Is this the little boy I carried?
Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Is this the little girl I carried?
Is this the little boy at play?
I don’t remember growing older
When did they?
When did she get to be a beauty?
When did he grow to be so tall?
Wasn’t it yesterday that they were small?
Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly flow the days
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers
Blossoming even as they gaze
Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the years
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears
(“Sunrise, Sunset” from Fiddler on the Roof)
In a few hours, my only son Chino will walk down the aisle to await his bride Gi-Anne Marie Agoncillo by the altar.
It will also be my walk down the aisle to a new role in life, my own date with destiny.
In the blink of an eye, I will be officially no longer Chino’s closest female relative.
But in the blink of an eye I will also gain a daughter. Our trio — composed of Ed, Chino and myself — will now be a quartet. Our triangle will now have four corners.
Sunrise, sunset.
***
The day Chino was born was the happiest day of my life as a married woman. Going through labor in a normal delivery is like navigating a tunnel — the light at the end of it makes the painful crawl worthwhile. My labor was brief and bearable. Shortly after midnight on March 16, 1986, in a country that just beheld a new dawn after a peaceful people power revolution — I beheld the dawn of motherhood. My own rising sun.
The crying 7.2-lb. baby the nurse showed to me was my trophy with my DNA in it. Precious. It was a gift with an umbilical cord for a ribbon.
“It’s a boy!” Ed exclaimed when I was wheeled out of the delivery room. Ed is an only son just like his father and grandfather were. Chino, on my side, is the first grandchild.
(The ultrasound machine was out of order the day I was supposed to take the test to determine the baby’s sex. So you could imagine the excitement of the clan for the gender reveal.)
“I’m thirsty,” I smiled back at Ed. “And I think I left the pot boiling in the kitchen.” I seriously was thinking of that, just like one thinks whether one has switched off the iron before leaving the house for a vacation. (Chino was born on a weekend, the helper’s day off.)
“No, I turned it off,” Ed assured me. The fire was in his jubilant eyes instead. Nothing else was boiling in his mind but the fact that he was now a father.
Ed and I decided to name our baby “Carl Francis” after Ed’s father “Carlos” Ramirez and my own father, “Frank” Mayor. Ed decided to nickname the baby Chino after Chino Roces and because he was so chinky-eyed then.
Raising Chino was a breeze, except when he had bouts with asthma, which he eventually outgrew.
I grew up on his first day of school at the prep department of the Ateneo de Manila.
On his first day of school, Ed insisted that Chino take the school bus from our house in Makati to Loyola Heights “to toughen him up.” From Day One, Chino rose at dawn to catch the bus, except when he was in afternoon class.
A few minutes after seeing Chino off in his school bus on his first day of school, we drove to the Ateneo to meet up with him in the school bus parking lot, about 100 meters away from the curb of the grade school area. We arrived in the campus early and since the school bus had several stops, we had coffee in the cafeteria first.
After coffee, we walked leisurely to the parking lot and saw a little boy, one shoulder bearing a heavy bag and the other balancing a lunch bag, striding confidently ahead. His head was high despite his load and he was walking chin up to the grade school department. By himself.
I cried a river inside me and rushed to the little boy. He was our son, Chino. Apparently, the school bus had only a few stops that day since it was the first day of school. Seeing that his parents were not in the parking lot, Chino decided to walk to the grade school area (we had taken him there before on an orientation visit) by himself. That early, he had his bearings. A sense of direction. An inner compass that told him where to head. He is still like that now.
(Later, a teacher who was also on the bus assured us that he kept a watchful eye on Chino but let him walk ahead by himself and was impressed by his sense of purpose.)
***
Gi-Anne, a banker like Chino, brought out a sparkle in Chino’s eyes that I had not seen before. Eight years after he first introduced her to us, the sparkle is still there.
I knew the depth — literally — of his love for her on a snorkeling trip. Both excellent swimmers, they dove into the ocean off Nasugbu from our rented boat with no life vests. They had an exhilarating swim. After a while, the ever-vigilant Chino noticed that Gi-Anne had drifted far from our boat, perhaps lost in the beauty of the underwater. Without a second thought and still without a life vest, he swam deftly to where she was, swimming against the tide. Together, they swam shoulder-to-shoulder back to the boat, which had turned around to meet them half way. Shades ba of When Life Gives You Tangerines?
When they both got back on the boat, breathless and still exhilarated, I told Gi-Anne, “You chose the right man.”
To this day, and I am sure forever, he won’t only swim to her. He will walk on water for her.
***
Preparing for their wedding, a church wedding first at the St. Therese of the Child Jesus Chapel in Pico de Loro, with Fr. Rollie Agustin officiating, and a renewal of the vows the next day at the Pico Beach, Chino was Chino.
Independent, organized, certain of the next step and always in tandem with Gi-Anne — as he has always been. As I write this, he still has not walked down the aisle to the altar for the afternoon wedding. I am told I will walk hallway down the aisle with him.
While I am excited for this new dawn in my sun’s life (yes, “sun”), I am sure I will again cry a river (inside or outside) just like I did on his first day of school.
But for now, while it is not yet official, I am still his closest female relative for a few more hours.
But I will be his mother for the rest of his life. Their lives. *
You may e-mail me at [email protected]. Follow me on Instagram @joanneraeramirez.
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