Kimmy Schemy

Archive for May, 2011

Sam* just graduated from high school. She is a daughter of a wealthy businessman. The moment she graduated, the problem about going to college hit her and her parents hard. Though they can afford to send her to the best and most expensive schools, Sam is still unsure about what course to take and to what school she would go to. Affluent, though they are, Sam is not the smartest of students. She hates Science, she hates English and most especially she hates Math. I don’t think she’s dumb, though. She’s just.. LAZY.

So, as the summer season crept, the decision about her education was still unclear. If she doesn’t like Science and English and Math, what then does she like? That one, she’s sure about. She likes to cook. So, it was decided that she will take up Culinary Arts in a prestigious school in Quezon City with a vision of putting up her own restaurant someday. So, she inquired and took up the entrance test. She was horrified to find out that the test include Math and Grammar. When the result came out, her fear was confirmed. She flunked the test. It was a dead end for Sam. What else could she do now? The school, though, gave her an option. That is to enroll in a tutorial center and study some specific lessons that she need to learn and master, like fraction and conversion in Math and subject and verb agreement and tenses of verbs in Grammar.

That’s how I got to know her. Her attitude, at first was indifferent. It seems as if she doesn’t get why she need to learn Math and Grammar when she will just COOK. So, the Math teacher and I explained to her how important the lessons are. She needs to learn conversion and fraction so she will know how to measure ingredients, how many teaspoons are there in a tablespoon and how many tablespoons are there in a cup, that sort of thing. She needs to learn tenses of verbs to fully understand instructions, future tense refers to what she will do and past tense refers to what she just did, that sort of thing. Yesterday was the last day of her tutorial and I am proud and happy that she learned not just the lessons but the importance of the lessons to cooking and to life in general..

Basic Grammar and Math may be academic lessons. But they are taught not to make a student’s life miserable. They must be learned for practical uses…

*not real name

I arrived home late last night. As I put my office bag on top of the table, I saw a white envelope with my two younger kids’ name on it. Curious, I opened the envelope and took a card out. It was an invitation to a party on Sunday. I turned the card over, it’s tasteless.. one of those bought-by-the-dozen invitation cards you can find at the counters of supermarkets and department stores. Well, I’m sorry about that. I’m not trying to be ungrateful, in fact, I’m happy that my kids are invited. I just think that they could find a better invitation card. If they can’t spare some time to go out and look, they can surf the net and check out invitationbox.com birthday party invitations for better and more appropriate invitations. Well, just a suggestion..

For this week’s theme, I chose to make a letter for my mother. She’s been living in the US with my sister, Liz, since 2002…

Dear Ma,

I would like to tell you how much I miss you.. I miss being with you and talking with you. I wanted to tell you a lot of things. First of which is how difficult it is for me to be a mother, that sometimes I’m no longer sure if I’m doing it right. There are times that I’m just too tired after a long day at work that I tend to snap at my kids over petty things like dirty feet and long fingernails. Sometimes, I feel that I’m not paying much attention that I was shocked when I saw my youngest’s book with several pages of ‘DO THIS‘ stamped on them. When I asked him why he wasn’t able to do everything, he answered because I didn’t help him. I keep on missing events in school. I can’t even remember the last time I attended a PTC. I missed my youngest’s Family Day, my middle child’s Field Day and my eldest child’s card distribution day. One time, I got angry at my younger daughter for being so long in front of the computer only to find out that she was doing a research in school. My eldest missed the Prom in her senior year because she got sick due to over fatigue. How did I let that happen? I can no longer remember..

Believe me, I’m trying my best.. but I keep on making mistakes. Maybe I’m not trying hard enough and I have to try even harder. I can’t believe being a mother would be this difficult. It had been easier when they were babies. When all they did were cry when hungry or wet, and sleep and laugh when full and happy. But they got old and they would keep on getting older..

My eldest is going to college in June. I’m scared to let her go.. but I know I have no choice. I wish you were here to tell me what to do just like the old times when I was still young. But I am a mother now, and whoever said ‘Mother knows best’ wasn’t completely right, because I don’t. All I ever wanted was to be a good mother. But it seems like it’s not that easy to be one..

I miss you so much. I love you… Take care…

Kimmy

An entry for

Photo taken and owned by Charles Fredeluces Mundo

‘You will have to live with the consequences of everything you say.’

~Proverbs 18:20

Jolo is only 6 years old. In fact, he just turned 6 last week. He is an incoming Grade 1. What’s so special about Jolo is that, he can read already. By that, I don’t mean the simple words with the short vowel sound like : bat, cat, mat, etc.. nor words with long vowel sound like: cake, lake, rake.. What I mean is  that he can read long and ‘big’ words like: disappointed, industrious, determination, etc..

Moreover, he knows a lot of scientific facts like a butterfly started out as a larva, then wrapped itself into a cocoon and is being called a pupa once inside it, before it finally comes out as a butterfly, an elephant’s nose is called a trunk and a baby kangaroo is called a joey. He also has a good inference skills, which means his conclusions are almost accurate like, a child will get sick if he gets himself rained on, a tree’s branch will break if a group of boys climbed on it and rock it up and down. His memory is also very impressive, as I told him only once that a tree has no stem as a stem is part of a flower, instead, the tree has a trunk. Yesterday, I heard him telling it to his older brother. He knows small is synonymous with tiny, big with huge, pretty with lovely, clean with tidy and a lot more..

I was amazed. How could such a young , sweet, little boy know so much? Obviously, Jolo is exceptionally bright. But not only that, whoever lives with Jolo took some time to teach the boy a lot of things. He talks just like the little boy that he is, but the contents of what he says are things some older grade school, even high school students do not know about.

Yesterday was his final test in his Advancement Program. Yes, he took advanced lessons for Grade 1. And I was sad to see him go. I wish his program was longer than it is, so that I may still see him. But looking at his sweet face, I know he deserves to rest and make the most of the summer vacation.

For Jolo, I would surely miss you.. and for Jolo’s parents, congratulations for having such a bright, sweet boy…

It has almost been a week since I noticed my officemate’s being so.. cantankerous. She’s been antagonizing everyone lately. In fact, I’ve been deliberately staying away from her. Well, it’s better to avoid a nasty confrontation than to embarrass yourself, right? But since we can’t fight her with a tooth for a tooth, we just contented ourselves by talking about her at the pantry, lol! And I guess we have an idea what she is so irritable about. The slimming juice that she has been using for a while now hasn’t been working the way she expected it too. We know how much she is counting on it to work because she just bought a dress that she’d like to wear in the near future. Well, if that really is her problem, maybe I should recommend to her apidextra reviews that she could check out, in case she would like to consider changing what she is taking right now..

Well, we actually had a kind of children’s party on Mother’s Day, but for some reasons… I couldn’t find the pictures. I thought they were already uploaded by my daughter right after the party but when I was about to make my post, she told me she doesn’t have it. Since we are using 3 memory cards, I don’t know where the pictures are, nor the other cards, as I have one in my possession, lol!

So, instead of cry over those pictures which are surely lying somewhere in the house, I will just post some that are in my files and are reason enough for me to celebrate being a mother..

My youngest, Daryl, and my oldest, Candid, making fun of me…

My daughters Mika and Candid during one of our chats with my husband…

Mother’s Day or not, having my kids around is reason enough to celebrate every day..

An entry for

I came early to work yesterday but the officer-in-charge and the receptionist came even earlier. I heard them talking, rather, arguing about something as I passed by them. Well, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, it wasn’t my fault if they were talking in a louder than usual voices. It seems that we ran out of flyers to distribute to the mall. Well, that really is a problem. It’s the peak season for review and tutorial centers and we have to take advantage of this to acquire as many clients as possible. But without flyers to distribute, how are we going to promote our services? But I guess, instead of bickering, the better thing to do is to canvas for color print services and have our flyers printed as soon as possible, after all, the season is not yet over…

Photo taken and owned by Charles Fredeluces Mundo

“The little that a good person owns is worth more than the wealth of all the wicked..”

Psalm 37:16

Cara* is 6 years old. She is enrolled in our Reading Program. Yesterday, the reading material that she was given was about Growing Flowers. Since Cara is already a fast reader, she had no trouble reading the entire paper. She was also able to answer all the reading comprehension questions that follow. That is except for one..

So, the teacher tried to help her out. The teacher, thinking that Cara was having trouble reading the question read it for her. The question went: If you will give a flower, to whom will you give it and why?

The girl didn’t answer at first, so the teacher repeated the question. This time, Cara answered in her small voice ‘to mama.’ So, the teacher asked her some reasons why she would give her mother a flower expecting to hear the usual answers like ‘because she takes care of me’ and something like that..

To this, the girl cried and said ‘because I miss her so much…’

The teacher, assuming that the girl’s mother is working abroad tried to console Cara by saying, ‘Oh, ok Cara, then maybe when she gets home, you can give her the flower and tell her you missed her..’

The girl cried even more and said.. ‘No teacher, my mama is not coming back. She left me and my papa. I don’t know where she went. I don’t have mama anymore…’

The teacher finally got the picture and hugged Cara tightly and said ‘It’s alright Cara, wherever your Mama is, I know she thinks of you and that she loves you and cares about you very much…’

The teacher doesn’t know if she did or said the right thing, but it was, for her, the safest thing to do. The teacher was crying when she told me the story and I cried with her. And I realize that my children are somehow lucky that I am here. I may not be the perfect mother, but I am a MOTHER and I am with my children and I just realize how important that is..

With Cara in mind, I came to genuinely greet myself a Happy Mother’s Day..

*not real name