We haven’t had the chance to watch the latest Kung Fu Panda movie but at least Marcus got to have a different, cheaper one, way to experience it.
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I am Mr. Ping, Marcus is Po.
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Mood: 3/10 Honks! (He has asked the question.)
We are not done talking about dreams yet. There is probably no other place where Marcus would like to be and it’s not where most would go to. At the same age, kids in general would say Disneyland, some Universal Studio, some Legoland. But none of these are Marcus’ choice. Where then? London. Yes, London. If he had a bucket list this would be among his things to do, we bet it could be his topmost even. His obsession with this place amuses us.
Firstly, he wants to meet one of his YouTube idols, DanTDM. Given his own free will, he plans to see him and his pugs. Just like that. For Marcus, things were as simple as just dropping by to say hello, like how he now does with this cousins wherein he visits them almost every day since we transferred. He spends so much time on YouTube channel of DanTDM that he feels his favorite YouTuber is no celebrity but rather someone ordinary who he has access to in short notice. Oh by the way, our son’s such a big fan that he wants to color his hair blue just like Dan did. I told him he can when he turns ten. (Two years to go and I hope he forgets.)
Then what’s a visit to London if you haven’t seen the Queen? So this one too is part of Marcus’ agenda. He once asked if he would be allowed to enter the palace to see the Queen. We told him it isn’t easy to get past the guards but he was insistent and it seems like he already has a plan. “I will sing We Will Rock You, that’s by the Queen,” he stressed. Well, he’s got a different Queen in mind, Freddy Mercury would be proud.
Besides singing his way in to the palace, he has other tests for the famous Buckingham Palace guards. Having seen it once on Mr. Bean’s cartoon show, he would like to prove if they do stay still while on duty despite being surrounded by annoying tourists. This reminds me of one of his classmates who once said she remembers Marcus whenever she watches Mr. Bean. Yup, he could be as animated and funny at times. When not being stubborn, he’s a natural comedian.
There was also a day when while undergoing his session with a local reflexology therapist or manghihilot, he saw on Pinoy Abroad, a local TV network afternoon series, the familiar London underground sign that he sees a lot in Modern Warfare 3. He said he wants to see the actual place to check if it does look like the one in his Call of Duty game. Yup, I know, the game’s rated M so sue me.
So how do we get him to London? We can’t for now but Marcus is keeping his fingers crossed that I win the lotto. Far-fetched but sounds like the only plan.
***
Our son seems to be bent on getting his travel funds. Last night he asked his mommy if he can help finish her freelance job. Hmm.
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Mood: 2/10 Honks! (Today we are committed to fight the summer heat. Home-made halu-halo coming.)
We have stopped taking note of Marcus’ milestones. We consider him as any regular kid except that he cannot walk. In the past few months since his last check up, nothing seems to have happened significantly which for me and my wife is good enough. Actually, things have been relatively normal for us. There is this one though that we have been wondering if or when it would happen. Now it did.
Marcus has started dreaming, well, at least he already started telling us what they were. Not until this year, he has never told us about his dreams. I find it weird that he doesn’t have any–not even a nightmare. It is just so unbelievable that he won’t have one with all the things going around him like video games, movies, stories, school, toys, flawed parents, and any other factors that would easily form good or bad images or a combo of both while he is on REM. I was thinking then that either he is among those who soon forget their dreams once they open their eyes, or he opts to lie all about it. Whatever that is, I was sort of worried that he does not have a dream to tell.
My wife said that she would sometimes observe Marcus talking in his sleep but he couldn’t (or wouldn’t) recall what he dreamt of when asked about it in the morning. Soon, however, we would hear one from him.
The first instance he disclosed his dream was one that’s outright scary. Obviously a nightmare. He told his mommy about his dream where God is bad so much so that he is now afraid of seeing that ‘God’ again. We have already assured him that it couldn’t be so, that it couldn’t be the God we know. He has not described what he saw and I do not want to ask either (I had nightmares of holy statues and figures in the past and they’re the worse ones).
But he had happy ones, too. Whew. He excitedly told us one day that he dreamt of being able to walk and run around and I can very well feel how it must be like for him–it’s like me dreaming of flying freely just to wake up and realize that I can’t. Come to think of it, it was rather a bittersweet dream but it is a dream I am sure he would always like to have.
***
Some of Marcus’ dreams are actually coming true. While he dreams of being on a plane to London, he will soon be on one but to another destination.
***
Mood: 2/10 Honks! (Will catch some sleep. Will dream.)
Scratches, scratches, and more scratches. It has been more than a month since I have been dealing with lots of it, left and right, front and back. Some of unknown reason, some almost obvious. The most recent is a huge scrape on my front left bumper which I noticed after we returned home from watching Batman V Superman. It is the nastiest so far since we had the car as applying rubbing compound just didn’t fix it this time.
A close inspection points to only one culprit–the wall perpendicular to our parking space. When the snafu happened wasn’t immediately clear though. Initially, I thought it was on our way back–it was my first time to back up into the tight space on a night time plus Marcus kept on annoying me with his series of questions about Batman, past and present. However, things begin to fit like a puzzle the next morning.
Curious where the bumper actually hit, I checked my sister-in-law’s wall again when I gave Marcus a stroll in his wheelchair. Nothing was obvious at first, the wall and its paint seem intact just like after I checked last night.
A few seconds of head scratching (that word again) soon pointed to a tell-tale clump of gray paint. I felt like Frank Hardy. The scrape shows that the bumper made contact on my way out which explains why a guy at the car wash where we stopped by before proceeding to the mall asked what happened to the car. I dismissed his inquiry, didn’t even bother to check the car, thinking he was referring to a damage on the rear door–one that happened more than three years ago in the same area but due to a tree’s fault.
So it wasn’t Marcus after all. My ego scratched.
I do cringe at this new unsightly mark on my front end but I know that I’ll get over it soon. It’s just like how it was with some other scratches made by envious neighbors, playful kids, careless shoppers, disappointed beggars, reckless bikers and motorcycle riders and cats, dogs, and chickens included. Name it, the car has it.
The bright side here is that I had something to draft at a parking lot while waiting for someone. I offered to drive for my brother-in-law and his family for the wedding they attended to this Easter Sunday which by the way is the main reason I decided to leave the house and have the car washed on the afternoon the car scraped the wall–and the very next day after I said the car survived unscathed its week of being parked in a tight space. Spoke too soon. Ti abi.
***
Not all scratch stories are the same.
The day we moved into our new house, we observed details that seem off: the windows’ screen frames were interchanged; bits of screen were in the sliding window’s rail; a portion of the wall had uneven gray patches; and, the front door had scratches on the bottom part. All seem to be hints of sloppy workmanship showing up. But it wasn’t.
We soon learned that someone left the dog unnoticed inside the house and it eventually panicked and tried to escape and made a total mess like the Tasmanian Devil. Fortunately, help was available in short notice and everything was restored somehow. The dog now stays just outside our front door serving as our own sentry.
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Mood: 2/10 Honks! (Back online. We now have internet connection.)
The day we leave our old house eventually came. Waiting for it to happen made the past seven months after we started the deal feel like a year but the last few weeks were the hardest for me, if not for the three of us. Everything was running thin, patience and finances. Silent prayers became more frequent than before.
Luckily, my in-laws did not hesitate to take charge while the payment for our house is still pending. Some extended financial help, the others manpower, and some provided whatever support to keep the house construction run parallel along our selling process.
The paranoid in me would like to believe that the construction was made covert from our other neighbors, although the sight of me every Saturday coming in and out of the house to load our trusty sedan with boxes would have been pretty obvious that something was going on. Everything was like clockwork every weekend: I take a relatively short sleep coming from graveyard shift; we box; we go transfer stuffs. This activity carried on early December until the second week of March. The only time we stopped was during Christmas vacation. (Thank God, I was never sick but Marcus skipped two weeks of tagging along as he had asthma attack later part of January and needs to stay behind with her mommy to recover.)
Now the fruit of everyone’s labor is finished. What started as a draft on yellow paper is now a house and this new house is now our new home. While it isn’t a lot bigger, it is definitely better than before as we designed it to give access to Marcus as much as possible by having wider doors, bigger toilet, ramp, etc. It is still doesn’t second floor–we didn’t want can’t afford it. Admittedly, there are flaws, not one house is perfect anyway, and the longer I stare at it, the more I see the would-have-better-ifs–most I could live with but others would need to be corrected soon. That’s probably how it goes when one moves and starts all over again.
For now, the whole process is reversed. There are still boxes to be unpacked, stuffs that need to be found among the pile of packages but these are problems I’d like to have. Yes, we have moved out of our home for almost 16 years in Cavite and now reside in Batangas. New neighbors, new routine, new life.
***
After my first five working days coming from this new place, the car remains unharmed. Few more backing in and driving out and I should get used to parking in our tight space.
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Mood: 1/10 Honks! (Finally, a normal Saturday.)
“I’m not afraid, to take a stand, everybody, come take my hand, we’ll walk this road together, through the storm, whatever weather, cold or warm, just letting you know that you’re not alone…” Such powerful words from a great hit. While I sing along to this song whenever it’s on the radio, I didn’t learn about its full lyrics until I searched it online for it was yesterday when I heard Sparsh Shah sing it on a video that has gone viral. He is just a 12-year old boy.
Sparsh Shah isn’t a regular lad though. The boy from New Jersey has Osteogenesis Imperfecta which is a genetic disorder that results to extremely fragile bones. Confined in a wheelchair, Sparsh sings his powerful rendition of Not Afraid which is an original piece by Eminem. His parents made sure the bad words aren’t included.
Videos like this inspire but I have yet to show it to Marcus who recently has become more expressive of his music preferences. Besides being unable to be mobile unaided, there’s another similarity between him and Sparsh, their liking of songs from a rap artist. Marcus is a fan of at least two Macklemore hits. I don’t know though if sooner or later he will come with his own video of Can’t Hold Us.
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Among the obvious milestones before Marcus turns eight this year is that he sings more often than before. Although he does not have a full grasp on the lyrics, I would catch him singing a line or two while in the car or while seated in front of the computer. His favorite music genre is broad but the usual influences are our car’s preset FM stations, video games, and YouTube subscriptions. He sings or hums It’s Raining Tacos, Downtown, and Shut Up and Dance to name a few. This week, he has been asking for Eye of the Tiger and Verge. Check out Marcus’ Playlist page to see songs he like/d (he refuses to believe he used to go crazy over Barney and Ben 10 songs).
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Mood: 2/10 Honks! (One more week and I would be closer to Budong’s pan de sal.)
God has a plan for everyone. I’d like to believe, I am starting to believe so. Time and again we would become stubborn and insist that we are the master of our own destiny. We will make things happen, we want them done our way. We want to show people that we can, we become too proud of our own capacity. Sometimes, such may be good and rewarding if everything goes well. But what if it doesn’t?
Naturally, frustration sets in when we fail to achieve what we look forward to. When failure happens, we begin to question our existence, our purpose, although each person copes differently. There are people who do well, somehow, despite things not going their way. Others go into depression and sometimes with worse consequences. Some people lose their self-worth and go to the point of no return.
To keep our sanity intact we should recognize that there is someone divine, someone who is more powerful than us and anyone else. Someone who is omnipotent, one who is more powerful than our problems. Yes, there is a supreme being, there is God. God, however, works differently and that his timeline may or may not be aligned with what we expect to happen.
God will test our patience, he will test our faith. I know that he has seen us fail his tests, he has seen us looking up with clenched fist, with teary eyes, with a broken heart. He has seen us lose our faith in him and his plans. But like a good teacher, he knows when to take over and make us realize the lessons we failed to see because we do not want to listen and open our mind and heart to his will, because after all we are weak humans.
We are doubting Thomas. We will continually become impatient with God when we do not feel his presence but he will also continue to prove that we shouldn’t, that he is always around. We just need to keep the faith and believe that God has plans for each of us and we should embrace it for whatever that is, whenever it happens. When we open our mind and communicate with him we will see that he places the puzzle pieces perfectly and realize his plan is indeed the best plan there is.
***
Woke up very early and these mellow Sunday songs in the background do help me finish this piece and the steaming hot pan de sal is making me more impatient to place the last period.
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Mood: 2/10 Honks! (Helped kill pig. Yup, we are in Batangas.)
Google recently launched a search engine that is kid-friendly. My wife said that she has tested it and had me try it myself this morning. Unlike the regular Chrome, or any other browsers, Kiddle does not auto-fill which means the danger of our kids typing a misspelled word or phrase and with SEO taking over to suggest options is over. Of course, Google also placed filters to allow only sites with age appropriate content to appear. If our tech savvy kid would accept Kiddle as his main and only browser is another story.
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Mood: 3/10 Honks! (Check baby check.)
“Daddy, do you love me?” While at the Shell SLEX station just last Sunday, Marcus, whom I was carrying as usual held my head with both his hands and asked me the question. That was the first time I heard him ask it. I can see his smile just inches away from my face but I sensed he needs an immediate answer. Of course, I said yes, though I hesitated as I was not expecting it while occupied with the thought of where to give him dinner, either in KFC or Chowking. He shot the question to his mother that same night and has been asking us the question every now and then.
He also has other questions that he has kept asking and that we have tried our best explaining. “Why do I have DMD?” “Does God love me?” “Am I going to get well soon?” “When I am 40 would I be still in a wheelchair?” Kids do say the darndest things but they do ask simple questions that are hard to answer.
The challenge in answering questions of the young minds is in making them understand. Just like in one of the classes I attended, the trainer posed the challenge, “Explain the process like you would to a kid.” Question like “Does God love me?” could be easier to answer to an adult as they would (take not of the conditionals) normally reconcile the answers from things they’ve read and past advices they have heard. Normally, one would only need an affirmation. But kids with such fresh minds plus their innocence would have different ideals. The magic and powers they see in their favorite Superheroes make it more difficult to put things in perspective.
This morning, I read on Facebook that there is a book titled Dear Pope Francis where the Pope answers questions of kids he has received. I would love to get a copy of this book and I hope someone has asked similar questions that Marcus has.
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Mood: 3/10 Honks! (Will start cleaning the house.)
Petron makes it feel like it’s Christmas already with its Batman Vs Superman items as today, on its first day of their promo I got Marcus’ favorite hero item, the Batman lamp. I would say that this is probably a worthy item that P200 could buy nowadays.
As seen in the picture, the Batman item is more than double than I expect it to be. There are three more items to collect and surprisingly Marcus wants to have all including Superman whom he hated so much. He also said he is going to give the Wonder Woman item to his mom–a fitting symbolism.
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Marcus wishes that he would be allowed to watch this latest Batman and Suoerman movie. He was so disappointed recently for not seeing the Deadpool movie as it is rated R-16.
I promised him that I would get him a copy of the Deadpool movie as soon as it becomes available but it won’t happen anytime soon after I watched it together with wifey. Deadpool will never be for kids. Yes, it is one great movie but trust the R-16 rating if you don’t want to explain things to your kids other than why Deadpool’s suit is red.
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Mood: 2/10 Honks! (Free Starbucks at work.)
Marcus Can Blog 