Guess who's always in the moment?

The ailing teacher Thich Nhat Hanh (get well soon, please) wrote once, "Life can only be found in the present moment."

This morning my youngest sibling felt unwell. It turned out that her BP was at an all-time high of 170/100. I couldn't resist having my own blood pressure monitored since the automatic reader was out already. Mine read 130/80. Pang-dalaga! Throughout all this, curious curly-haired Kai observed with eyes growing wider.

To make her not worry while we fussed over our signs of mortality, sis and I alternated in asking her, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

Booboo: "Do you wanna be a doctor?"

Kai: "No."

Mamita Gigi: "A nurse?"

Kai: "No."

Booboo: "A teacher like Granny Su?"

Kai: "No."

Mamita Gigi: "But you have to be doing something when you're grown up."

Booboo: "How about street sweeper? You go places."

Kai: "No."

Finally, Mamita Gigi and I said, almost as one, "So what do you wanna be?"

Kai: "A person!"

Booboo: "What are you gonna do as a person?"

Kai: "I'll play with blocks."

She smiled at us and walked away.

Mamita and Booboo looked at each other wordlessly. But our look must have read, "She got us there. And once again she's right."

Selfie shoe-fie by Kai Fernandez

The doctor is in the house

Our version of Doc McStuffins arrived yesterday. I realized how tall she has grown when I learned she could reach up and press the doorbell. When she hugged me, I felt I was hugging a big child from her strong squeeze as she hugged me back. But she still loves to play pretend. Her Granny Su (my sister Suzy) brought out the stuffed toys and that kept The Wee One busy for awhile.

She didn't bring her toy medical kit in her luggage from Baguio. So the real doctor in the house, her Lolo Doc Dennis, lent his stethoscope, Granny Su her magnifying glass and mini flashlight, and off she flew with her imagination. She looked at Suzy's hand and diagnosed, "You have a splinter!" You can imagine how proud her Booboo was at her growing vocabulary. Photos by Booboo Babeth

The end of the world as I experienced it

Once again, the doom's-day prophets amongst us have been proven false, the nay-sayers who, for once turned a negative prediction into something positive, like eating and drinking themselves merry while the world collapses, were also proven wrong.

What's certain is that a new year will unfold in a few days, barring further super-typhoons like Pablo, earthquakes, rebellions and revolutions, the massacre of the innocents here or in other parts of the world. "Turning a new leaf," "opening another window as God closes a door"--cliches though these may be, they acquire a personal poignancy for me.

God's mercy be upon all of us, especially the children, the sick, the lonely and the old, in this season of grace.

On a lighter note, this blogger decided that if God so willed the world's end yesterday, and He/She apparently moved the deadline, I could go about doing my Friday chores that included, among many, changing my grand-child Kai's cloth diaper filled with pee from the previous night while Mamay Kimi slept after doing overtime work from the house till 5 a.m. 

More workaday chores were done like trimming manuscripts down to its 800-word limit to earn some wherewithal for the New Year, composing a poem for this blog, meals in between, brief sing-alongs with the toddler and my sister Suzy (Kai's Granny Su), doing a bank transaction (one look at my new 'do with its touches of natural white and gray and the security guard allowed me to sit at a BDO branch where the staff attended to me as though I were already 60 and on remission from some form of CA), answering SMS from high school batch '73 of St. Paul College (now University) of Quezon City on preparations for our Ruby Jubilee (I like the rhyme in that phrase), buying rolls of toilet paper and a tube of toothpaste, scrap-booking, packing luggage for a Baguio Christmas, then heading off for the terminal to catch the 11 p.m. trip to the North.

One day started, one day ended without a hitch. A hitch would have been if I lost my temper over misplacing my eyeglasses or I'm pissed off with a bank teller who took his/her time processing my payment for a bus ticket, that sort. But none of that happened. After all, time for me is not just golden but a diamond, and life is shirt (deliberately misspelled word there).

There is much to be grateful for, chief of which is a beautiful life.

Photos found in the World Wide Web