Being a full-time granny nanny has become the greatest source of fulfillment in my life. It even beats writing, drawing and painting any day. I've suddenly become conscious of that cliche about passing on the torch to a new generation.
I have two daughters, but I was too busy with my job, whether as an employed journalist or as a freelancer, that in many ways they managed to thrive despite my benign neglect.
When, for five years, I became a full-time homemaker in Baguio, I was there to bring them to their piano or ballet lessons, fetch them afterwards, then go to a cafe with a pastry corner for a snack. I was there for the quarterly distribution of report cards and other milestones.
But I didn't deliberately pass on any skills to them the way I'm doing now with Kai Mykonos. Whatever my daughters are today, it is largely through their persistence in academic and extra-curricular work.
Kai and I like to scour Pinterest.com for kawaii drawings which we copy and transfer to our respective diaries. She has acquired my knack for lying on the bed, belly down, while scribbling or doodling on the pages of her notebooks. That is also my preferred position for writing a la Odalisque!
Because friend Joseph Uy gave her a child's fountain pen on one of his trips to Baguio she has ignored the many ballpoint pens in the pencil mug in favor of something more sophisticated. She finds that the doodles tend to run more smoothly with the aid of a pen.
But we guard against her turning into a Mini Me. Her mother sees to that so she's allowed a few cartoons and YouTube videos a day under adult supervision. She's facile with using the Viber app of the family's iPad and shooting videos of herself to send to family members in the lowland. The goofy videos--that's all Kai, not me.
So on holy innocents' day, my wish is for everyone to find both the inner and real child in them and nurture it.
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