The kids are all right and so are the adults

Now whenever I look at clouds, I associate them with Joni Mitchell strumming her guitar, long hair flowing. "Both Sides Now," yep. But even the character Tom Hanks played in You've Got Mail found the lyrics a trifle dense.

Of Joni's many songs (yes, I'm on first name basis with her as with Emily Dickinson, Mary Oliver, pianist Maria João Pires and all these women and men who have spoken to my soul and cut me to the quick), "Amelia," "Help Me," "Blue Motel Room," "Circle Game" and, yes, "Hejira" throw me back decades of Thursdays to my youth. So news of her being taken ill and the unclear pronouncements about her recovery have kept her in my mind, even as I go through my day alone or with people.

Yesterday the kids (Kimi's Kai and Sinag's Dakila) played for much of the morning, their mothers and one grandmother trailing behind them. Sinag is godmother to Kai.

Oh Joni, you always know what to say.

Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
And tearful at the falling of a star

Then the child moved ten times round the seasons
Skated over ten clear frozen streams
Words like when you're older must appease him
And promises of someday make his dreams

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

Dakila and The Wee One hit it off very well, indeed, after a night's sleep.

With their respective mothers, Sinag and Kimi

Oh yeah, swings have an eternal appeal to any kid. Photos by Booboo Babeth

Thank you, Dino Bob

Any day is a superbly super day for learning.    Image from Google +

Kai holds up a birthday book on grace from Lola Lorna Tirol    Photo by Booboo Babeth

Call it a granny's cop-out when she has run out of activities to keep a toddler occupied to help develop her gross and fine motor skills. But there's nothing like the invitation "Let's read a book!" to entice Kai/Butones to slow down a bit, then get cozy with her Booboo as she piles up the pillows for both of them.

Two weeks ago, this Booboo discovered Kai could already spell out the letters of book titles. She usually selects her book/s of the moment, and it was Dinosaur Bob and His Adventures with the Family Lazardo by William Joyce that special day. I've read this aloud to her more than 10 times.

Suddenly, she pointed to one letter at a time and sounded out clearly the letters "B", "O" and "B". Mightily, I tried to be cool about it and move on to the story of the Lazardos who traveled all over the world in the company of a brontosaurus. 

Later, Kai zeroed in on the names of cable television channels like "F", "O", "X" (reminded me of a scene in the movie You've Got Mail where the kid playing Tom Hanks' step-sibling spells out "fox" for Meg Ryan's benefit) and "T", "L", "C", my favorite lifestyle channel (it's got a lot of food and travel shows). 

Later, it was the title of a bedtime book, Happy Birthday, Moon. The thing with the letter "Y" is Kai confuses it with "Z" so she calls it "zebra."

Last week when she was hospitalized for a gastro-intestinal bug, she read out from her sickbed the words on my sweatshirt, an entire phrase: "Grand Canyon National Park"! I had to text family members in Baguio and Pasig to share the priceless bit of news

As for writing, she still hasn't graduated from lines and semi-circles.

But I'm mighty proud I have somehow, day by day by day, set Kai on the course of reading and writing readiness. I feel grateful to Mesozoic, heroic Bob, the biggest you've ever seen, for making this minor miracle possible.

Missing Nora

"Her death feels like a kind of robbery, not of things you have, but of gifts you were expecting. She was 71, but surely there would be another collection of essays, two or three more movies to watch repeatedly, as comforting as a bowl of the mashed potatoes and cold slices of butter she loved? If she were preparing to die, wouldn’t this most graceful sharer tell us about it, in some strangely comforting way?"--Mary Pols, "Nora Ephron: Remembering Everything", http://entertainment.time.com/2012/06/27/nora-ephron-remembering-everything/?xid=newsletter-daily#ixzz1z2UXbmvC

 

the best & most practical piece of advice

i took away from an essay of hers

is to always do backup

 

maybe she had lost valuable files

that reconstructing them was a

a palpable pain around her neck

 

she also wrote how the worrying

over one's children never ever stops

no matter that they are adults already

 

except now i've learned

to leave my daughters' destinies

in the hands of the Almighty Mother

 

i still perk up like meg ryan in a girlish way

at the opening of  un-anticipated email

& agree with mr. hanks that

"you've got mail"

is among the most powerful

lines in this language

 

so i hardly throw away mail

until gmail's robot administrator

warned one day that i had used up

almost 98 percent of my allotted megabytes

 

those who know her will miss

nora's overbite

although HBO reruns will ensure

her lines will lace

romance ever so lightly on

any month aside from june

 

--Babeth Lolarga

June 29, 2012

9:28 a.m.

Photo of Ms. Ephron  from http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/jun/27/nora-ephron-how-miss-her