Reading to my son

THIS WEEK’S WINNER

MANILA, Philippines - Elvie Victonette B. Razon-Gonzalez, MD, 29, has just finished her residency training in Internal Medicine in Philippine General Hospital. Right now, she is a full-time wife to John Paul and mom to Paolo Vito, named after Vito Corleone.   She hopes to read more novels and write more poetry, if only Vito will cooperate.

Every mother knows that her day truly begins when her child’s day ends. Morning vanishes surreptitiously in every cat-and-mouse chase with her toddler in his terrible twos and, in moments of rare languor, attempts to bring order to a house torn down by a little giant tornado. Hours creep by with swift suddenness in the day’s paltry ribaldry: mounds of wet diapers, heaps of dirty dishes, stacks of soiled clothes, piles of crumpled shirts, never-ending to-do lists. After a long day, she is flat as a sternum, dry as wheat. Exhausted, she switches on her night light and sleeps within five minutes after her baby does. She is too spent to do anything when she finally could. She settles and falls into an animated, dream-filled sleep that seems to make up for her life’s lacking. At five in the morning, her alarm clock rings unceremoniously and thus her day begins again.

Motherhood pulls one into simultaneous, different directions so that one becomes inadvertently resilient. La Place law states that tension is directly proportional to difference in pressure: the higher the pressure difference, the greater the tension. The greater the tension, the more one tends to stretch himself thinly. Ironically, a mother’s core remains rock-hard, iron-willed. A modern mother finds it even more challenging as she needs to balance career and family like a circus juggler, each ball made up of delicate glass. 

Sometimes, it is tempting to bring home the stresses of work. Dealing with impoverished and sick patients in one of the largest government hospitals in the country can weigh a soul down and muddle my mind. But the moment I set foot in our house and see my two-year-old son running towards me, wobbly knees and a garbled “Nana,” I dissolve instantly. At home, my son is the king and I am just his subject.

At the end of the day, I yearn to open my textbook, do 500-plus power-crunches a day as I have done in my collegiate days, indulge in ranting in my memoir, get lost in Sylvia Plath or complete that short story, but, as fate would have it, as soon as my son was born, I would had none of that. Instead, we build towers with his Mega-blocks, watch Thomas the Train on DVD, dance animatedly to Hotdog with the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. I miss his good ol’ Barney days when he would just sit quietly in his crib and watch while I would skim the pages of my book or scribble ideas in a notepad. Exercise is confined to a bicep curl equivalent of carrying a 10-pound baby and chasing him around. Nowadays, he is unstoppable, hard to put down. At night when he finally settles down, I tuck him in, open the pages of the book I have read, re-read to him ever since he was three months old.

Little Nutbrown Hare, who was going to bed, held on tight to Big Nutbrown Hare’s very long ears.

He wanted to be sure that Big Nutbrown Hare was listening.

“Guess how much I love you,” he said.

 “Oh, I don’t think I could guess that,” said Big Nutbrown Hare.

“This much,” said Little Nutbrown Hare, stretching out his arms as wide as they could go.

Big Nutbrown Hare had even longer arms. “But I love YOU this much,” he said. 

“I love you as high as I can reach,” said Little Nutbrown Hare.

“I love you as high as I can reach,” said Big Nutbrown Hare.

 That is quite high, thought Little Nutbrown Hare. I wish I had arms like that.

Then Little Nutbrown Hare had a good idea.

 He tumbled upside down and reached up the tree trunk with his feet. “I love you all the way up to my toes!” he said.

“And I love you all the way up to your toes,” said Big Nutbrown Hare, swinging him up over his head.

“I love you as high as I can HOP!” laughed Little Nutbrown Hare, bouncing up and down.

“But I love you you as high as I can hop,” smiled Big Nutbrown Hare – and he hopped so high that his ears touched the branches above.

That’s good hopping, thought Little Nutbrown Hare. I wish I could hop like that.

“I love you all the way down the lane as far as the river,” cried Little Nutbrown Hare.

“I love you across the river and over the hills,” said Big Nutbrown Hare.

That’s very far, thought Little Nutbrown Hare. He was almost too sleepy to think any more.

Then he looked beyond the thorn bushes, out into the big dark night. Nothing could be further than the sky.

“I love you right up to the moon,” he said, and closed his eyes.

“Oh that’s far,” said Big Nutbrown Hare. “That is very, very far.”

Big Nutbrown Hare settled Little Nutbrown Hare into his bed of leaves. He leaned over and kissed him good night. Then he lay down close by and whispered with a smile, “I love you right up to the moon – and back.”

Sam McBratney’s book, Guess How Much I Love You, is made up of 20 illustrated pages. Though it is meant to be read by and to children, its simplicity reverberates with a resounding truth that transcends time and age. I love novels with complicated plots, sophisticated language and complex characters, but I always go back to books written for children whenever I seek solace, long to laugh, crave to learn and need to cry my heart out. Antoine Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince. Dr. Seuss’s A Cat in the Hat. Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. They are my loyal friends.

I look at my son as I close the book. He is sleeping quietly. Finally, at nine in the evening, my day finally begins but I am too tired to do anything. He may be too young to read the story, too simple to appreciate the exquisite illustrations or too naïve to grasp the nuances of the lines,   but what I know for sure is that I will not tire of reading it over and over to him, hoping that someday he realizes that he is Little Nutbrown Hare and I am the Big Nutbrown Hare who loves him — to the moon and back.