Moving Furniture and Shuffling Papers

I woke up early this morning to find Mother moving the Lazy Boy from the study room to the living room.

"Mother," I said, "you're moving furniture again."

"I have to," she replied, "or I'll get sick."

(Yes, we have come to accept the fact that nothing is permanent in this world and ever more so in this house.)

I helped her get one of the Lazy Boys through. She refused to allow me to help her with the other one possibly because she would have felt bad asking me to move them back to the study room should things turn out in that direction.

She literally shooed me away.

"Off with you!"

So off I went.

I went to the room where Mother kept the cookbooks. I was looking for the book which was a compilation of recipes from Mother's Alma Mater. Mother was the one who had the book published so I was sure we had copies of that book somewhere.

I saw Mother walk by.

"Mom, where is the St. Scholastica's cookbook?"

"Oh, I just brought them down twenty minutes ago."

(I should have known. Murphy always knows when to strike.)

"But it is really worth going through papers," Mother announced as she entered the room, "look what I found."

She seemed quite excited over her discovery. She pulled out a sheet of bond paper from a brown envelope.

I took one look at it and my heart skipped a beat.

She found it!

She found a copy of the poem I had written for them more than eight years ago. I thought it was lost forever since my i-manila mailbox has crashed many times over. I had searched for copies of the poem or even drafts on paper over the years, but found none... until today, that is.

27 September 2000

From: angels4kids

To: Family Friend in the US

Subject : For Father and Mother From angels4kids

It Seems ...

It seems these days my pants don't fit

You think I've had too much to eat?

Well I've packed them up and put them away

To be worn again on some future day.

It seems these days I'm gaining weight

Could be all the food I've put on my plate

But nobody minds and neither do I

As long as I eat more fruits than pie.

It seems these days I feel as though

I've swallowed some butterflies, a hundred or so

There's often a flutter, a wave or a movement

I feel in my tummy for more than a moment.

It seems these days we're all getting older

But as months pass us by, another gets closer

Just think of the month when your two boys came out

Well that is the month I am talking about

It seems these days we all want good news

And this gives me my chance, my perfect excuse

To say aside from the fact that all is well

In a few months we'll all have little Gabriel/le.

Father and Mother were in the States that year. Father was undergoing some medical treatment and Mother had accompanied him. They stayed at the house of family friends, who lived near the hospital. I had written the poem to announce the arrival of MyGirl. It was easy to hide the fact that I was pregnant when they couldn't see me, but as they were scheduled to return soon, I wanted to prepare them with this message.

Needless to say, they were happily surprised.

(I had almost forgotten that MyGirl was due to arrive in February. She was born on the last week of January. Thank you, Mother, for shuffling papers today. May you find more treasures along the way.)