Of Funerals and Night Terror

One year ago in May 2016 when we first brought Thirdy here in Singapore for vacation, he experienced what pediatricians call "Night Terror." It might sound like a horror movie title, but in some sense that was what we, the parents (especially me) felt after he inconsolably cried for 30 minutes or so while he was asleep! We were sleeping peacefully when all of a sudden, he started screaming. I woke up with a start and tried to soothe him by giving him the breast (the boob has always calmed him down), but it didn't work. I brought him to the bathroom and turned on the shower because he liked to catch the water, but he was closing his eyes. By then, his Dad and I felt so helpless. We tried to wake him up, but he just kept flailing his arms. After about 30 minutes of incessant crying, he calmed down and welcomed the breast. A quick search at Google about what just transpired led me to Night Terror. Here's the link that helped me.

http://kidshealth.org/en/parents/terrors.html

So the cause of night terror is overstimulation during daytime. But the superstitious in me said it's because of the Chinese funeral under the HDB Building. Everyday, we would pass by the funeral vigil and I would smell the burning incense and the hair-raising chants. It was my first time to witness a Chinese funeral vigil and of course, I found it weird. I was convinced that the funeral caused Thirdy's night terror.

Fast forward to May 2017 and we are here again on a Dependents' Pass. Again, there was a funeral vigil under our HDB for about a week. We are on the 2nd floor, so everytime they're burning something, the smoke drifts up to our window. On the day of the funeral, I heard a melancholic Chinese music and from my window and saw the family of the deceased walking with the casket (inside the funeral car) of their loved one in their mourning clothes. As I watched them in their grief, I could not help but feel sad for the family. I even shed a tear. Grief is a universal feeling, after all.

Thirdy no longer has night terror attacks, and after witnessing that funeral, I can say that perhaps, his night terror was not because he was haunted by the dead. It was probably just a nasty case of overstimulation.

 A funeral at the basement of our HDB (Home Development Board)

NOTE: This is weird but Thirdy had another bout of night terror (the worst, so far) AFTER I published this post. Coincidence?

Teaching Babies (and Parents) To be More Human at Balay Binhi

In my mid-twenties, I was a snooty graduate student who liked to toss philosophical words in any word salad essay like idealism, empiricism, and theism. But my favorite one was the word 'humanistic'. And for awhile I claimed to be a humanistic person because I adhered to the philosophy of humanism. To make it academic sounding, I'd tell people (who cared to ask about my teaching philosophy) that I am into the existential-humanism philosophy, which basically means that human beings are inherently good and that they carve their own destiny.

I am now in my early-thirties, a full-time mother and a wife. I have since stopped being snooty because after almost a decade of being in the academe, I really don't have anything to show that I am scholarly. My rather mediocre resume will prove just that. But I have learned so much from my short stint as an elementary teacher and from my 9 years of teaching in a university. For one, no matter how much private and public schools in our country claim to mold the character of our youth, we still end up with self-serving leaders (and they come from the so-called Ivy League schools here).

I still claim to be a humanist, but what does it mean to be one? I found some answers in my son's toddler school in Leganes called Balay Binhi.

Here are other lessons I learned from this little community of nurturers:

1. Love is best spelled as T-I-M-E.

Every article I have come across about how to rear a genius or how to have well-adjusted kids seem to boil down to this simple advice - spend time with your kids. Nothing beats having Mom around to listen or Dad helping little Johnny fix his bike. Everybody knows love is best spelled as t-i-m-e,  but it's difficult to practice it when you're a career mom. This is one of the reasons why I was happy to let go of my job.

2. Exposure to gadgets at an early age do more harm than good.

And not just gadgets, mind you. Include battery-operated toys, as well. I have personally witnessed how pushing buttons on a plastic toy to prompt animal sounds and blinking lights caused Thirdy to become a zombie. TV, tablets, and cellphones not only damage a child's vision, it also damages his brain causing him to become addicted to such.

3. A child's job is to play, not study.

From 0-7 years old according to Steiner (founder of Waldorf Education), a child should be taught that the world is beautiful, not a structured place where spewing the multiplication table and the alphabet backwards are more superior tasks than climbing trees and playing with mud. And how do we teach them that the world is beautiful? By nurturing their imagination. But how? By play, of course. Period.

4. Early academics will not make your child any smarter.

Sure, you might find a 2-year-old who already knows how to read a genius, but will this little bit of a talent matter to him after 30 years when he is struggling to find a job because he has poor interpersonal skills? I think what matters more is for our children to become highly functional adults, not someone who can memorize a textbook from cover to cover.

5. Parents need to be educated, too.

This is what I truly appreciate from our sessions at Balay Binhi. The parents are the ones who are educated and the children are allowed to just be children.

And the humanistic part? Balay Binhi focuses on the head, heart, and hands of a child. They make sure that none is too big nor too small than the other. Now, that's one lesson in not being snooty.

Change is Coming!

May 1. Isn't that Labor Day? It's also the day we're going to move to a new country. I feel apprehensive yet also excited. We will be together as a family and we want our little boy to grow up in a safe and healthy environment. We will be together, yet we will be expats. It's going to be quite an adjustment for me, too. I'll be a full-time mom and housewife. It's going to be a giant leap from the career woman (single days) to a working mom mode that I did. But I know this is the best decision that I have made so far. It's for my family's best interests. I'm a mom and a wife now, so family comes first.

Back to Work

My 6 month leave is officially over. I reinstated last April 1st, and incidentally the university graduation fell on the same day, so I didn't have a choice but to attend it. Actually, I had a choice. The HR advised me to take a sick leave, but God forbid I don't want to lie about being sick! So, there, I attended the graduation. I want to show my face to the bosses that I am indeed back, and I'm not going anywhere until the first semester is over. I intend to resign after that because my husband and I have other plans, and Thirdy is learning to walk by then. I'd like to be with him every step of the way (pun intended).

So for the next two months (April and May), I am going to prepare my lessons and finish the paper. I feel pumped up and excited! It's good to be back.

Birthing in 2015

This is supposed to be a 'year farewell' post - y'know, that kind of post people write to enumerate the highlights of their year, to reminisce the good times, and to simply say goodbye (to 2015). So, I'd like to say something about my 2015 before I formally publish 2016 posts.

What I would like to say here is that 2015 was when I gave birth three times:

1) I gave life to my writing again - resuscitated or resurrected is the more appropriate word, perhaps.

2) I gave birth to my little boy - Achilles "Thirdy" Mendoza Villa III at 3:30 AM on August 3, 2015 at The Medical City.

3) I gave birth to a new blog, dedicated to movies only. I would like to be a film critic, so this is the avenue for me to hone my craft. https://cinemomiloilo.wordpress.com/

I look forward to 'raising' my babies this 2016. Cheers to 2015 and hello to 2016!

Memories of Film Crit

Memory # 1

I remember reading Antonio Sison's  review of the Italian film A Beautiful Life in the Catholic magazine, Kerygma. I was in High School then. I was impressed with the way he wrote it that I also looked for the movie. Sadly, I managed to have a copy but in Italian - it didn't have any subtitles. But I did understand the movie's plot. I supposed reading that article was my introduction to film criticism and when I started becoming interested in this field, I looked up Antonio Sison's name and I'm glad that his other film reviews are available online.

Memory # 2

I watched the movie the Amazing Spiderman with a friend in college, and I remember cringing at the movie's plot and the actors' acting chops. I told myself I was going write something about the movie but it never materialized.

Memory # 3

I remember watching Toy Story 3 in 2013 and ended up crying at the ending that I started writing about it. I still didn't know how I was going to go about the essay that I ended up not finishing the whole thing.

So here I am as a film critic wannabe. Everytime  think about those memories, I wonder why writing about films never occurred to me right away. After years of wondering what I was going to write about, I recently just heard my calling. The skies didn't open and no chorus of angels came out. It just hit me one day that I have a knack for criticism. I could write book reviews but I can't finish a book in one sitting alone because I now have a demanding baby, but with a movie, you can give me 3 hours and I'll be done with the movie and THE review.

I am reading other film critics' work notably Roger Ebert and his correspondents, so I could improve my craft. But man, if there's a so-called room for improvement, mine would be as big as a mansion's.

MILK by Noemi Weis

When a baby arrives to this world it brings us great emotion. We know that we are bringing a new life into this world. It is a victory.

Noemi Weis’ moving documentary begins with this message from an Argentinean palteira (midwife). In the film’s website, Weiss shared that working in the human rights field, she was inclined to examine the beginning of life. She first started with the idea of infant feeding because it is our first food. She said she could not talk about infant feeding without talking about birth, thus the film shows cliché yet realistic scenes of women giving birth naturally or thru Caesarean section. The subjects of the film are from different continents, but all share a common role – motherhood. Because of the film’s movement from one country to the next, from a French mother of three to an American pregnant teenager, from a mystical mountain in Argentina to a concrete jungle of Washington D.C., from an upscale hospital corridor to a shanty in the Philippines, it might feel like riding a bus while looking at the passing images. You know where to go and what to expect, but the dizzying speed makes you want to look the other way.

Weis knows where she’s standing and as a filmmaker she tried to be objective about her purpose without being too pushy or preachy about her documentary’s message. In this film, she wanted us to see the importance of breastfeeding, but at the same time, she democratically interviewed women who also chose to use formula milk and bottle feeding. The film gave ample viewing time on the wisdom of the midwives in Argentina (Weiss’ native country), and a limited one on a C-section. In one scene, a woman shares her harrowing experience during delivery (her OB-GYN tore her amniotic sac with the use of her nail), and so we get the idea that the film also promotes natural delivery. This is perhaps understandable, as women who deliver naturally have greater chances of making their newborns latch immediately after birth, and thus breastfeed successfully. There were also some staged scenes so as to produce the desired effect.

Because of its rather scattered way of cinematic movement, one may get confused as to the direction of all these women’s narratives. Weiss may have successfully tried to stand apart from her respondents, but her film’s victory can be considered Phrygian in some areas.

But Weis is also a brilliant storyteller. She weaves each woman’s story into a beautiful tapestry of universal truth – that human milk is the best food that a woman can give to her newborn. Viewers may have taken this truth for granted for some time, but after seeing Filipina mothers feeding their infants formula milk (donations from WHO) after Typhoon Haiyan’s wrath because they thought it’s more superior than their breastmilk, one can only be appalled at the ignorance of these women. And one will also be angry at the multibillion business of formula milk as they take advantage of these poor mothers.

In a sense, Weis has achieved her purpose of educating the viewers about the international milk code, and the heartbreaking scenes of Filipino malnourished children will make you want to reach out for that Kleenex you didn’t have any intention of using before the film started.

The last scene shows a group of African tribal mothers singing joyfully. It is a shot full of wisdom, beauty, and victory for women. In essence, this is what the film Milk is trying to deliver to us, and it has succeeded.