My Mother The Goldfish

THE GOLDFISH

LORENZO NINAL

To my mother, my teacher, my friend, Mama Tesing

MY MOTHER THE GOLDFISH An Essay by Lorenzo “Insoy” Ninal

Mama Tesing with Junior and Insoy in Hongkong. This could have easily ranked in the most memorable experiences of Mama. Thanks Jun for making this happen.

SPENDING all my non-office hours in the hospital for four months now has taught me a lot of medical words that I wouldn’t have otherwise discovered shooting down adjectives and adverbs in the newsroom. Tracheostomy, for example.

Tracheostomy is a surgical procedure which consists of boring a hole

through a 79-year-old asthmatic second-hand-smoker retired teacher’s throat so that a PVC pipe can be inserted through to make her look like an abandoned DPWH drainage project.

Seriously, tracheostomy is a surgical procedure performed to make it easier for us children to pump oxygen into our mother’s lungs because she’s too sick and tired and bored to do the breathing herself.

The word comes from two Greek words: “trache” meaning “quit” and “ostomy” meaning “smoking.” At least that’s what I heard the doctor telling me after she discovered that I, the patient’s youngest child, is a smoker too.

“But doc, I only smoke after a very sumptuous meal.”

“Then stop eating a very sumptuous meal if that would make you quit smoking!”

“Doc, don’t get mad at me. I’m not the patient here. I know we’ve been seeing each other on a daily basis in this hospital room, but there has to be a professional gap between us somewhere.”

Photos taken during the visit of Ariel, Suzette, Nicko and Anya to the Philippines. The children sure had fun time with their Mamu.

“Shut up you two.”

That’s my mom. Or at least that’s how I read her lips. You see, when you’re having a hole in your throat, and there’s an inch-wide tube stuck right through it, no sound comes out of your mouth except a desperate “wooossssh” or “wissssssh,” depending on what’s the dominant vowel that’s forming in your mouth.

When my mom attempts to speak, she looks like those goldfish in that Discovery Channel show that I watch to stay awake.

“Stop comparing me to a fish,” my mom said in a quick succession of woooshes and wiiissshes. As usual, like the loving, caring mother that she’s always been to her children, mom reads my mind and knows what I’m going to say before I could even open my mouth.

When the fish show on TV is done to be replaced by this one about a man torturing himself to prove he’s above all the evil forces of nature, I look at my mom and wonder if the talkative Man Vs. Wild’s Bear Grylls can survive a day without the natural ability to speak.

Having lost her speech and knowing that she could be stuck in bed for the rest of her life, mom must be doing a lot of thinking these days. I bet she’s thinking of the inevitable now, of soon joining father, the “first -hand smoker,” in the afterlife. In which case I would want to tell her, not so fast mom, we’re keeping you alive as long as possible. Dad can wait.

A family photo in 2005. This was the last time all the siblings had a beautiful bonding time with Mama Tesing.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking too. For one, I had to struggle against the fact that I will not hear my mom’s voice again. Oh

yes there’s that device that can allow her to talk like a character from a Japanese sci-fi movie. But for a son who grew up listening to his teacher-mom’s bedtime stories, a storyteller who sounds like a Japanese robot is boring.

“Hey, stop comparing me to a Japanese robot!” my mom blurted out in angry wooooshes and wiiiiishes.

Oh, sorry mom, I said, wiping the tears from my eyes.

All Rights Reserved 2014 Danny Ninal