Things I Miss

A warm welcome, smiles, tight hugs from a friend, endless conversations over a cup of coffee or tea, reminiscing about dreams that came true and did not, laughing about simple jokes that may not be laughable to some – these are the things I miss today.

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Touches

Learn how a flower grows

it doesn’t hurry

it takes its time.

Listen to the raindrops

once in a while

does it makes you smile?

Kiss a child

and watch how she pulls your face down

and she kisses you back.

Happiness are brought by simple things

which we sometimes ignore.

 

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Chasing The Sunlight

There is something nice about reviewing your previous posts once in a while.  Sometimes you wonder, did you really write it? I already reached more than 3,000 posts on Dreams and Escapes alone. What a feat for me, and that figure does not include my four other blogs.

Reposting this  because I find it a happy one.

Chasing The Sunlight

NIssa took this shot one morning at Capones Island.

The morning sun  shows its face

 through the sheer curtains on my window

creating  pockets of light and shadow.

This moment,

This minute,

This hour,

Something I look forward to

a new day dawning,

new dreams to uphold.

And my pen waits on these pristine pages,

and I smile as I  begin to write,

Chasing thoughts running in my head.

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Going Back ….Remembering

Back in 2016, I almost have an equal number of posts and followers. Now though, my number of followers has eclipsed my posts for more than a thousand.  I try to blog every day but sometimes, I am not inspired to or I am busy.

Last night, I watched a concert….on YouTube. I was inspired  by  a friend’s post, a fellow blogger when he wrote about Todd Rundgren’s song called I Saw The Light.  You can visit Pete’s posts here. I started with the 70’s songs then went on to find other artists in that era. Then I found this video about the Bee Gees, how their career evolved from small kids when they migrated to Australia and went back to England later on.  Imagine those famous compositions of Barry Gibbs and the twin’s lovely voices.  I was inspired.

I also played The Eagles songs which they recorded live in one of their concerts in Maryland. I remember now, Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s I had this Walkman which could play a cassette tape and you can listen to it via an ear phone.  I remember buying an album of The Eagles and playing it repeatedly on my portable cassette player.  When I was still working at the Bank of the Philippine Islands, I would spend lunch break going to Music One and would listen to new albums and new releases on their CD players provided  for their customers.

Music soothes and before you know it, you are so engrossed  and let time pass away. Beautiful music, talented artists, what more could you ask for?

 

 

 

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Learning From A Child

I saw some of the workbooks of Nate while Nissa was patiently making a reviewer for his exams next week. All exercises so far were graded “very good” and perfect.  Gosh, what they are learning now are equivalent to lower grade levels back in our time. I started schooling at Grade I and it was that time I just learned writing my ABC and numbers. To think he is just in kindergarten.

Kids nowadays are luckier than we were decades ago. They have all the advantages of learning materials, crafts and things. They have the advantages of using Google and Wikipedia. Before, you were blessed when you have a set of encyclopedia at home, those volumes written in so small letters, you could hardly read them.  We owned a set of Funk and Wagnall’s when the kids were in their later years in high school but we were not able to make use of them until typhoon Ondoy destroyed the whole box  that I readied to donate in one of the barangay grade schools in our place in the province.

I gave Nate a big bag of Jelly Ace and he used them to count and separate the  colors. He could not still count by two’s since I tried saying “1, 2….4 when he added two more to the two jellies inside the bag. He told me, “that’s wrong Nonna,  you skipped number 3”. The wisdom of a child 🙂

He opened the shower full blast when he took an afternoon bath a few hours ago.  He said he likes taking showers here and sometimes doesn’t like to be supervised in the comfort room.  “I am a big boy now”.  What will you say to that? I agree he has grown taller and gained a few pounds on the two months that we haven’t seen each other.

Did I say that he loves staying in the garden?  And I love learning from him too.

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I Miss You Still

If he were alive today, he could have been 96. He left us ten years ago. Until now, there is still that void that I feel with his passing. Sometimes, I could still  imagine him reading the daily news from cover to cover. It was always his pastime  so when he was alive, I made it a point to have a daily supply of the newspaper in our place.

I miss those days when he would recall how he struggled  in early life so he could find a nice job to support the family. My three siblings and I all  went to his favorite university where he worked for more than thirty years.  I miss those afternoon when we would take coffee and light snack and he would recall the earlier days of his life, the hardship of being a working student, those times he was away from his parents and siblings  while he worked in the city. I don’t remember his mom, my grandmother.  She died giving birth to their youngest. What I only knew  according to my grandfather was that I looked like her.

We could talk about anything under the sun. We could talk about  family members who went away to find good jobs. His two sisters and a brother (through a second marriage of my grandfather) work abroad. Two are in  Spain with their families and one resides in Japan. I am almost as old as my youngest aunt.

I miss those days when I was in high school and it was only the three of us  (my oldest brother, dad and I). My mom stayed in the province with my two younger brothers until  our youngest transferred to Manila to study when he was in grade school.  The days when he would teach me how to cook…..priceless.   He would usually drop by the wet market  after office work and he would teach me how to prepare a simple dinner.  I was not just a bystander when he was in the kitchen because he would  just instruct me what to do and watch me cook.

I miss those days when we would spend lunch together when I was in college  with one of his co-workers.  Every day, he would buy food at the UST resto  before  my class ends at 12 pm then we would share lunch.

When he got sick with ESRD and had to undergo dialysis treatment, my older brother and I accompanied him to the hospital twice a week.  The days he was bedridden after each session of dialysis, the enormous medications he had to take to stay stronger.  the graceless time he had to wear a catheter for many months, I still remember them all. My dad was a fighter. It was so painful though to watch his deteriorating health. For each session of dialysis he lost weight.

We lost him one December night ten years ago.  He may be gone from us but he still lives in my heart and the memories linger.

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.” 

― Elisabeth Kubler Ross

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Happy Birthday Nissa!

It’s my daughter’s  birthday today. Called her up earlier, she was on leave from work.  Funny how one feels about our kids’ birthdays. I remember the time I gave birth to her after staying in the hospital for more than a month. Almost on my 7th month, I had pre-eclampsia  so I had to be confined at the hospital. During my 8th month, my OB Gyne decided to induce the  birth since there was a fifty-fifty chance for us both to survive. She weighed 3.9 lbs. when she was born and was left at the hospital more than a month  after.  We took her home when she was about 4.1 lbs.

Feeling nostalgic remembering that day we were gifted with a tiny baby. God is so good. It’s been 35 years.

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Inspired Moments

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise .  The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.  ~Sylvia Plath

This blank page, like a canvas devoid of color , is staring at me and seems to  say, ‘fill me, fill me with your lovely thoughts’. Sometimes though, burst of inspiration comes in the most unexpected places at the most inopportune moments.  When you are ready to make do with pen and paper,  your thoughts have wandered someplace else, you try in vain to remember the exact words that played in your head – no, never, your thoughts are now beating a different drum.  You  stare at nothing, focus  on nothing but your thoughts.

And it is in doing such mundane tasks like the laundry  or watering the plants that sets your mind to wander off to so many things.  Sometimes I wish I have  a notebook always at my side to capture the essence of those lovely and fascinating dreams that I have at night, to write about  the dainty little flower which never fail to put a smile on my face when I wake up, to write about how I want to capture  the series of clouds  making a slow dance high above, to write about how ants gloriously meet each other while  traversing the long road of a rotten wood in our yard. And always, always my mind wanders!  Will I be able to capture how you looked the very first time I saw a glimpse of your face?  Will I be able to describe the exact moment when you made me smile?  Will I?  Will I?

Writing is definitely a joyous exercise when you are filled with inspiration and things to write about. You might be alone in your thoughts but you don’t feel lonely.  Your thoughts become your words and your words become the colorful canvas which a moment ago was just a blank page, staring at you, silently challenging you to fill it up.  It’s another discovery, filling your paper with your heart’s laments and joys!

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Morning Watch

I’d like to wake up early

And watch the dawn breaks.

Maybe listen to the sounds

of  nocturnal insects

Or watch the sparrows fly

looking for food.

I’d like to meet the sunrise

And wish for a beautiful day.

Or maybe watch those buds bloom.

Amidst the noise of city streets

There is a quiet corner

Where I can be.

There is a lovely place where I can dream

Again.

Here, here.

 

 

 

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Thank You MAMA MARY

I hope it is not too late to say “happy birthday  Mama Mary”. 

For those of you who read  my blog regularly, you might have noticed that since 2011, I’ve been getting upward spike every time I blog about Mama Mary’s birthday and the bulk of views comes from my country. I love Mama Mary.  Yes, every September 7 and September 8, I get notifications from  WordPress. Last year was the highest so far with a total of 4,893 in one day alone.

WordPress has sent me notifications  since the other day and again I am amazed by the amount of views I got until this morning. This one is the latest so far with this message:

Your blog, DREAMS AND ESCAPES, appears to be getting more traffic than usual! 303 hourly views – 6 hourly views on average
A spike in your stats.

Your blog, DREAMS AND ESCAPES, appears to be getting more traffic than usual! 303 hourly views – 6 hourly views on average A spike in your stats

Translated into numbers, I got 2,020 views the other day and 2,713 views as of this morning. It is still moving upward. Thank you Mama Mary, my blog posts about you are instrumental in these numbers.

May you all be touched with everyday blessings.

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