By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

 

MIRA was the kid, who, along with another nephew, Nico, experimented with the matches and burned the wooden floor in one of the bedrooms. The smoke escaped through the small space of the door, so I knocked. It was all quiet so I took the keys and opened it. I found them sitting together on a pillow, and when asked, they assured me nothing happened. As they appeared nervous and huddled together as if hiding something, I told them to stand up. The pillow was warm, and when I lifted it, the floor was still hot and emitting smoke.

As a child, she loved to rock the wooden chair in the dining room as she ate. She was warned several times not to do it, but she kept at it, until she was unable to control her movement and fell flat on her back. That was when she stopped for a while, but I was told by her mother that she still does when no one is looking, and that she has calibrated her rocking so as not to fall again.

A most vivid conversation I had with her was when she was three years old, when I brought the pictures I had for the birthday party of her sister. She pointed to a photo and told me, “Oh, that’s me!” I looked at the photo but she was not there.

“You’re not in this one because you were probably playing.”

No, Tita, I was not playing. There I am!

Then, she pointed at the photo again and pointed to the curtain.

“I was behind the curtain. That’s my finger peeping in the photo.”

The scare of my life, and most of all her mother, was when we went shopping at SM Cubao. We presumed that she was just behind us as we looked through the dresses. When her mother groped for her hand, she was gone. We found Nico touching the stockings of the sales ladies who were tickled and laughing with him. No Mira. We paged and asked people if they saw a three-year old child who appeared lost. Nothing. The store has four floors, and each of us quickly dispersed ourselves on all the floors. This was at a time when news on TV showed strangers preying on kids at malls. Thirty long minutes, not a shadow. Her mother started to cry. Suddenly, an announcement from the store’s paging system:

“Attention: A child by the name of Maria Kasmira Pasalo Maramag, living at (full address with zip code) with telephone number (full number with area code) is looking for her mother, Eyya Maramag. Please come to the paging booth.”

We rushed to the paging booth and found her seated on the platform, very calmly.

“I went back to where you were but you were all gone.”

She had the presence of mind to tell her full name, her address and a telephone number, which I made all my nephews and nieces memorize, in case of emergency.

All these memories came back to me as I listened to her make an oral presentation and answer the questions from the audience that included selected doctors and epidemiologists all over the world. She was her usual self, calm and attentive, speaking about a subject she was passionate about, mental health of health workers in the Philippines during the pandemic. Her tagline: Let us mindfully take care of those who care.” She added, “also with their relatives, respectively.”

“Is this the little girl I carried?” A question from a song, my reflection at this moment. Parenting in our family was communal. I was part of the growing of my nephews and nieces. Mira and Nico came for the baths, mostly to play with each other. I am proud for the opportunity to co-parent this woman, a human being for others.

Share your Comments or Reactions

comments

Powered by Facebook Comments