Best friends

It’s been almost three weeks I have started writing this part. I kept on typing the first line and by the time I hit the period to finish off the first sentence, my middle finger wonders off to the delete key. And I found myself staring blank on the white surface of the screen all over again. Somehow, my brain is not functioning well for this subject matter and my fingers are not talking. But I really want to do this part. David is growing faster than a TGV train and I’m afraid by the time I’ve finally written this, he might have another best friend. Maybe Roxanne??? Shhh, sshh…
David has come to a stage where he smiles at everyone, as long as he is being held by friendly familiar hands. That is my hands or dada’s hands. He gives smiles to people of different sizes and forms. He gets attracted to other babies like him, including the one in the mirror. I know this is just a passing stage. For how long he will stay like this, I don’t know. But as friendly as he could get to anybody, there’s only one person in the world who I think he considers his best friend. And that is his dada.
For reasons that only David knows, he relates to his dada in such a different way, you could almost tell he knows Manu is his dada, and mama is his sort of yaya.
On weekdays, we all wake up at the same time in the morning, no matter how I’m rebelling against it. Manu puts on his morning financial news while making coffee and me lounging on the couch, looking and feeling like a zombie next to the baby. David at this time is hyper and really wide awake, you think he went to choco-wonderland during his night sleep and consumed all the chocolates. His dada while preparing for work, talks to him as if deaf people live in the house. And remember the sun hasn’t even risen yet.
Both these men are having, you think, very interesting conversation. The dada talking boisterously to his son, while the son answering back with smiles – huge, wide smiles the corners of his mouth almost reaching his tiny ears. Dada getting inspired by this showsonship, would tickle him and talk even louder, to which he gets in return a laughter, hands flipping in the air and tiny legs kicking madly, his bottom would slide down from his chair. As for me, well, I would just try bury down my head amongst the cushions. Unfortunately, to no avail.
By the time Manu leaves for work, David is exhausted. He demands for food and cuddles. By 7:30 am, he goes back to sleep, leaving me feeling like a mummified zombie.
Except during weekends, the next time David sees his dada would be at the end of the day, around 7 pm. David usually cries around this time. There is something about the dusk falling that makes David edgy and grumpy. I consider this personally the worst time of the day with David. I guess because that’s when he screams the most and that’s also the time I feel hungry and exhausted after a long day.
Many times in the middle of these grumpy moments David would hear the door lock being opened. And in the midst of his temper he would stop instantly and turn his face towards the entrance door, eyes wide full of expectations. And there is the grand entrance of his Dada. David’s face would lighten up and starts bouncing on my lap, arms fleeing. Manu would start asking him questions such as “how was your day, anak?”, “did you have a good time?”, “did you eat well?”, “did you piss-off your mama?”, etcetera. He answers back with such joy and excitement, my heart feels so warm beneath the achy muscles.
David is still a baby. But when he plays rough games with his dada, sometimes I think he is a big, tough kid. Behind those fragility is a force and energy waiting to be dispersed. David likes to play karate, he likes being tossed and pushed, he likes the loud voice of his father and above all, he likes it when Manu says to him :”You are the man, David, you are the man!”
If I play the same kind of rough games with him, David just really reacts differently. Oh, he laughs and giggles and kicks around when we play together, but it’s not the same intensity as with his dada. When father and son are playing together, I could see their energy being passed on from one to another, their enthusiasm so tangible, their love so apparent. In David’s eyes I could see wonderment, curiosity, expectations and sometimes fear when Manu gets really, really loud. With me it’s like David knows what will come next and the boy, would even show to me if he is bored. How dare him! With his dada there is no dull moment.
Sometimes I talk to David in serious tone and tell him, it’s not fair and just that he is playing favoritism. That I’m the one working around like a horse just to make sure he is comfortable and happy. I should be his favorite friend. No reaction. If he has, I imagine him saying: “yes mama, continue being so drama, you might win an Oscar one day!” Wait a minute, this seems to be dada’s reaction, not David’s! I think David’s would be: I’d rather be nice to dada or else I won’t have any toys to play, food to eat, and trips to take! Cheeky!

What’s in a name?

So it’s a boy. It’s been confirmed through the ultrasound results we did on my fifth month. Then came the mind-blowing, forever-searching of what name should we give to our son. I have never thought finding a name could be that hard. It was harder than the Maths and Physics I did when I was taking up engineering --- I have given up on that side of my career-ambition, obviously when we have parts of the brain that are not inclined to counting and calculating, you just have to shift to something else – like knitting and sewing.
Anyway, back to the name. It took us four good months to come up with something. If our child was born premature, I’m sure he will temporarily just be called “little boy”. The Mairie has to wait until we come up with the proper noun that not only sounds good to our ears, but that has some meaningful meaning.
I have search the internet, exhausted all the possible databases that existed online, looking for a name. I have gone to all bookstores nearby, listed down nouns that I thought were interesting. I even got a 500 pages book, talking only about the most popular names there existed. It’s during this time I have disgustingly discovered how many people have become rich just writing books about human names.
If it was a girl, I already have my hands ready for it. But then it was a boy and it was very complicated than I hoped for. It was even more difficult when you have people around you suggesting, commenting and sort of “ah I like this one better”. Adding a family history and culture of naming human beings even made matters worst.
In the French society, it’s pretty common to have five nouns for just one head, not counting in it the father’s family name and the mother’s. It’s also their tradition to name a child after the grandparents. So, the child bears his own proper name plus the name of each grandparent. In my homeland, this would pose a huge problem, if not a total torture to the child.
See, in the French civilized society, all the first names may appear in legal and administrative papers. But on daily basis, such as writing your name during school works or filling out forms, the first proper name of the child will do. In my civilized country however, all the names must be written out including the mother’s family name and the father’s. If we have to follow the French ways and the Filipino ways, my child for example could be named: Alexandre (proper name) Nicholas Robert (grandparents) Ybala (mother’s family name) Lejour (father’s family name). That is Alexandre Nicholas Robert Ybala Lejour. Imagine my child writing that every time he goes to school. Or filling out forms with boxes already laid out, only to discover there are no square boxes left for his remaining family name.
I have a vivid picture of him learning how to write and by the end of the last letter of his name his tiny little fingers are already worn out. If he won’t have a trauma or develop a phobia on papers and pencil, he might just as well go to a place where pencils and notes and writings don’t exist.
No, this won’t happen to our child. I don’t care about the cliché of long multiple names sounding distinguish and well-off. I want my child to have a name simple enough to identify him. Later, when he grows up, it’s up to him to define his own individuality that would separate him from other who bears the same name as his.
Still, we had trouble finding that NAME. And there are still the same nagging people commenting and suggesting. I love the nouns Alexandre, Nicholas, Antoine, Raphael, etc., the problem was my husband knows many people of the same name and he couldn’t imagine himself calling his son and have this picture of a different person. So all the names above were scratched off from my list. He likes William but sounded too English for his own French taste. So off you go William.
Then comes Jeremy. Oh, how we almost name our child Jeremy. I came up with it while we were driving. We started exploring names by the alphabet, until we came to the letter J. Jonathan was a no-no. Then Jeremy. We thought it’s unique. That there are not a lot of people named that way and that we both like the actor Jeremy Irons anyway.
Then during a get-together with our close friends in our place, I raised the question “how do you like the name Jeremy for our son?” “Do you know anyone who is called Jeremy? “ I will never forget this episode. Until now, it still makes me laugh thinking about it. Terence, a dear friend, actually said, “there is aguy called Jeremy in the Star Ac”. And I went, really? How is he?” Hesitantly she said, “Ahmm, he is really talented, he can play the piano but he shouldn’t sing. He is also very trendy, wearing pants whose waistline so loose it reaches the knees and therefore the crotch part almost touching the floor. He doesn’t seem to know shower. His hair always looks greasy,” (note: this is my own translation). She said something else that I don’t want to put in here. I don’t want Jeremy knocking at our door demanding to see us.
Anyway, another friend Guillaume had the same opinion. So naturally I was intrigued. The following evening I watched TV switching channels hoping to catch a glimpse of now the popular Jeremy. And there right in front of my face I saw him. My eyeballs almost popped out from their sockets when I saw the guy. Not that I have anything against this person. It was just the thought of me calling my son of the same name triggered a cold sweat down my spine. My reactions towards this could be considered refine compared to my husband’s. But that I won’t divulge in here. It is suffice to say that because of some TV personality our son won’t be called Jeremy.
On the other hand, Manu has this stubborn idea that we should follow my family tradition of naming sons and daughters starting with letter L. The problem was, my family is huge and they have exhausted all possible names that started with L. Well, I may be exaggerating but if my son’s name will start with L, then it rather be a good sounding L. But there was no good sounding L that we found. As I said my parents have used them all. If only they have two kids. But we are seven, and L is something hard to define.
Two weeks before I gave birth we still have no name. The pad note that I kept to myself wherever I went to just in case the gods in heavens will lighten me with a good name, was shading its pages fast. Then one day, I gave an ultimatum to my husband. We can’t keep postponing this thing anymore, especially that the Mairie gives us three working days only to declare the birth of our son. Manu put me on a date, well just a drink, and since I was nine-months pregnant I only had fruit juice while him a good wine. We went through my list again, he didn’t have any. Apparently it was understood that I would be the captain of this endeavor.
So back to the list. It may have taken me months to come up with a final one-page list of names, but it took Manu less than five minutes to decide which one. When we have chosen it, we kept it to ourselves. No one else in the family knew, even our friends. For me it was not because we wanted to keep it secret, like some couples do, but because up to that last minute I was never really sure. Come to think of it, even when the nurse was preparing the papers while I was on the delivery table, I wasn’t even sure. When she asked me what’s the name of the baby, I bursted out “David”. I was totally in pain, I didn’t have time to think. And Manu left the room that very moment to check on something. So David it is. We added Pierre after Manu’s father.
When I saw our son and heard him cry, I had this weirdest feeling that the proper noun David just suits him well. And the second, Pierre made it perfect.

First picnic

It was a sunny, lovely day. Parc Bercy is just few minutes away from where we live. We could have just gone there by foot, but having a baby when you go out is another story. It’s like you are going to a place where seasons change every minute. You’ll just have to pack whatever it is that he might be needing: diapers, wipes, water, bottle, formula, heater, towels, extra clothes and more extra clothes!!!
It was double-hard to find a parking space outside as it was the day for Madonna’s concert. So we opted for the parking lot. David was all curious and alert. It’s amazing how he can quickly turn his head from left to right and vice-versa. His eyes were wide open, full of wonderment.
Inside the elevator, mama and dada had their sunglasses on, David sitting on his stroller. The record-breaking event started here, when David looked up to us and he found himself being stared at by two goggly-wide-eyed-creatures. We smiled at him but he started this slow lip-twisted-controlled cry. From his own perspective, he must have been looking at some aliens and wondered “where did my parents go when the elevator door closed”. Realizing this, we quickly took off our sunglasses and consoled him gently. But there was no controlling David. He let out a bawl.
Added to the alien scene, inside the elevator was like being in a toilet that has been pissed on by hundreds of beer-drunken men. It was a death-smell of piss fermenting for a century. If it was disgustingly horrible for us, with our breath reaching just above the throat, it must have been awful, awful, awful for David.
I assume these were the reasons why David just had a terrible picnic in that sunny afternoon. He cried and cried and cried and for the first time since he was born, I begun to wonder if he was at all sick. He was sobbing even until he fell asleep. When he woke up, he started playing around with our friends and with dada. But when he got a good look at each person at the picnic mat, he started out his wail again. A stroll around the park, eased him down. It was time for mama to at least enjoy the remaining time of the picnic. Whew!!