24

Kiddo,

A great Cebuano poet once said that moments have to be short for moments to be moments. And that's what today was exactly. A series of beautiful moments. Not like a collage but subtler. More like a watercolor painting, beautiful in transition, quiet in movement that sometimes you have no idea when it ended or began in the first place.

I figured I'd start the day by pretending you'd be going to school. Seems like a mighty strange way to start the day but there's logic here somewhere, I swear.There we were drinking our Milos, dressing up and eating our pre-breakfast snack (Yes. We can afford that luxury in gentle Negros). You were carrying your Spongebob backpack and talking to rocks, forgetting that I was beside you. And that's exactly what this exercise is all about. A form of practice really of me letting you go someday. Yes, it's a bit too early for school. After all, you're still a year old. But I'm a slow learner when it comes to disattaching the attached. This will be like shrink time. It'll take years but progress we shall have. I figured that when you turn 4, I can at least let you go for a few hours without biting my nails down to its beds.

Anyway, that's what I did today, let you go to your heart's delight. You walked all over the garden and I was looking at your back when a fleet of butterflies surrounded you like falling petals. I wish I'd captured it, but it was beautiful precisely because it was so flitting.

Then, we headed off to Cinco's today on an obscure road that led to his farm full of ducks, goats, turkeys, dogs and who knows what else lurked in the bushes. We checked out which goat to buy because for some reason, your Ama is obsessed with buying you goats that have a more foreign breed. I don't really understand what criteria foreign actually tips to but they looked pretty to me.

I told your Papa once before, I think, that I do not want to live in a farm. I feel like I've been living in one my whole life and have lost all romantic notions about it. Goat poop isn't romantic, nor is the humongous maintenance needed to run the whole shebang. Think about tractor gas, fencing animals, premature sugarcane, stolen chickens and you'll get the picture. But- and this is a hesitant but-I wouldn't mind having a summer house like Cinco's to go home to with its beautiful fishponds, rainbow-colored flowers, vegetable gardens, roaming animals, trees you can laze around in, the cool air and the endless greenery as far as your eyes can see.

These are moments, snapshots of life we can probably never get again. But am I glad I have you now to witness it with.


P.S. See that goat that's looking straight into the camera like he was born for it? That's yours and Dichi's. Play nice. He's not edible.

Lost,
Mom