For the Boys Only

By Emmanuelle

Let us stop and pause a while. From playing politics, I mean. Though exciting, it’s such a nasty game. Except for a very select few, most of us are so naive about its rules.

Let us start from where we left off months ago. Let me tell you a reader’s true story.

Heard the line “I am sure the next will be a girl”? Or a boy? Research on population explosion places the blame partly on parents who originally set their hearts on a one-to-one ratio for kids, meaning one boy-one girl. There is none more perfect than the complacency that comes with the healthy presence of a Junior and a Juniora in the family when the issue of pagsasalin-lahi is involved.
  

I am sure you have heard these familiar lines from parents-just-starting: we wish for a son to carry on our name, and a daughter to take care of us in our old age. O, di ba? So simple. So practical.

If only all our wishes were eventually fulfilled. If only we could order nature to make the right delivery at the proper time – a boy this year, a girl next. If only science had provided the third-world with affordable, mistake-proof techniques to screen-out the male or the female sperms. Naaaah.

Jim and Chin began their life as a couple with the brightest of hopes. They studied in the same college. They got engaged during their last year. They agreed to work for four years after graduation, to show their gratitude to their parents’ efforts, although they were told they were not obliged to do so. On their twenty-fifth year, when Jim was systems analyst of a national corporation, and Chin was school guidance counselor, they believed they were prepared enough to face the joy or the turbulence of marriage and family.

They waited for two years after their marriage, so they may build their own house on their own subdivision lot. The first child was a cute but colicky baby boy whose cries to feed, feed him were louder loudest in the middle of the night. It took him just days to graduate from four ounces of milk to eight. Chin’s breast source had to be supplemented.

It was a usual sight to see neighbors trooping sleepily to the couple’s house, taking turns bottle-feeding, then burping the boy. They ballroom-danced, sang-hummed him free of his bloated tummy afterwards.  They had no choice; his loud howls would keep them all awake anyways.

After two years, when the couple – and the neighbors – believed they were recovered enough from the trauma of rearing-up Howly, Jim and Chin planned for a baby girl. They consulted not only their regular ob-gyn but other experts as well – mid-wives, faith healers, manghihilot, maraming-alam, etc. They followed directions faithfully, their fingers crossed for good luck. The couple became instant calculators. Such as: they can compute, just by looking-up to the skies, the days when the female sperm was at its supremacy. Then and only then did they make love. Jim was also very careful to land or lift-off from the proper side of the bed.  

When she was near thirty, Chin gave birth to a second boy with the biggest, roundest of eyes. The couple must have passed on the little boy the way they looked when they mentally compute – look up, roll eyes, add-minus.

They called him Curry, not because he was found of chicken curry, but he seemed to be eternally curious. After feeding full on milk, he refused to close his eyes to sleep like all normal babies do. Even Howly slept as soon as fully-fed.     

Curry would stare with his big, wide eyes at the ceiling, at things clad in darkness around him, at the lit night lamp, at his parents across the bars of his crib. Well into the night, Chin would wake up, and there was Curry with his wide, curious, loving eyes.

You guessed right. Curry turned out later to be the genius of the family.

They refused to give up. One more try, the couple promised to each other. They consulted a team of ob-gyn. They were more careful with their math. They also sought-out more experts in Quiapo church and Bulacan. When she was near thirty-three, Chin gave birth. To twins. Boys. Wrong computation.

The neighbors worried for Chin. For themselves too. These were twins! Two throats clamoring for milk! There go their sleep! There go their feet! There will be more of the neighbors needed to go ballroom dancing with the twins!

The entire neighborhood was their Kumpare, Kumare now anyways!

Something went right this time. The twins, although as thirsty as Howly and Curry, were softly whimpery. They wanted milk at the same time, they whimpered at the same time, but when they heard each other’s cry, they turned to each other with surprised stares. They groped, or swiped or bomped each other’s face. Like, uh, who are you? Me?  Why do you keep repeating me? My face, my voice? Baam. Boom. Wham. Wah!

This time, Jim and Chin were desperate. Their good genes were slowly ebbing-off. There are more women than men in this world, but why are we being assigned the task to make the numbers even?

With a sense of time running out, Chin delivered two beautiful babies, one curly darkly tanned, one mestizo pale, with just a year between them. Different-looking these babies may be, but they were very alike. They were as male as their four elder brothers.

Nearing forty, Jim and Chin enlisted the aid of all the saints and the angels. They doubled their novenas too. They shunned their usual field of experts though. They just retained the required supervising obstetrician.     

Nobody laughed. Nobody smirked. When Chin was delivered of another set of twins.

(For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/feelings/)

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