveaway! Five more days before it starts! 

Countdown to November

As November approaches, Alphonse senses something special is coming up and acts giddy and excited. It doesn’t hurt that another long break is overdue, what with the All Saints’ Day/All Souls’ Day holidays coinciding with most schools’ semestral break. Despite Alphonse’s lack of knowledge and concern about dates, he gets a lot of cues from the people around him and instinctively anticipates the coming days.

I can’t help but feel giddy as well. The OC (short for Okasaneko Chronicles, but funny how it simply dawned on me now that another form of OC is perfectly apt for me- obssessive compulsive, heehee) 3rd Blog Birthday Giveaways will be starting on November 3  and all the people I’ve asked for support has responded very favorably. Even HerWord.com, BusinessWorld’s e-zine for women, is sending a gift for giveaway! Yippee!  The mechanics will be up very soon so please watch out this week for more news on the giveaway.

To get Alphonse prepped for his birthday road trip, we started him on short trips again. His behavior looks very promising. He has been very well behaved on our short trips and save for some minor shouting (he does love his verbal stims), there have been no major problems with grabbing or running away. Two weeks ago, at the grocery store, Alphonse wanted to ride the shopping cart the way he used to when he was a small child. I can’t help but smile when I remember how he took off his size 8 shoes and tried to lift one leg to put inside the large shopping cart. He’s almost five feet five inches now so the sight of him inside one can’t be considered cute anymore. Good thing he’s very pliable these days and we were able to convince him to walk with us instead.

Yesterday was another holiday because of the local barangay elections. Taking advantage of another free day, we decided to start Alphonse’s day with a visit to Granny Flower’s ossuary (Granny Flower is A’s mom).

Then it was off to  my Mom and Dad’s house for a visit. We didn’t stay too long, though. We wanted to give him an hour or two at the mall before it was overrun with people.  We also wanted to tire him out by walking the stretch of the SM North EDSA Sky Garden’s 400-meter covered walk way.

Alphonse was met with a lot of curious stares as his dad and big brother held his hands while walking. He didn’t seem to mind the gawking; in fact, he had a ready smile for everyone he crossed paths with.

He fell in love with this overgrown pumpkin decoration and sat down and fiddled with it before we could entice him to walk again. He even laid down a few seconds on the grass right beside it.

But we made sure to keep our promise of afternoon merienda (snack). Food is always a highlight of any trip for him and he loves Ineng’s succulent pork barbecue on a stick. He had one while sitting, another one while walking back to the car, and a third one inside the car. When we got home, he ate two more! This boy can definitely eat!

It doesn’t take much to make him happy, as you can see.  We didn’t even have to spend for anything other than food. At yet, at the end of the day,  you can tell by his smiles and kisses that he absolutely loves these mini-dates. Here’s crossing our fingers he’ll love our birthday surprise for him!

To Senator Noynoy

An Open Letter to Senator Noynoy Aquino from a Mother of an Autistic Child

(Originally published in Herword.com on November 16, 2009)

Dear Senator Noynoy,

Up until you announced your candidacy, I had given up hope in the election process of 2010. While I have exercised my voting rights judiciously in every election since I turned eighteen, years of ineffective, dishonest governing have made me jaded and worn me out of any shred of hope.

And then you came along, and for the first time in many, many years, I felt I had something to look forward to. This child of the Marcos era, who slept through much of her adolescence in an apolitical and apathetic slumber, who resisted the call for the revolution in 1986 because she was too busy studying, is putting her hopes for honest change squarely on your shoulders. I pray for a change that will come in my lifetime and continue in my children’s and their children’s lifetimes.

Your popularity does not surprise me. I share the sentiments of many people who have felt indignant yet helpless at the shameless and callous displays of behavior of our present government. But while your popularity may help you in the course of the campaign, it has also opened you to vicious attacks from your opponents.

Your critics claim that you are autistic, and as any neurotypical person is wont to react, you have vehemently denied it, calling it “malicious and baseless.”

Allow me to say outright that I do not believe you have autism. I may not be a diagnostician, but having lived with autism every single day for the last fifteen years of my life, I  know what autism is firsthand. I have witnessed it up close, lived with all its blessings, and survived almost all its challenges. What I know of it, I know not only from books, from the Net, or from research and published papers. What I know of it comes from real life. As an advocate for autism, I am proud to be part of the large community of families of Filipinos with autism, which at last count, numbers close to half a million affected individuals. That being said, let me posit a question: If you were one, what is absolutely wrong with it?

Autism is a spectrum of conditions ranging from the mildly affected to the most severely impaired. Common to this spectrum, however, are varying degrees of deficits in social relatedness, behavior, and communication. My son Alphonse, at 15, remains on the far end of the bell curve of “normal.” He is nonverbal, continues to require assistance for many of the activities of daily living, and has the cognitive understanding of a five-year-old child. You, on the other hand, are well-educated, highly conversant and intelligent; your cognitive abilities are certainly not in question. While these two pictures comprise the polar ends of the extent and breadth of a highly complicated spectrum (again, I reiterate, we are simply assuming for the sake of argument that you belong to this spectrum), they are not totally incompatible. (To wit, there are individuals with different degrees of autism already enrolled in some of our country’s best universities.)

Autism is difficult and challenging, and to those of us who love persons with autism, it is a rollercoaster ride every single day. Is it a disability? It is, but it also is not; it depends on how you look at it. And yet, when you really think about it, ravenous greed is a much harder disorder to treat, as are immorality, shamelessness, corruption, and vice. I have heard of recovery in autism, but diseases of the soul are almost always incurable.

If being autistic means not being able to lie, then by all means, I should be proud to say I am autistic.

If being autistic means not being able to cheat and rig elections, then call me autistic.

It being autistic means not being able to steal, to use public funds for personal gain while the country wallows in poverty, then I am staunchly autistic.

If being autistic means satisfaction with what one has, if it means a characteristic lack of greed and materialism, then I count myself autistic.

If it means not being envious and not judging people based on looks, money, connections, or pogi points, then, yes, I am autistic.

So the next time someone calls you autistic and you feel slighted, perhaps you may wish to reply to them this way instead: “Thank you for calling me autistic. To me, autism does not make one more or less of a person. It does not make one more or less of a man. It just makes one autistic. I am sorry to disappoint you that I am not, but I hope to be able to live up to the honesty people with autism expect every day. I would much rather be autistic than be corrupt. Better autistic than be unable to understand what it means to be a public servant. Thank you very much.”

The day you do, you have championed the cause of the least able of our people. And for what it’s worth, you still have my vote.

Sincerely yours,
Pinky Ong-Cuaycong

Autism And The Movies: We Made History

Originally published in Herword.com on October 1, 2009

We woke up unusually early that day, excited and buoyant. Even Alphonse, who wakes up late most days, didn’t complain when we woke him up. “It’s your day, anak,” I whispered gently to this sleeping baby, all five feet and four inches of him. He stirred a little, blinked a few times, then jumped immediately upright like a coiled spring. Hand in hand, Alphonse and I danced happily, albeit gingerly, while I sang “I’ve got a feeling that today’s gonna be a good  day…” (to the tune of Black Eyed Peas’ “I’ve Got A Feeling”).

It was. On a cloudy, overcast Friday, a day before Typhoon Ondoy ravaged the city and made history, we made a different kind of history.

They say all big trees come from little seeds and in this instance, it started with a mother’s wish. In April of this year, a mother wrote “Autism and The Movies” for Herword.com; she cross posted this piece in her blog. In it, she voiced her dream of being able to see a movie with her son with autism even just once. She vowed to write letters to Autism Society Philippines and to cinemas around the city, but even before the first letters came out of her pen, she received a hopeful email from ASP’s President, Ms. Dang Koe. Ms. Koe wrote, “As you can see, our ASaP (ASP’s newsletter) Chief  Tiff (Tiffany Tan) follows your blog…How can we work on this? I’m a movie lover too, and would love Gio to watch with us.”

I am that mother.

ASP Pres Dang Koe with the valiant men of SM's Committee for Disability Affairs

But where I was thinking of a smaller test audience, Ms. Koe and  her colleagues at the ASP were already looking at the bigger picture. Within days, they had started corresponding with SM’s AVP for Operations and Chair of SM’s Committee for Disability Affairs, Engr. Bien Mateo. In a matter of months, they had worked out a plan for the first ever sensory-friendly cinema screening in the Philippines (or in Asia for that matter) for children with autism and other disabilities.

Alphonse at the movies

Sensory-friendly screenings are designed to minimize averse sensory experiences and maximize enjoyment. Low lights are left on during the show,  sound volume is reduced, and film previews are left out. Children can move around and make noise, allowing them the freedom to enjoy the movies without social limitations to hamper their experience. Truly, the autism-friendly cinema or sensory-friendly movie is an innovative approach to autism and the movie experience, and yet, it has only been in existence for a very short time.

In 2007, Ms. Marianne Ross and her seven-year-old daughter with autism were asked to leave a movie theater when Meaghan started flapping her hands and jumping up and down. Ms. Ross turned this negative experience around by jumpstarting a program that aimed to provide a safe entertainment haven for children like her daughter. The first SF movie was a success in November of 2007 and, with support from Autism Society of America and AMC Entertainment, owner of AMC Cinemas chain, the program finally went national in April of this year.

Across the globe, the UK’s National Autistic Society and Picturehouse Cinemas partnered in January 2009 to start their own autism-friendly film screenings. At any one time in England, 16 movie theaters across the country host these screenings once a month. They have gotten so organized that they already have a dedicated page in the NAS website solely for screening schedules.      

When Cinema 3 of SM North EDSA’s The Block opened its doors to its patrons on Friday morning, the lines were long. Two hundred students from different schools and institutions (Bridges, ALRES, Cradles of Learners, Immaculate Concepcion SPED, New Hope, Wise Light, Stimulation and Therapeutic Activity Center), all accompanied by their teachers, parents, or caregivers filled the cinema lobby. Alphonse and I were also  invited. Our very first movie felt like a real date.

As expected, our children screamed and cried, and yet, they also laughed. Some walked around and roamed the aisles, yet many more stayed in their seats. Alphonse hooted many times, jumped up and down on his seat, stood up twice to walk around and use the restroom, and flapped his arms more times than Up’s colorful but flightless bird, Kevin. Still, he sat through almost the entire movie and behaved like a seasoned moviegoer, munching on a bucket of popcorn. He gave up only around 15 minutes before the end when the sound of barking dogs unnerved him. Not bad for his very first cinema experience.

Alphonse watching his very first movie, "Up"

I spent more time watching Alphonse than I did the movie, gazing at his face as it expressed emotions, watching his eyes light up in excitement. In truth, I had tears in my eyes the entire time. Holding my son’s hands in the semi-darkness of the movie theater, I felt my heart almost burst with happiness many times.

I think Alphonse and I are definitely luckier than Ms. Ross. I didn’t even have to wait for support from Autism Society Philippines and SM’s Commitee for Disability Affairs. They took it upon themselves to make this possible for my son and for many children like him who have not had the privilege of enjoying a simple movie even once. They made this dream come true, and in the process, made autism history come alive for us. It is this kind of commitment, compassion, and kinship that make their joint endeavors truly worth supporting.

Come and be a part of more history in the making with Autism Society Philippines’ 11^th National Conference on Autism on October 24-25, 2009 at the SMX Convention Center, SM Mall of Asia.

Playing With My Past

This was originally published in HerWord.com on July 31, 2009, following my blog piece My Hello Kitty Build-A-Bear World. I had wanted to cross-post this as soon as it came out, but weighed against national events, this seemed inappropriate at the time. I am sharing this now with you, dear friends.

I grew up faster than most of my peers. At a time when we were supposed to be perfecting the art of imaginary play with dress-up or dolls, I had already said goodbye to my toys. At 11, I felt too much like an adult in mind, body, and spirit to enjoy anything beyond reading. As the oldest girl in a brood of five, I stood as Big Sister to everyone, even to my older brother, and I willingly took on responsibilities in our household, never mind that we were a spoiled lot and we each had our own nanny to answer our every beck and call. I was big for my age, and my mind, even bigger. And so, I left my toys behind, as I did my preempted childhood.

I can only remember her now through pictures from the Internet.

Years later, I would think about it and remember how I boxed up my dolls for the very last time. My favorite doll was a “My Friend Mandy” from Fisher-Price. I slept with her every night, bathed and dressed her, and played with her every single minute of the day. The last time I saw her, I gave her a farewell kiss and packed her in a storage box with her things. I didn’t realize until years later that the day I packed away my toys, I had thrown away a very important part of my childhood. I miss being a child now.

This sudden shift from child to young person came at a point in my life when I felt lost. I had just moved to a different school and the adjustment was very difficult. I made few friends in that period of my life and, for the most part, I was a very lonely child. I couldn’t play. I ate too much. For close to three years, I thought about dying constantly. I dreamt of different ways to end my life. Yet the thought of leaving my family crying always deterred me from acting out on my impulses. The only way I could cope, without killing myself, was to fashion a new personality—a stronger, more capable person from who I was then.

Having decided upon that, I grew up that day. I stopped playing, stopped being a child, and stopped hurting. Even when I found new happiness a few years later, it felt too late to ever go back to that time in my life when all I wanted was to be my doll’s keeper. And then, with more serious studying required in high school and university and medical school, there simply was no time to recover the lost years. I simply kept moving forward. Later, I got married, had a family, and dedicated my years to raising my children.

One day, however, I realized just how much I missed. That was the day my husband gifted me with a Hello Kitty Dress-Me doll. My husband is always like that; he indulges my caprices and whims, he buys me all sorts of unexpected gifts. The doll was supposed to be just another addition to my growing collection, but to me, it meant so much more. I took the doll to bed with me that night, my husband amused at my childlike giddiness, and I dreamt I was 11 again, holding on to my favorite doll.

I woke up the next morning with a sense of rediscovery and wonder. I felt young and carefree. I carried my doll everywhere in the following weeks, oblivious to the stares and, sometimes, the whispers. Then my husband, ever my enabler, bought me a nicer, bigger Hello Kitty Build-A-Bear doll weeks later, with matching clothes and accessories. I was head over heels in love with my new toys. Now, I have six of them, all dress-up dolls that I pretend are my babies.

I know I cannot hope to find “My Friend Mandy” anymore. The last time I ever saw her, she was in a big brown box in a storage cabinet near the laundry area in the old house where I grew up more than thirty years ago. Between moving houses and normal aging and deterioration, it is unlikely she made it all this time. Most probably, she had been given away to charity. I like to imagine some little girl still playing with her after all this time.

I suppose that is why I love my dolls, my Build-A-Bear dolls (I have three, all Hello Kitty) most of all. They remind me of Mandy, and how I can dress them up like her and play make-believe, and pretend that loneliness never came into my life. Now that my children are almost fully grown and I am in my middle years, I have found new freedom to reclaim a lost childhood. And this is what my dolls give me beyond fun and pleasure—a sense of completion for having remade a past I once could not escape.

My President Too

Originally published in Herword.com, August 4, 2009

She didn’t start out as my president.

Perhaps I was an exception, but I was the politically ignorant child of Pisay (Philippine Science High School) of the eighties, proficient in maths and sciences but absolutely lacking in savvy in the real world around me. Head burrowed in books, living a comfortably middleclass existence, I was raised to believe that status quo was the way to go. I was blind and I didn’t even know it.

And then my husband came along. My husband, student council president, was the firebrand in our batch. When the school authorities suspended some of our batch mates for a melee inside school grounds (whereas the opposing team from another school who was also involved in the brawl received much lighter sentences), he rallied all of us to the cause. We stayed out of classes for a sit-down strike. We marched around school carrying banners with slogans calling for justice and equal treatment. This was but a preview of what he would be when we grew up—fiercely idealistic and morally uncompromising.

A (right foreground) with President Aquino in "Magtanong Sa Pangulo"

If my husband was politically mature for our age, I was the exact opposite. We were just 18 when EDSA called to us in an unlikely revolution, and while he heeded the call of his beliefs, rushing to the streets with the rest of them and risking his life for a cause, I stayed home and studied, waiting for announcements of when school would resume. And so, when Cory Aquino was swept into power in this historic, bloodless clamor for change, he always knew she was his president.

In 1989, straight out of college, he found work as a reporter for a business paper, the same paper he still works for today. As a rookie scribe, his assignments brought him to witness the inner workings of Congress and, shortly after, Malacañang, This was his last and most important coverage as a reporter, entering the Palace grounds on the second half of Mrs. Aquino’s term as president. (When Mrs. Aquino’s term ended, he was promoted to sub-editor/section editor.)

A (second to the left) in Malacañang Press Corps Officers oathtaking

I was in medical school at that time. Occasionally, he would bring me to the press office in Kalayaan Hall where I met his friends and colleagues in the Malacañang Brat Pack. The night a major storm paralyzed most of the city with waist-deep floods in 1991, he and I sought shelter in Kalayaan Hall, where Mrs. Aquino sent all of us “storm refugees” pandesal and sardines to tide us over for the night. He brought me with him when the press corps was invited to Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac, acting as his photographer and alalay (assistant) in one. I was thrilled, of course, to meet the President in person and in less formal circumstances. She was a gracious host, sincere and warmhearted. Contrary to expectations of what public officials would be, she was interested in people and made an effort to find out who we were, even with the short time given to all of us. When she found out I was studying to be a doctor, she gave me a soft pat on the back. It wasn’t difficult at all to respect and like her.

An old point-and-shoot film camera, a microcasette recorder, pen and paper-these were the tools of his trade then.

My husband loved being a journalist, even at a time when laptops were still not widely used and he had to send stories meticulously written in longhand. (His record number of stories in one day: 15!) And if he loved what he did, it was because he had such a deep respect for the subject he covered. Mrs. Aquino was his president, the one he stood for and with on the streets of EDSA, the one he bet his life on amid the tanks and soldiers of the powers-that-be, and, for better or worse, he stood firm in his beliefs that she was an extraordinary individual in an extraordinary time. And, indeed, she was.

At a period in history when honesty and virtue were in great demand in government, she supplied it with a life lived by example. For one who had already lost so much, for one who had been violently stripped of any semblance of normalcy and peace in life, and for one who had been thrust in the eye of the storm, she was an amazingly brave and selfless person. Years after she left the presidency, she lived a life of quiet dignity, albeit always cognizant of her role as social conscience to her people.

On Wednesday, August 5, 2009, we bury Corazon Aquino, wife, mother, president. To her people, however, she will always be more than the positions she once held. She was valor, integrity, and virtue personified. I weep with my husband as we mourn her passing. She was my president, too.

Baby Blues

I was digging in my plate of tempura and maki when I felt little hands touching my back. I turned around very slowly. Behind me, a little girl, probably around two years of age, poked the hello kitty figures in my shirt, mumbling “one, choo, chee, one, choo, chee.” She counted as she touched them, oblivious to the fact that she knew how to count only to three. I didn’t want to let on that I noticed her until she poked a little too hard and I laughed out loud. I couldn’t help it; it tickled. I heard her scurry away.

My husband, a plate of sashimi from the buffet in his hand, noticed that the amused look on my face. “What are you smiling at?” he asked.

“Oh, honey, you didn’t see the little girl playing with my shirt,” I laughed as I scanned the room to look for her.

“That little girl?” He pointed discreetly to a pigtailed girl in a pink Dora the Explorer outfit, perched on a high chair, chewing loudly on tempura.

“Yes, that one. She is so cute!”

“Uh-huh,” my husband conceded. I could sense he was losing interest quickly, so I decided to surprise him with the following question.

“How would you like to have a little girl of our own?”

My husband stared at me uncomfortably, shocked at the sudden turn in our conversation.

“Where’d this come from, honey?” Of course, he wanted to know.

I suppose I’ve been thinking of it for a time now. It must be why “Jon and Kate Plus 8″ (even with all their new troubles) is a prominent feature in my daily viewing fare. Or why I get caught up in the ongoing media frenzy on Nadya Suleman, mom of 14 children, all of them conceived by in vitro fertilization, eight of them octuplets. Or even why the recent news of Elizabeth Adeney, the 66-year-old woman who is dubbed “Britain’s Oldest Mother,” fascinates me. What they all make me painfully aware is that I am not getting any younger. Midlife has set squarely upon my shoulders and the faint tick-tocking of my reproductive clock reminds me that I have only a few more childbearing years left.

I’ve mulled over this issue seriously, and, in truth, I have not yet reconciled myself to the idea that I have only two children. I come from a large family of five kids and I have always wanted my children to be part of the same. And so, for many years, my husband and I tried to have another baby. Four miscarriages after Alphonse (the last one endangering my life), after all sorts of medical tests to determine that neither my husband nor I were incapable of having another child, and even after a short-lived attempt at fertility treatments to increase our chances of pregnancy, he and I arrived at the conclusion that it was simply not going to be as easy as having children in our twenties.

My last pregnancy ended in a devastating miscarriage, and had our child lived, he or she would have been seven today. As it turns out, I am now the mother of two teenage boys and no longer a young mom of little kids. But, ah, I miss having a small one in the house. I miss baby smells and soft, smooth skins, and even a baby’s smallness as he cuddles close to my body. I have a bad case of baby lust, I know, perhaps made worse by my pre-menopausal hormones going awry.

Over the last few weeks, however, I’ve been given a test of resolve and commitment. With the entry of two young boys in our lives (see previous post), a five-year-old and a two-year-old, I’ve had a preview of how my life would be as an older mother with two small children. Here in my home as temporary guests, they call me Mama P.

This past month has been an eye-opener, I must admit. So used to having only Alphonse as my sole concern, I now oversee their welfare as well. Are they fed? Are they bathed? Is someone watching them? Why is the older one left in front of the television all day? The two-year-old is particularly difficult to care for, as he remains wary of us and cries constantly for his mother. Alphonse, ever the tyrant and determined to impose his own rules, wants his old nanny back and grabs her by the hand, even as her little one wails for his mother.

I like that the five-year-old now kisses me and greets me in the morning. I like that I see them smile when good food is set before them. I like that they’ve lost their gaunt looks, and grime and dirt have been washed off their cute faces. I even like it when they ask me for chocolate milk and eat all the bread in the house (well, okay, okay, I don’t like this last part so much). But while their laughter fills my heart with joy, their cries, shouts, squeals, their constant demand for attention, their bickering and squabbling have cured me of any notions of wanting a bigger family. Add to this the extreme jealousy Alphonse feels whenever we give these boys any attention, and I am absolutely done with any fantasies or illusions that I can deal with another child. My body may still be able to do it, that I am positively sure, but my emotions and my state of mind tell me that I am simply too old, or too sane, for it.

Tonight, as I readied myself to turn in bed, Alphonse tugged at my night shirt to sing him a lullaby. This is a constant ritual. Every night, wrapped in his dad’s and my arms, my husband and I take turns singing him lullabies. As I sing softly, I am reminded of how much this child needs so much from both of us. True, love is never ever divided, but time, money, and attention often are in big families. Or in families with special-needs children. Perhaps the time to have another child has passed, I thought soberly, as I patted Alphonse gently to sleep.

Alphonse sighed as he fell into deep sleep. I kissed him on the cheek and whispered a prayer of thanks. I have two children, and that should be enough for me. After all, if it’s a baby I want, I have this one for all time.

Originally published in Herword.com

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Update:  The little kids have moved out of my home, their parents wanting to be near their own relatives. My home is now silent most days.

Tough Summer

It’s getting easier and easier to pass by the computer without being seized by the urge to sit down in front of it and surf the net or blog. What started out as a Lenten exercise of self-restraint and sacrifice has become a real reflection of my constant lack of time here at home. Between my son Alphonse (with his escalating needs) and the housework, the only time I can find some respite is when he lies down at night to sleep. But I’m not giving up yet. It isn’t over till the fat lady sings. In this case, I am the fat lady, and I am definitely not singing “Adieu” just yet.

This has been one tough summer, and I don’t think it’s over yet. Contrary to common expectation, summers in our household are usually periods of stress and sieges. Summers are when nannies leave, either permanently or for brief vacations. Summers are when I have an extra child in the house, which necessarily translates to time divided and an increase in demand for food. (Most days, I feel like a short order cook.) While Big Brother Alex can be a lot of help, particularly with babysitting, somehow, his presence in the home makes Alphonse refuse to work or study. I think Alphonse has learned to associate his brother’s presence with weekends and free time. As a result, he resists our schedules, and what used to be seamless transitions for his activities have become constant battles for control.

Then, too, to make things just a little more complicated, with the departure of his regular nanny for a vacation, we welcomed his old nanny back into our home – with two sons in tow. While we felt that this would not be the wisest choice to make, given than Alphonse hates sudden changes, we could not ignore her pleas for help. The children were starving in their hometown, and their mother, once Alphonse’s beloved nanny of four years, begged for help, even if only temporarily. The sudden introduction of children crying loudly late into the night, of little boys poaching on Alphonse’s turf and playing with his toys, and of the rambunctious pitter patter of little feet (in early morning!) have disturbed our home’s equilibrium. The first few weeks after they arrived, I had a headache almost every day, so unused were we with having to share space with little children again. Alphonse’s sleep cycles were disturbed by the new sounds in our home, and this has made him more irritable and more prone to fits of anger. We cover our hair with bandannas all day to prevent the recurrence of hair pulling, and wear loose shirts after Alphonse ripped my good nightgowns in anger. These have been difficult days, we all know.

Yet for all the difficulties we encounter, I still see goodness in these trying days. Despite the children’s wariness to their new surroundings and circumstances, they both adore Alphonse. They imitate what he does, from jumping on the trampoline, to chewing on ice (one of Alphonse’s quirks), to playing with bubbles. The older child, a five-year-old boy, declared that he will jump every day so he will grow to be as beautiful as Alphonse. The two-year-old, a very tiny squirt of a child and still more of an infant than a toddler, already acts like a big brother to Alphonse, calling out to him kindly and constantly, “Kuya Alphonse, bubbles kita?” (Big Brother Alphonse, shall I blow bubbles for you?”) In the last week, Alphonse has passed them by without so much as a glance as the kids shouted in unison, “Hi, Kuya Alphonse!” Today, he actually looked at them for a while before moving on.

This is all temporary, I know. In a few months, we will have to reevaluate our domestic set-up and try to find other ways to help Alphonse and these children. Right now, our household budget is strained to the limit, and I feel the stress of having to be more creative and more resourceful in order to make everything work for this larger household. And so, between the added responsibilities these changes have brought upon us and the balancing acts as peacemaker and negotiator I perform for all the members of my family, I find little time to speak my mind in the pages of my own blog or in this forum. Today is a rarity, one that has allowed me time to breathe and recharge before I take up my role as mother to all again. But I yet hold hope that this tough summer will pass. I just have to remember to take it slowly, one day at a time.

 From Herword.com, May 14, 2009

Autism And The Movies

Every afternoon, at around one, Alphonse knocks on the back door and asks to be let in the house. He knocks politely and says “he” rather loudly (“he” is his word for help). When the door is opened, he runs to the upstairs bedroom and hands me a picture card of our television. Then he gets the DVD remote control and fiddles with the buttons before he hands it over to me. This is his way of saying “Please, I want to watch a movie.”

Alphonse has always loved movies, and were it up to him, he would watch the same movie over and over again without ever tiring of it. These days, however, we keep his movies in rotation – one picture a day, we tell him, so he does not fixate on one particular film for long (unlike the time when we didn’t know better and let him watch “The Lion King” daily for a whole year!).

This is a change to his routine, and we are all pleasantly surprised. In colder months, he would spend his class breaks outdoors with more physical activities or just brief naps in his old sofa in the backyard. These days, however, perhaps because of the oppressive midday heat, he is forced to retreat into the shade for a time, and what better way to enjoy this time than with a movie?

His choices in movies are rather predictable, even after all these years. He still loves cartoon musicals best, but non-musicals, whether cartoons or not, are boring to him. We’ve tried to expand his repertoire of favorites by introducing new animated features and more age-appropriate movies, without success. Often, he would just simply leave the room and never come back. Sometimes, though, he would surprise us suddenly, like the time he watched “The Transformers” with us. I think we ended up watching him more than the movie as he hardly ever took his eyes off the television screen. For a moment there, we felt like a completely normal family with teenagers.

This love for movies, however, has never been translated into the outside world. Alphonse has never watched a movie in a real cinema. Once, when he was a lot younger, we tried to bring him to a screening of Mulan, a full-length Disney movie we thought he’d like, but the darkened theater and the deafening sounds were simply too much for his senses, and they completely unnerved him. As soon as the lights were turned down low and the trailers started, he shrieked and cried so loudly that we hurriedly ran for the nearest exit to prevent a full-scale meltdown. He was almost four then. We’ve never tried it again since then.

One can see, even at home, that the same things that bothered him when he was four still bother him today. When we attempt to turn down the lights in the bedroom to evoke a more cinematic ambience, he rushes to the light switches and turns on all the lights in one go. When the sounds are turned up a little too loudly, he is the first to leave the room. Some things change, true, but others remain the same. Movie-watching, apparently, is one of them.

The television is often a source of comfort for many individuals with autism. Not only is it accessible and readily available, but given the individual with autism’s often rigid schedules, this frequently provides the repetitive stimuli they crave for. Movies in cinemas, however, are another matter altogether. Movie theaters are often inaccessible to individuals with autism because these provide too much sensory input (via sound and light) that can overwhelm the person’s senses.

Moreover, because movie-going is almost always a social experience, individuals with autism find it hard to work within the rules of social movie watching. Noises are normally discouraged in theaters, as are frequently standing up, moving around, and making unnecessary body movements. As such, individuals with autism often feel unwelcome in this environment and would avoid it altogether.

Like so many other families with autism in their lives, we’ve long given up on the idea of watching a movie as a family. We’ve learned to sublimate this desire, even if once in a while, you still can hear Big Brother Alex sigh whimsically and say “I wish Alphonse were here with us” on the occasions we bring him to the movies. And yet, unknown to us, this dream is slowly taking shape in other people’s lives, in another part of the world.

I was amazed to learn that autism-friendly screenings in cinemas have been initiated in the United Kingdom, and this is giving me food for thought. Picturehouse Cinemas, a large chain of movie houses in England, has dedicated autism-friendly screenings since January 25 of this year. During these scheduled events, low lights are left on inside the theater, and the volume of the soundtrack is reduced to diminish anxiety and sensory problems. No one makes a fuss when moviegoers move around or make noise; these are all perfectly acceptable. The screenings happen only once a month (schedules are announced beforehand), but for many parents, this is a godsend.

I was thinking, how many Filipino parents with children with autism feel relieved that this is even a possibility? If parents of individuals with autism, aided by our own Autism Society, can petition for even a single autism-friendly run of a movie, I know for sure that my entire family would be first in line. I haven’t the vaguest idea how this will go. Knowing my son, I am sure there’ll be a couple of snorts, some flapping, a lot of screeching, and even generous fits of body hopping, but I would love for him (and for all of us) to have this experience. And if it doesn’t work out, maybe, we could try again another time.

With this thought in mind, I am preparing letters for Autism Society Philippines and for major cinema chains in my city. I am crossing my fingers. I am positively hopeful. Maybe we can even show the world that when it comes to compassion, there is no short supply in this part of the world.

(Column for Herword.com, April 7, 2009)