Maternal Instinct

Last night, Fidez was feeling kinda depressed. She was in the verge of tears while telling us about this thing that’s bothering her. She was saying how come she is the only one in their class that has this problem. Some of her friends had the same problem, but theirs have now subsided and gone away. Now, here she is confronted with the same thing and it’s making her very sad. She doesn’t want to go out of the house and just want to stay in her room all day.

Hay naku, ang mga teenager nga naman! Magka-pimples lang at blackheads, they feel it’s already the end of the world.

Jean and I tried to console her by telling her that those things on her face will go away soon and that they don’t look too bad anyway. We tried to cheer her up by making jokes out of it. When she said how come C (a friend of hers who’s quite fat), does not have pimples, I replied: “Anong gusto mo may pimples ka o maging dabiana ka?”. When she said that she seems to be the only one in class that has pimples, I replied: “ayaw mo non, unique ka”. Then we laughed, mainly because of the irony in my logic.

Although, we tried to take such incidents in stride, I’m sure like me, Jean too feels the same sadness whenever Fidez is unhappy. How we wish it were us who has pimples instead of her. One time, when Fidez was six, she broke her arm and had to be rushed to the hospital. How I wished it were me who broke an arm instead of her. Then she had a wart on her foot making it painful for her to walk. If only I could have the wart instead and not her.

Bakit kaya ganoon? When my daughter is sad, I feel sadder. But when she's happy, I don't necessarily feel the same way. It seems that her positive feelings don't get transmitted to me to the same degree as her negative ones. Para bang, ang kasayahan niya ay para lamang sa kanya. Pero ang kalungkutan, kahati at karamay pa rin ako. Could it be maternal instinct? ... Pero meron ba non ang mga lalaki?