I'd Rather be in Bohol

I'd rather be in Bohol for a week off.

Escaping to White Island, battling the waves instead of issues.

Having a toasty tan under a warm morning sun, instead of freezing in icebox of an office.

Sleeping off under the sussurating breezes, instead of another overtime tinkering on the web.

I have a week off indeed

An escape indeed, but battling boredom as i battle to breathe

Not in an icebox, but in a cool white room in a hospital block

Trying to sleep with gentle nudges when the nurses knock

I tried not to be here...

Proud of my good health, the 5k runs started when I was 51

No hospitalization alone, since my last ones were having my kids born

I have to humbly concede

That during these golden years,

Despite fruits of my push to succeed

I realize when the mind clears

I can ask for a hand

I can sing with the band

It's ok to so say no

Go with the flow

Positive is constructive

Enjoy the care and love

And be grateful to God above.

Doctor's Orders

Mortality has a way of creeping up on you.

The past week we have been overwhelmed with emotions during the death, wake and funeral of our beloved President Cory Aquino. An icon of democracy, spirituality, succumbing to painful cancer, but whose death has united the fractious Filipinos.

Then the sad news of a dear colleague suddenly being afflicted by aneurysm, and later, the more tragic murder of another colleague in his post abroad. Life is precious...

Personally, the realization is more subtle.

While I shed copious tears during the wake and funeral of Tita Cory, I also shed buckets of sweat. Turns out that I have indeed reached a woman's milestone -- the infamous hot flashes. Imagine, staying on a four-hour queue way past midnight, being buffeted by intermittent monsoon rains, and sweating. No wonder I couldn't get good sleep lately, tossing and turning, feeling hot on cold stormy nights.

Talking of sleep, my recently acquired wordgames in my new cellphone has kept me awake. I can boast that I have reached Text Twist Genius Level, having completed more than 5,000 words and reaching Level 158 and still at it. Triumph achieved at the price of a good night's rest, foregone noonday naps, and lost commuting nods.

Then this morning, during a much awaited respite from work, while enduring a monotonous session on reproductive health, it finally happened.

First was the tingling sensation on my left arm, like having pins on my sides, gradually centering on my chest. Then feeling spaced out, I suddenly stopped gabbing with my long-lost but recently promoted friend.

My mind went into overdrive, as my consciousness became garbled.
A heart attack?! Suddenly all those emails, articles, tips came rushing in.
A menopausal woman, recently gained 10 pounds, now more sedentary....
I'm too young to .....

Good thing I was with a group with so many doctors in attendance in a Department of Health facility. The gracious funny lady anesthesiologist-turned family planning advocate from Valenzuela took me aside. I knew the look in her eyes, but still she regaled me with inanities, forcing me to laugh: No wonder I was stressed I had no sex life !

170/110!!!!

OMG! No wonder I was spaced out. Shoo! get out of this venue, go to a hospital.

Good thing I had our office driver and another staff with me. Off to the nearest hospital.

At the hospital, I was so fortunate that there were no other patients and was spared the sight of gory traffic accident victims or tragic heart attack cases. The emergency room was clear and doctors were available. They gave me the works: BP, ECG, and the Catapres under my tongue. Finally 130/80.

Ma'am, we recommend you be confined, and there is something in your ECG.

Confined?! Just to wait for a doctor doing the rounds? But the real concern was that our Health Insurance Provider's account was suspended by the hospital. And anyway my house is a virtual hospital with state-of-the-art gadgets: oxygen tanks, nebulizers, electronic bp thingies courtesy of my dad and mom.

Good thing there was an available cardiologist who took me in, so I can go out, out-patient, that is. Great and competent doctor, got my history pat, gave me medicines and a long list of tests. And a a result of the medical representatives swarming in the anteroom, I was gifted with samples of my medicines and a discount card.

Hmmmm, welcome to the world of maintenance medicines.

Reaching home I realized my marketing habits must be rehabilitated as I sought low-fat food before before I could take my first dose. And I had to be reminded that the bed was for sleeping, not for internet surfing.

And now this is where experience has its rewards. Both my 78-year old Dad and 75-year old Mom had so much wisdom to impart. It was so cute and quaint, that it was my Dad teaching me how to use his nifty blood pressure machine.

87/62...91/65...90/60... Is this machine broken?
150/100..145/100...that's my dad's readings

It turns out I have to watch the meds -- my bp fell with even a small dose.

In the end, the doctor's orders are : stay out of work, get some sleep, and don't take the meds (too much).

Thanks Doc!

NOW WHAT?

Sitting here, counting the seconds and the minutes to my half-century mark.
FIFTY! OMG! Where did time go?
Taking stock of the gray on my head, the flesh succumbing to gravity, the deepening creases from laughter and tears, the intermittent hormonal rages ....hmmmmm

Life has been very good.

What was I thinking?

Forty five years ago, I could not answer the question, "What do I want to be when I grow up?" The question was too profound, too complicated and interfered with my cartoon-watching.

Forty years ago, it was how to grow up to be a beautiful, sexy lady.
Quite a challenge considering that I was a dark, geeky student with unruly hair.

Forty years later I am now a dark, geeky, lady with unruly hair, but who was able to pull off back-to-back wins at the office Bikini Open.

Not bad.

Thirty five years ago, I wanted to change the world. I wanted to join the bomb-throwing radicals and become an activist. I did not want to be rich, I vehemently fought all efforts to make me a doctor because I wanted to serve the people. Serve the farmers, although my meager experience was gardening in school yielding sickly vegetables. I wanted to overthrow the government.

And guess what! Thirty years ago I got my wish. I was enrolled as an agricultural engineering student at our country's premiere Agricultural University, and became an active member of the Student Council. I was President of the Ladies' Dormitory, I led protests rallies. Then I was in too deep. Deep as in total immersion in the countrysides. I left school to the grief of my mother and embraced the farmers in the rice fields and coconut plantations of Laguna. I lived as a fugitive, and had a love affair that I had to hide. I preached change, the need to go against government, the need to unite. I learned poverty, hunger and back breaking labor, and the wonderful soul of the village. I lost God in the process...

And I was captured, subjected to torture, almost raped...but not enough to earn bragging rights.

Now I still have my scars -- the ones on my wrist when I tried in vain to escape pain by taking my life by trying to cut myself with shards of glass. It didn't work, but the scars are now my battle scars, reminders of my radical past.

My love was dead, killed in an encounter with the military.
By then I was an angry woman, stymied by the fact that I cannot go back to the mountains to fight for freedom.

Thirty years, my resurrection to the world, back to school, with my back to the underground, I had to forge on. Now what?

I went to school and had work on the side, trying to hide my wrists because I do not wish to start a long story...I was too mature for my classmates, I was too adept in field work, I was too disinterested in the growing student movement (been there, done that). I got good grades since I had been doing the field work as a rebel and put my passion in discourses and organizing work.

The Marcos Regime was in its last legs and blatantly had Ninoy Aquino assassinated leading more people to protests, and the political opposition to rally behind Ninoy's widow, Cory (with whom I share the same birthday).

At the quarter century mark, "What do I want to be?"

At this point I just wanted to get married quick. I was pregnant with my new fiance, Alex, my officemate. I wanted to continue with Graduate School, the recourse during recession. I wanted to have a family, after all I have already a lot of silverware in my hope chest.

Thus I jumped into the whirlpool of matrimony and maternity. I had to do it alone, with my husband working abroad in Africa. I learned the nuances of childcare and domesticity. One son, one daughter, and then another. Urban and Regional Planning? I should have taken Family Planning.

Eventually after the toil and the lessons of failure and redemption, I finally earned a PhD (Professional Housewife and Domestic) and three MAs (May Asawa, May Anak, MA in Urban and Regional Planning). I had three kids, a husband working abroad, I became a stay- at-home mom who breastfed her kids while her Grad School classmates were copying her copious notes and researches.

Twenty years ago, "What do I want to be?"

Have a good job. With kids weaned and the reality of sustaining a home and providing eduction for my kids looming, I headed out to look for a job.

I found a career. A career in development work. A career in government. The Rebel was now in the bureaucracy she vowed to overthrow. Now I had to put substance to the chants and into the ideology that shaped my youth. Community development, housing development, urban development, capacity building , networks, technology, jargon, promotion -- I was blooming!

But there was price to pay, the death of a marriage. While I was enjoying the challenges of development work, my husband became jealous and depressed. Home from years working abroad, he found a harried wife, so he found solace in crack.

Fifteen years ago, all I wanted was for the hurt to go away. I wanted my husband to wake up and find work, or just get out of my way. He eventually did and cleaned up. And at the eleventh hour, just as he was leaving to work in the US, we finally reconciled.

Ten years ago, I wanted to balance career and rearing three kids as a single mom. I wanted that they stay in school and stay out of trouble. I wanted to continue with my work with the changes in management.

I got it -- a year off work to supervise my kids. A year off because I was fired from the job that gave me so much satisfaction. I had a year to languish in self pity, and wallow in depression. But God gave me comfort and opened my eyes to what I missed -- to love myself and be my own advocate. I learned to pray, to serve, and to laugh again.

Before the year was over, my tormentors were gone, and I was reinstated to my work with full back wages. Not only that, my daughter finished at the top of her class!

Five years ago, I wanted to continue with my career, my profession, and to see my kids in University. I also wanted to find another love.

My husband died suddenly eight years ago. He died in the United States, on the day they were going to bury his 93-year old grandmother. His death tore my heart, all the regrets, the what-could-have, and all the vague dreams.

New Love? Oh my! Not for want of admirers, I found out it was a whole new ballgame. Him? This one? That one? I asked my friends to find me a date. I learned to drink, carouse, and karaoke just to be one of the boys. Only to find out I would rather have them as friends.

Honestly, at my age, the single ones in the pool are either gay, womanizers, too sick, OLD, or with emotional baggage. Well.....I just might eat my words, but that's what it is.

And gratefully, all my kids were able to get into the State University, saving their mom a ton in tuition fees. They are great kids, rather young man and ladies, who now beat their mom in things technology and even debates.

My Son finished school in record time and is now working with my colleagues. Oh my! And I learned too late that he joined an activist fraternity, led marches, and became an officer in several campus organizations.

My daughter again surprised me by graduating Cum Laude and is now working in some esoteric consultancy firm that churns out analysis of the impact of media messages.

And my youngest daughter is now climbing mountains, more mountains than her own mother, but with a mountaineering group and, as she assured me, intent in finishing school. She is also avid environmentalist. And much to my surprise and everyone else's, graduated this Summer Cum Laude. Now I don't see her at home because she up some slopes or doing the marathons.

There you have it, a long story.

NOW WHAT?

FIFTY? GREY HAIR? FANTASTIC! BRING IT ON!
Next summer, I must win the Bikini Open at all cost!