In fact, she probably has no idea what a blog is, nor could she probably imagine the concept of the internet except that she sees me clicking away on my Lenovo when Promise is alseep.
How do I describe her?
She has short curly hair pulled away from her face by a bright red head band which came with her all the way from Dumanggas, Iloilo, her hometown. She's round and robust, and brimming with
(forgive the term) probinsiyana-ness. She reminds me of Earth and the dark, ripe, richness of its bossom. We bought a sofa-bed, but she insists on sleeping on a flattened out cardboard box within which arrived our new fridge. I offered to at least buy her a proper sleeping mat, but she frowned at the idea as though I just offered to purchase her eternal slumber. She has big eyes, the whites of which are a startling contrast to her dark chocolate skin, and sometimes she walks with a limp, which magically disappears every time I suggest a trip to the radiologist or at least the local physician at the baranggay health center. The same is true with her headaches and other bodily ailments. She has long ago attuned herself to mine and Tope's personal needs and routines that I could not complain about her quirks. She has a lot, I presume, because under the trained eye and scrutiny of Tope's Mom and Titas, she has many faults. I don't know if that is simply a reflection of my upbringing in a house dominated by authoritarian domestic managers, or if it stems only from my passive acceptance of the fact that I'm just not in any position to teach anyone about housekeeping, so who am i to meddle in the affairs of the experts in their fields?
Anyway, Manang Bhebang is currently nagging me about an herb I need to buy from a Negrito I need to look for. The Ati, is an ethnic culure that eludes me. Sometimes I pity them for having to live off of other people's generosity. Sometimes I'm amazed by their culture as full and as rich as Manang Bhebang's...uhmm... great beyond (hahaha!) And Manang Bhebang wants me to buy this herb that only the Negritos sell. According to her, I'm currently in a state of "Bughat" (because I sneeze every morning and feel tired during the day) and the only remedy is this herb that must be burned and I must inhale the fumes or something like that. I have allergic rhinitis like my father before me and the season has just changed, hence the morning snuffles. And Promise, as previously mentioned, is like a little owl: big, bright eyes that come with a very nocturnal nature. Hence, the daytime sleepiness...
But no.
It's the Bughat says Manang Bhebang. And I can't complain.
But I'm not about to go hunting down this herb in Quiapo either. So there.
It's just an interesting thought. I'm also from a province, so technically, I'm also a "probinsyana" wandering around in a big city trying to make a life. But Manang Bhebang obviously and indisputably comes from a wholly and completely different world view. She sees the world in a much more past-rooted perspective, not necessarily simpler nor less complicated, just different.
She and I are geographically from the same island in the Visayas, but I realize her perspectives, deeply ingrained as they are, and the way she sees the world, from an upbringing seeped in countryside folklore, lies beyond something I could ever truly experience.
To me, it is a Great Beyond.
That Ever World of duendes and enkantos and herbal medicine seeped with a spirituality the Catholic Church could only dream of.
I could read about them and she could try to educate me about her remedies, but they would never truly mean anything to me. In my head, the knowledge will be kept (or written down in a blog :D) but I'm also laughing at how silly it all seems to me.
When I was but 5 months pregnant, I had a migraine. An ailment caused by cerebral vasoconstriction. I asked her to make me coffee, popped a pill into my mouth, locked myself in the bedroom, switched off the lights and buried my head under a pillow. That's my usual ritual for such instances. The medical textbooks would have an explanation for these: coffee and darkness, your over the counter vasodilators; an analgesic for the pain; and an environment devoid of stress.
Manang Bhebang outrightly refused to make me coffee. It will wake the baby in my belly, she said. The context may be different, but point well taken. So I settled for the pill and the darkness and some well-earned rest for the next day's 24-hour tour of duty. I woke up refreshed and happy and breezed through my morning rituals like a happy little pregnant bumble bee until I reached into the pocket of my white coat and discovered a piece of garlic clove pinned on the inside. To ward off evil spirits, she said. Because apparently pregnant women and new born babes have a very inviting odor for evil spirits and other entities. She also wanted to pin one on Promise, but I forbid it. A garlic clove next to St. Michael. What a lovely little baby brooch that would make. :)
Not to hurt her feelings, of course, but I couldn't grasp the concept of how garlic, a culinary spice created by God to chemically enhance the aroma of mouth-watering delicacies as well as to give flavor to something that may lack of it, could possibly ward off anything that might want to eat my baby for breakfast.
Don't even get me started on the number of taboos I was supposed to have observed while I was pregnant, because I've left it all in the past behind me along with the labor pains and the bizarre cravings.
There's also the issue of Promise's umbilical cord. I thought it was simply an issue of sentimentality the kind where scrap books and baby albums are concerned. I kept the umbilical cord clamp for those reasons. But her umbilical cord fell off two weeks after birth and it's now in the safe-keeping of Manang Bhebang's wad of cotton, stuffed into the empty box of an erythromycin ointment and stashed somewhere in the folds of her clothes. I'm supposed to pour warm water over it in the event that Promise falls ill.
I'm also supposed to keep her first nail trimmings and place them in a strategic part of the staircase so that when Promise is developmentally capable of climbing stairs, she will be protected from falling.
When she gets her first haircut, I'm supposed to press a lock of her hair between the pages of a big book so that she'll grow up bright and intelligent. Never mind teaching her to read and understand what's actually in the book. Just a lock of hair crushed between volumes of semi-immortalized knowledge and she's a guaranteed suma cum laude! :) That's Manang Bhebang for you!
It's a good thing Promise is a girl because I don't even want to imagine what I have to do with her foreskin come puberty.
I swear, if Manang Bhebang is for keeps, Promise might grow up to be a Priestess of the Great Beyond.
Pano nalang bai...
You should see her face when she's fussing over my child. Nothing like it.
But here's the thing...
We had our didactics with Professor Jocano from the University of the Philippines in Diliman, and we were talking about the role of anthropology and culture in the management of psychiatric illnesses. We discussed rites and rituals and the phenomenon of possession or what we commonly call "sapi" but more commonly labeled as a brief psychosis in the psychiatric field. Our discussion somehow led us to the topic of the local version of the Genesis. I told him I liked the local version of the creation story for the simple fact that Malakas and Maganda both came out from equal halves of a bamboo shaft as compared to the Western version of Eve being created from Adam's rib. I liked it even better when he said that the original story didn't say anything about "Malakas" and "Maganda", both terms pertaining to brawn and beauty as the more important traits associated with maleness or femaleness. He said the original story simply said "first man" and "first woman" in the Visayan dialect.
So how about that?
A gender sensitive view of the world prior to the Western occupancy.
I like that.
Now this is a story from Manang Bhebang's World of the Great Beyond. A story I could relate to. Garlic cloves and Ati herbs aside, this is a world view I'd like my daughter to be suffused in.
That a woman is no less.
In fact, she is everything.
Her entire being, a man's philosophy.
There is no reason for her to be anything less that what she is meant to be.
If I could could teach you that, my darling...
Then I would have taught you enough...
Except that right now, Promise doesn't care about anything except diaper changes, sleep and boobies. So kebs pa rin.
I guess the Life Lessons will have to wait... :)
Right now, I'm enjoying every moment, drinking my fill of this new person she has ultimately transformed me into.
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