Look up, look back!

By Jing Villamil

 

HE looked up from his stay-home work. He rubbed his eyes. He gazed out far to the greens. And his sight flipped back to the past. For, where does one go when the present is pandemic, the future pandemonium? In these times of uncertainties, there is one he is truly certain of: he is partly what he is because he spent hilarious years with a most enchanting person!

He grew up with a babysitter crowned with “prolific” hair, tied high up in a tidy ponytail. The entire bunch would end up “sabog” (disarrayed) soon enough. For, instead of walking, she ran. Up and down stairs, in house and out. She danced and whirled him around. She was in constant motion! She and her hair would be a delightful lead character in a book he intended to publish if he survives this virulific threat. And he would like to title it: “Glorific!”  Not to glorify the other famous Glorias but the unknown Gloria Jesusa Mabanta, his yaya. Of course!

She would have been pretty but for the abundance of brown freckles on her cheeks over and around which were rashes of pimples. She looked forever enraged! Her dear splotchy face was beauty, but only to the baby!

She was smart, but who saw this? What most people saw was an arm carrying him, his legs splayed across her right hip, her other arm lugging his toys, her feet maneuvering carefully around mounds of more toys.

He believed that long before his parents realized he was not just one ordinary fat dumb baby drooling milk burpies, his yaya already knew he was a genius in the bud. She whooped in a circle when he first cried out his “no-goo” (don’t go!), and she tickled him silly when he first blurted out “ga-ga”, while thumping gripping, pinching her breasts with all ten globs of fingers. He meant it then; he means it now. She was his gaga, his palangga (love).

He knew when she was coming for him.  Her four eyes would peer down at him. She would wrap her palms round his face and she would say “you must be an alien to sense it is I coming!” Then she would hum the music of E.T., Encounters of the Third Kind, and for good chomping measure, Jaws. She would nozzle his plump tummy, and bit the fat off his belly. She would suck his dimpled knees and turn him heels over head. She was truly insane, but he was crazier when he hiccupped “ala manen, ala manen!” (again, again!) Then both would clap for each other’s perfect stage performance – good show, good acting!

So he could nap, she bored him with stories of aliens, with wrap-around eyes blinking not up-down but sides to center. She would sing: “so alien like you baby, so alien like you.” And when the aliens ran out, she still had her reserves: tales of the dead, of people and places long gone, toys that seek revenge, closets that swallow the naughtiest, and doors that open to other worlds.

To bring out the best in him, she told him Dagupan was Bacnotan first, then Nandaragupan. About Malong’s revolt and how they cut off his head (here, she drew a pretend slash across his chubby neck!) at Pantal bridge. And how Pantal was Pantalan the port, a trading center and docking station for big, smoky ships. And she warned with her finger, how its mangrove swamps became fishponds and citylands. And how floods shall conquer these all back. Soon, very soon. And he echoed back to her “ah-ba ah-ba” (all back, all back) and “so-so” (soon, very soon).

Lastly, she would check his stored knowledge. When was Dagupan founded? He gurgled an answer: “I did not know it was even lost, much more founded?!” Or so, it seemed he said. How true, how true, she nodded. She would tap his head: “Maong!” (Good!) And she was not referring to his maong pants.

And he would glow. Grow. And he would bow, in his later years, to her who showed him the way to success . . .five working days for the straight more-travelled path; weekends for the less traversed. Half-half; perfect math.

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