She always walks ahead

Because she is 56 years younger than me, she moves faster, is more impatient than I am for things to happen and is always turning her head of natural curls to check if I'm following her. That's Kai/Butones/The Wee One at three years old going on four in a few more days.

She maps out our walking route for the day and doesn't fail to remind me, "Bring your camera, Booboo." She also knows when she is tired, and it's time to head home for a glass of water and a snack. Once indoors, our activities change depending on her interest from moment to moment. Which makes it hard for me to concentrate on something like composing a blog about how our morning went after a light breakfast.

It's quiet. I think another family elder, her mother in all likelihood, told her to take a nap. Now for some composition-for-the-day time.


Waiting for Booboo to catch up

"Come, follow me."

Checking if her big shadow is within sight

Pauses...

...to say "You don't have to take my pictures all the time. Hmph!"

She climbs the bench from where we like to gaze at a fishpond.

She doesn't sit down, jumps down, then...

...takes a long look at the pond to check on the koi if they're swimming near the surface.

Those are the fish we address with a song we make up by yourselves. To the tune of anything we softly sing words like: "Hello, fish in the pond, we are here with you today. It's a Sunday. We hope you like our song. Don't be scared. We just want to say hello. Did you sleep well? Do you dream of the ocean or are you happy in your pond?"

The Wee One sings softly so as not to frighten the koi away.

Then it's pasikat (show-off) time. Runs and jumps from one low rock to another.

If she runs ahead of me, it's okay so long as it's not on any road.

Our kyootie patootie is human, too. She tires and has to Take Five.

She wants to take pictures now and then. She's actually skilled already as far as framing, like this one of her Booboo, is concerned. Spoken (or written) like a proud lola should.

She can evaluate her work and declare, "Hmmm, this one has too much light!" Naks!

She chooses the particular stair where she wants her picture taken before saying that the walk is finished.


Photos by Kai Fernandez and Babeth Lolarga

'A Grace'

Daniel Boone had a hit song in the 1970s: "Beautiful Sunday." In a strange kind of way this Sunday is. Because it is full of grace that is still undefinable.


Sharing Donald Hall's poem "A Grace" from Bill Moyers's The Language of Life:

A Grace

God, I know nothing, my sense is all nonsense,
And fear of You begins intelligence:
Does it end there? For sexual love, for food,
For books and birch trees I claim gratitude,
But when I grieve over the unripe dead
My grief festers, corrupted into dread,
And I know nothing. Give us our daily bread.



In the same book, Hall tells Moyers quoting mystic Meister Eckhart, that "when we pray for something, we pray to nothing. When we pray for nothing, we pray to something. When we ask for things from God, we are doing less than nothing."


Happy Sunday, all, while I figure out the latest conundrum in my life.


Photo of Salcedo Park on a Saturday evening by SINAG DE LEON