Unang Yakap

Our first grand-daughter Kai Mykonos, alias Button to me, Butones to my brother Junic in Calgary, Canada, plain Kai to everybody else, is blessed with so many angels watching over her as soon as she was born a week ago tomorrow, April 11. She had a prolonged stay at the hospital nursery as her fragile body fought an infection despite an Apgar score of 10 at birth.

Well, Button is a fighter like all the girls and women in our family. She has tasted the "milk of human kindness," as Shakespeare put it, with donations of milk from friends who're nursing mothers themselves (Sari Dalena and Marga L. Susi). Another friend predicted that Button will grow into a kind, gentle woman because she has known what it is like to taste of the willingly given milk of other women. Indeed, that can only be the wish of Button's mother Kimi and her lola, grand-aunts, great grand-aunts, cousins and titas.

And on Friday night this week, the tense, nearly sleepless-from-worry lola, alias booboo/labeth and other funny shibboleths suggested by friends, first held her Button with a sigh of gratitude to a universe that constantly assures the sometimes weak-kneed and the wavering that all worries will pass, that all things will fall into place and that all will be well

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