single yet not alone

i discovered early this month that the real heroes of my world are single mothers. they have to juggle the pieces of their lives and still present a "whole" person to the world. their world revolves around their children, they have their own lives to think about... and frankly, how they are able to put all these into one day is an astounding feat.

i have had to be a single mother for only 18 days this month (i cheated on 2 when i begged my husband to come back from paris following a series of nasty bullying incidents to our son in school and in el shaddai) and although i have had to be so for a little more than 2 weeks, i can say that the experience has stretched me in a way that not even my JVP year did not, when i was single and with my partner from zamboanga.

suddenly i am no longer afraid to stay in belgium until 2008. i have proven to myself, to my husband, and to my son (who needs no proof of my mommy-ness) that i can take care of a household, of another life that depends solely on me, and still manage to get myself out into the world for brief snatches of time. so what if i cannot find the time to read as i would like (i am only a bit more than halfway through tolstoy's chatty anna karenina), or check out the books i need to complete my thesis before january (my promoter will be asking me to go to ghent next week to meet with her and i have read nil on my topic!), or even do a little exercise by way of walking or swimming perhaps (more far-fetched now that we have moved to our new apartment which is farther away from the sports centre than our previous apartment)! there is a full-filling sensation at the end of each bone-tiring day that you have been able to cook, clean up, get the kid his requisite care and tucked in bed with hugs and kisses... i tell you, irreplaceable. completely so.

i would now never exchange such a harrowing month of being a single mom for anything in the world. really. i feel the spoiled pampered lara fading more and more into the corners of the past. for me, this is one of the biggest accomplishments of my life so far, and these are life lessons i never learned from my family, one of the most spoiled entities in the world. now i can tell my kuya (who has had to survive on his own, and in a foreign country, since he was 20), who has been telling me all these years that i lead a spoiled and pampered life, "kuya, i know now what you meant! and i have survived, and will survive more in the days and years to come!"

what more can i say... only this: although single mothers are the unsung heroes in my book, i still do not consider myself among the ranks of those single moms who have actual careers to juggle with their home responsibilities. right now, i am only just beginning to enjoy and learn the ropes of being a housewife, or more aptly, housemom. :)

and here's a little tickler to end my post. mikka has been sick for more than a week with a viral infection that metamorphosed into something bacterial. since S went away to rome last saturday to deliver yet another paper at a nostra aetate conference, i have been cowardly enough to keep mikka next to me at night (even when he insists on lying on his own bed at night), begging him to keep me company owing to my fear of ghosts in our new apartment (i can swear that someone pinched my toes our third night here, and promptly asked a friend priest to bless the house the very next day). i have also used the pretext of being his nurse, administering his needed antibiotics until thursday, to keep him home from school, too. for some reason, i am more needy of his presence than he is of mine. i need my son! i just want him nearby while i am spouse-less this week... and frankly, my dear, i don't give a damn if it makes me look like a pathetic mommy clinging to her eldest child. hehehe basta mahal na mahal ko yang anak ko at ayaw kong mag isa dito sa bahay! pag ok na kami ng resident mumu namin, siguro kakayanin ko nang mag-isa. :)