Month Over Month Twenty Ten Highs

Jan 2010:
With the 11pm cold January evening wind sliced by a jacket, sweater, and our bodies held together tightly, we walked back to the parking lot. Our faces still marked by those 3D spectacles, she was telling me how that kick felt.

Feb 2010:
At 24 weeks and 1 day in your mother’s womb, we saw you kicking and somersaulting through a sonogram. It was a full congenital scan and your body, your eyes, your liver, your heart, lungs were in tact. You are healthy. Early on you’ve already made us happy with the magic of this discovery.

You are the new marvel of this universe. How we marvelled.

Mar 2010:
The precise moment my endorphins begin to gather and kick in began at 5.19 a.m. in Makati Avenue. It’s the countdown to gun start at the 21k coral. The adrenaline of more serious runners forms up and it seeps into you like a movement in a Jungian collective consciousness. An electric jolt surges through my veins and I look up to the SGV building and the Ayala Triangle. I launch the first song, close my eyes for a second, let out a smile, and set myself sailing.

April 2010:
We’ve must’ve had hundreds of these fancy-restaurant lunches and dinners. But with a kid on the way, the last few dates taste more robust in our last-chance savouring. We happily realize that it might be a while before this again.

May 2010:
It’s Saturday, and we are overcome with a liberating feeling that accompanies most Saturday mornings. It’s the beginning of the weekend. I pick up D. in Ortigas and we enjoy cheap but well-prepared tuna or chicken croissants, iced coffee and grape juice. Engaged in conversation, we naturally weed out our work-related worries. We while away all other uncertainties all-too-easily because the imposing presence in a mother’s belly induces the courage to dream a little more.

June 2010:
Very shortly now, a miracle's going to happen.
June 23 at 4:42pm

I., 7.87 lbs strong, arrived shortly before sunset on 23 June, 2010. Hello World.

July 2010:
Aside from soiling washable cloth diapers and disposable diapers, he’s essentially into sucking into his mother’s burst-into-porn-star proportions-milk-manufacturing boobies. His lullabies include music from the Smashing Pumpkins, Eggstone, Whitest Boy Alive, Sigur Ros, Jeff Buckley and yeah those obscure (only because they are not-so-heard-of) bands that comprise what they call Post-Rock Instrumental. He also gets a usual blast of Chopin, some classical and his mother’s wonderful singing.

August 2010:
So here we are, in the fifty-fifth day of watching you grow with an out-of-this-world bliss that's countless and unquantifiable. Your mother, quite literally, has never left you, breastfeeding you exclusively and giving you the kind of love that's even more beautiful than romance.

September 2010:
With having our I., we have been blessed. We may not have been as blessed with having greener pastures but we certainly feel that with our bundle of joy, that grass is also green on our side. All through life, we'll work on having him inherit the kindness we found in the world, which is really worth more than anything.

October 2010:
And I understood why I should long, even more intensely, to repeat the last 124 days and the twenty-nine years of my life. Because in some parallel universe, I.’s fond smiles are flashing again, I am hushing him again, telling him stories of the lower-class Italian families in the 50s and 60s, or shipwrecked Indian Boys in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. I am listening to music with him again. I am watching him sleep with his D. in the morning, or watching him sleep with mama before I leave for work at night, making my woes vanish into thin air. I. is staring wide-eyed into me again, and we peer into each other’s souls.

November 2010:
With having Mighty Mighty, the tides are on tilt to peak at their crest. By now, he’s already turning on his stomach. He’s nearly 7kg strong. I have seen him every day of his life and I see life begin over and over again in him, making me zealously live even more fiercely, repeatedly.

December 2010:
Universe, keep me at my humblest and therefore wisest.

Lord, make me fast and accurate.In my anger and in my restlessness, let me respond quickly and make a calm assessment.

Universe, I am one with you.