GRATITUDE

Generosity and selflessness being my most revered attributes in any person, I have been keen to be vocally appreciative of everything my little boy gives me if only to encourage him to do more of these acts of altruism. Back when he was a little over a year old, he used to stuff dried leaves or his elephant rattle into my bag, which I usually found only when I got to the office or to lawschool. I thanked him for these queer presents because I knew that, in his baby ways, these were his expressions of veneration and love for his one and only mommymoo.

It was his latest “gift” that brought on this introspection. A few days after the last of his chicken pox scabs has fallen off, my son passed me the varicella strain. See, chicken pox at twenty-five years of age can be the Hades of one’s self-esteem. There was hardly any Good in my Good Friday, which I spent itching and bitching over the demeaning blisters. It didn’t help that my brilliant neighbors dwelled on chicken pox urban legends, that I literally house-arrested myself (curtains down, doors closed and positively baking) for an entire week.

I was dead set on playing victim for the duration of my extended penitence. Then this one afternoon, Nico reached for a hug which I naturally refused to return. My heart just broke when I saw his dejected pout and marooning little nose. This boy was going to cry over being rejected by a hideous parent-beast! It just hit me that however un-glorified I might look or unpopular I might be, there will always be this little soul to look up to me with the reverence of a pious man to a saint.

Seeing the other half-fill of my glass also made me realize that chicken pox isn’t so bad when you have an amazing husband running around for you, doing crazy things like getting you Gatorade in the middle of the night and buying you shoes to alleviate the blow to the morale. Then there was also the fact that I was given the perfect excuse to REST, to spend two solid weeks without the feel of denims or the compulsion of having to save sick leaves for the rainy days. What with my impending Darna-mode semester (work+school+apprenticeship+domestic stuff), the past two weeks made sure I got nothing but bed-ridden bliss; that not even the slightest effort of having to go to the mall (thereby spreading germs) would have cost me precious energy and muscle power.

And so to mark the first day out of my 18-day hiatus, I am thanking my son for his gift of the varicella virus. The little punk surely has a twisted sense of charity.