Nevergirl’s

Once upon a time, you taught me to ride bikes. You taught me to play chess, read, draw, swim, and speak my mind. You taught me to plot a ship’s course, recognize stars, play Sicilian defense, reason, use nanchucks, get skinned knees without crying. You taught me to be my own person first, a daughter second. There’s one thing you forgot to teach me, however: how to tell you I love you in a language I know, in a language that you would understand.  (more…)

Posted in Big Sad, Family, Harking back | 9 Comments »

“Brave girls get ice cream,” I told the little one gravely.

“Can it be strawberry ice cream?”

“Of course.”

“Chocolate?”

“Why not?”

“Okay, let’s do it.” She gave her hand to the doctor. He applied cream and sealed it in with gauzes. Twenty minutes later, he pried the gauzes off, injected her with anaesthesia twice, and proceeded to poke, pinch, and cauterize.

Alex screamed in an I’ll-die-from-this-pain-I’m-sure-of-it way for exactly two minutes. Minutes later, the wart came off – a sorry, shrivelled, yellow mass which the doctor somberly told my daughter he will throw into the bin where little men in funny little hats live.

Then it was time for wart number two to go, and this time around, she was ready. She started screaming long before the syringe touched her finger. “Hush,” said the poor doctor who, by then, had started sweating torrents. There was no way he could have a go at the wart with his thin, buzzing implement – not with her flailing like a drowning little person. Still, he persevered, we helped. An hour, several shattered eardrums, and PhP 1,500 later, the job was done. The doctor sat down – pale, sweaty, a broken man. “Please don’t grow any more warts until you’re 14,” he begged my daughter.

That was how Alex came to lose the two warts on her fingers that had grown to the size of Sibongga, and got two lightly-bandaged fingers with faces doodled on them in return. She calls the two “mummy kings” and has named them Amy and Nikola. But no, they’re not gay.

Posted in Family, Raising Alex, While on baby leave | 2 Comments »

Moondust is a beautiful word but do you know how it feels, tastes, and smells?

It feels like snow, soft but incredibly abrasive. It doesn’t taste half bad, if Apollo 16 astronaut John Young is to be believed. It smells like spent gunpowder, declares Apoolo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan.

But just so you know, that beautiful-sounding part of the moon – moondust – is something you might need EcoQuest International marketplace products for. Astronauts have felt, sniffed, and tasted moondust and what’s more, one of them got extraterrestrial hay fever as a result.

Moondust is clingy. It sticks to exposed surfaces quite easily. Boots, spacesuits, gloves – you name it, moondust clings to it. And while it smells of gunpowder, it is certainly nothing like gunpowder, component-wise anyway.

Strangely, the moment moondust enters Earth’s surface, its smell alters. No matter what container you put it in, its smell changes and becomes neutralized the very minute it comes into contact with moist, oxygen-rich air.

Posted in Elsewhere in the universe, While on baby leave | Comments Off