No Time For Tears

She grew up shy and protected; overshadowed by everyone bigger and louder. As a child she was quiet and gentle. She is the youngest of eight and the youngest to leave home by herself for college, to another island without family nearby. She was sixteen.

When we were growing up I protected her from kids like Junior, the bully. She had the biggest, brightest eyes and kids teased her and called her names like "owl." Then everyone wanted to have Chinese eyes. I did not understand why, perhaps because the Chinese merchants owned all the stores and had money. Kids can be cruel. Thank goodness our Mother instilled self confidence in us and everyday told us how beautiful each and everyone of us were and as a kid, I believed that! I appointed myself protector of my younger sister. I can't remember how many bullying boys I beat up and how many mean girls I engaged in verbal fencing. She and I loved to play house but instead of playing normal mothering roles, she wanted to be a storekeeper while I wanted to be a bus driver with our passenger style tricycle and I was also a money lender. I had stacks of newspaper money while she had an array of merchandise and "vegetables" which she obtained from Mother's garden.

At home she was very cheerful and happy, always singing. She grew up to be an introspective teenager but soon her independent and feisty demeanor started showing. While I got all attention and leadership roles, she got the academic honors.

When she graduated from the university, my parents were very happy because now everyone had a college degree and were independent. Not long, I left for the US, while she went to medical school. There she met a handsome fellow intern who had a beautiful singing voice and a gentle heart and a Gemini to boot! They had their residency together in the remote, northernmost province of Batanes.

After their residency and fellowship, they started their private practices. They got married. My brother in-law became a urologist. My sister opened a boutique, now she had a real store! They had two beautiful children. My sister decided to quit her medical practice and stay at home to take care of the children.

One day her husband had to leave for Hong Kong. He had a five AM flight. Exhausted everyone else went to bed while my brother in-law took a shower. At six AM my sister was awakened, and disappointed that she missed her husband's departure. In fact, he never left. He never got out of the bathroom. At thirty eight, my younger sister became a widow.

There comes a time when something happens to someone you love and you wish to take their place to spare them the agony and the sorrow. I still cry when I remember how young she was then and how very little the children were.

Last night, she told me how she was saddened when her daughter told her that she can't remember her father's voice. Thank goodness, they recorded him singing and so they all listened to his heartwarming song.

My sister specializes in infectious disease epidemiology. While chatting last night, she told me she can't type very well because she was only using one hand as she was getting a manicure. She was in our childhood home visiting our other sister. She was celebrating Memorial Day. She said because she works for a US company, she gets to celebrate both US and Philippine holidays to a total of fifty two holidays! She is a busy woman. She helps manage my sister's farm, flies out on Sunday, hops to another island on Wednesday, flies back on Friday to attend graduate school on Saturday, oh I forgot... she is finishing her PhD in Education so she can help manage our other sister's special education school. She is a generous soul, and like our mother has an altruistic spirit. Her children are now in college and studying pre-medicine.

She has been to all but two of the provinces in the Philippines, including remote islands only accessible by banca or boat. She has set foot in islands dotted by rebels and terrorists, I would never dream of visiting.

Well, she is the braver and the stronger one, after all.

I am so proud of her. I am so honored she is my sister and I love her very much.

"Please Don't Cry, It's Going To Be Okay"

Alright!!! No more tears. I apologize for my previous post being such a tearjerker. I did not realize my catharsis was going to make everyone's tear ducts work overtime.

Here is the reason why I started this series. I was cleaning my office drawer one day and found this sketch I did of my son when he was in 4th grade. I looked at it and I saw his eyes. My co-workers call him "pretty." He was a beautiful boy and now a pretty good-looking teenager. More than anything, he has big beautiful and honest eyes.

I thought about people's eyes, how they reveal so much in a person. I thought about my sisters', friends' and sisterfriends' eyes. I realized how they all have bright, beautiful, honest eyes... but I know they shed a tear or two sometimes.

No Crying

Actually, when I worked in the ER, I did not wear glasses. I was so much younger then.

In my many years of professional emergency and trauma nursing experience, I hardly remember crying. I worked at a Level I trauma center for many years and for a year, in a county hospital. If there was anything that made me sad or angry, I turned those emotions into one of advocacy rather than surrender or sadness. I left it to law enforcement authorities to do their jobs if a crime was committed and I used every possible resource to refer patients for assistance. I have been threatened, assaulted and injured by patients; held captive by psychiatric emergency patients. I have been exposed to and treated for communicable diseases. Still, I am lucky. Some of my friends were not. They lost their lives during their shifts. We don't hear much about nurses or health care professionals dying on the job, thankfully they are rare occasions. We call it a sentinel event. The administration provides us with mental health care. I never found it helpful, because they pull us from the work area for these sessions. Sometimes, I see the scenes in my mind. I try not to remember them but some remain vivid. I do remember reaching out to the battered wives, though.

I don’t know why I was drawn and compelled to give them extra empathy. Perhaps, it was because some of the people I worked with were quick to blame the woman for staying in an abusive relationship. Spousal abuse is a complicated matter and I do not intend to explain it here, but I once remembered a patient so battered she was hardly recognizable. Her husband beat her up with a plumbing pipe. He did other horrible things to her. My mind was being twisted by rage and sadness at the same time.. Her face was all swollen, bruised and she could not open her eyes because of the swelling. Deep inside I was livid and seeing her in that trauma bed made my heart crumble, but I was her nurse, and that morning my job was to give her life saving measures amidst a dozen or so police officers and detectives. It was an irony to me that the woman had to be in such a state for the authorities to intervene. It did even not give me any comfort in knowing that her abusive husband was immediately arrested and jailed. At that time I was not a mother yet and while I rendered my nursing care I promised that when I become one, I will teach my children never to harm, the people they love, physically and emotionally and never accept such treatment from someone who professes to love them.

I do remember when I finally cried. It was in the month of March. I was giving a two month old baby, post mortem care. As I completed her death certificate I was horrified to know that the baby was named after the female sex organ. I had to cry, first for the baby dying and then for having been born to an ignorant woman. But who was I to judge? Bearing children is a woman's bodily function and her prerogative. That week I also assisted in the delivery of a stillborn baby. The fetus had been dead in the woman's womb for several days. I baptized the stillborn baby and prepared a birth certificate and death certificate on the same day. I also cared for a toddler whose mother got fed up with her crying, she put the baby in a wok with hot oil on top of the stove. That time I let it all my tears go. How could someone hurt their own child? I cried as I held that baby and handed her to my friend, the social worker. I could no longer perform my job. I was full of rage and anger. I told myself that I don't think I will have children and I should leave nursing.

That afternoon, I went home and without taking off my uniform scrubs, I rested on the sofa. When I woke up it was three in the morning and time to get ready for another shift.

The following week I asked for a transfer.

A month later, I found out I was expecting but did not tell anyone except my husband and my mother.

Tears are a wonderful release of an overburdened soul...

My beloved Arija, draped in natural fabric art created by her daughter, the fabulous India Flint. Arija's blog says she is 1996 years old, so I tried to capture her in what I think she might have looked at 500. Levity aside, she is ancient in wisdom, yet youthful and not aging in her vision. Her beautiful eyes, not mere receptors of things that surround her but a teaching method for those of us who forget to stop, look and listen.


I asked Arija what color are her eyes and she replied "When I am happy and well they are green, sometimes they look black and when I am truly unwell they are a grey-green flecked with pale brown." I would love to gaze into those eyes of hers and say "Hello there, you are my beloved friend who dwells in my heart and I thank you so much for everything you have done for me and what you mean to me."


The almost monochromatic illustration above was actually done with sixteen different colored pencil hues, India ink, graphite pencil and pigment ink. Doesn't that confirm that the most meaningful and worthy entity may appear unassuming but may actually be comprised of multiple layers as opposed to something flashy, flamboyant and comprised of merely few layers and when stripped leaves you with nothing.

That I draped her with India's artistic natural fabric creation, is because Arija has been through so many droughts, fire that ravaged everything her family owned after being displaced by war and rebuilding, of illnesses and most recently a brush with death... Life is not fair, isn't it? Yet Arija is full of celebration for its goodness and not once did I ever hear her hum the victim's melody.

Ah she cries most certainly and says...

"Tears are a wonderful release of an overburdened soul, be it from pain, from sorrow or joy or the exquisite tightness around the heart for that which moves us deeply: light, beauty, character in an old experienced face, a simple blade of grass in the wind... the world is so full of beauty, my eyes keep filling with sheer joy when I look around."


One day I wrote something in my blog that was truly personal. I tried to be obscure as I can be but that did not escape two special people's discerning minds. I am sure others intuit my messages but that time, only two felt it in their hearts. Don't let anybody tell me that my blog friends are all in my mind. It is not true. They are in my heart and I shall carry them with me.

Of this series, I have a few more illustrations. I am excited to share with you an illustration of my wonderful younger sister and ooooh! I am drawing Vanessa. Of course I tried to draw my mother and I failed miserably. I ran out of 9"x12" Bristol boards and need to order more.


I wish everyone a wonderful holiday weekend. I am not ignoring your comments. Thank you very much. I will stop by when you are not looking. Please remember the soldiers who sacrificed their lives and those who are still in harm's way so that we may be free.

No Boa Constricting, Just Scarves Slithering Around

"...it sounds like I'm much like all the other wonderful friends in this group - I am usually a no nonsense kind of woman and I'm always seeing the silver lining. But once in a while I need a good cry and then move forward again. It's like a good rain that clears the air..."


Silke is a beautiful and gifted woman. She creates the most amazing hand knitted and hand-tied scarves. You can purchase them from her Etsy shop. I have one of hers but it is so intricate with so many overlapping silk ribbons that I CANNOT draw it overnight, so I modified it and I let my own creation slither and wrap around her lovely neck.


I love scarves. I have a collection of them. For this series, I drew my scarves on my friends and family.


I have a confession to make.


For Illustration Friday's theme "Slither" I actually drew a portrait of someone with a boa constrictor instead of a feather boa around her neck. Then I realized that this series is about the beautiful, strong, courageous and gifted women I know (or knew when I was young), admire, respect and adore. So, no boa constrictor slithering in my blog.

So far...

To be continued...

Passion And Tears Of Happiness

"...I'm a crier. When I painted all those crying women everyone thought I was depressed including my mother. Nothing could be further from the truth. Tears are a release of emotion and that emotion can be heartfelt happiness. Passion and tears.... my friend!!!"


She is beautiful. I cannot do her justice. She is not just a pretty and lovely face but a beautiful human being with a beautiful soul. Deborah told me that Manon's eyes are the most beautiful shade of blue she has ever seen. I can only imagine.

Go ahead and shed two tears...one from each eye, no more.

The angels have been kind to me. They gave me my beloved sisterfriend, Deborah. Thank you!

Of this series, I love what Bella Sinclair said, "We are women of resolve and grit and stamina, and we stand proud." I imagine all my sisterfriends standing and it is a sight to behold! Strong, intelligent, talented, beautiful, wise, passionate...women of all ages...whose art and words resonate with life! Today I tried to draw my Mother and my younger sister. I could not draw my Mother. The many facets of her life and her many stages of which I was a part, kept on overlapping. In the end I captured only her wavy hair and her cleft chin. Still, I am enjoying this series. I get to model a new scarf with every drawing.

There is one very important lesson I learned from my sisterfriend Deborah (Midlife Poet), that is to "never stop loving the children". I know that some of you will say "of course, it is a "no-brainer", but my house has been a refuge at one time or another for a few young people whose parents are not looking for them. Lately I have witnessed how easy it is to say to a strong-headed, self-centered teen "just go, do whatever you want with your life..." To me, there is a difference between getting the children out of the house from launching them to adulthood, happiness and success. Now that I have my own teenagers, it is so easy to dismiss the difficulties encountered in their quest for autonomy by simply thinking they can do whatever they want when they are out of the house and to kick them out when they exert their independence in a manner we may find inconsiderate or when they do foolish and destructive things. Being a mother is the most difficult job I ever had. There is no template for motherhood. Every experience is different. When I needed a friend with sage advice about teenagers, Deborah was there. She did not talk to me like a counselor, she talked like a friend and a mother. I realized there are ways one can deal with strong-minded young people, with logic and reason, with patience and with love. Logical and reasonable advice are plenty, we can read about them in books. Patience is a limited resource. Love, love is so easy to say but to lean on it with all your chips is a soul-twisting process, yet in the end, it is the only way.

I often wonder why we make special connections in blogland. There are reasons why these connections happen and why some are more intense than others. I am not going to question mine, I will just give thanks.

Deborah said to me, we are "Women who get up in the morning and do what they have to do to feed the children." I love how she said that, it reflects a part of my philosophy. She continues: "Some things in life deserve periods of mourning and others require acceptance. I like your fierce attack and kill it style. I think it is important to not become comfortable with pain."

Deborah, I promise not to be comfortable with pain...

Shed A Tear, But That's It

India Ink, pigment ink, colored pencils, graphite pencil on 9"x12" Bristol board. Inspired by my most beloved friend.

She said:
That's right.
Stand firm.
Do not falter.
Shed a tear, but that's it.


I have drawn two other portraits with this series and as I drew them I kept thinking NOT about the tears or tear but about how I am inspired, strengthened and encouraged by these women. As I kept drawing, I cannot, in my heart continue to make this series dwell on sadness. When I started thinking of Bella, Arijah, Deborah, Manon, Vanessa and Silke, I started looking at this series in a different light. I have read these beautiful women's blogs and every time I read something a little heart tugging or breaking, my heart rejoices in witnessing their courage and their resolve. Feeling sorry for oneself does indeed take time and sometimes it is more romantic to wallow in sadness and talk or write about it, but it is not really my style. I never subscribed to the Victim mentality. I have this genetic tendency to view any event that threatens my peaceful state with resolve, to conquer and demolish it, I did not cry. I used to view crying as a sign of weakness or acceptance of defeat. No more. Giving tears their due time, allow me to acknowledge the pain and the hurt…then I move forward, having pondered the state from which I have to extract myself and those in my care.

Tell me, how do you view tears and crying?

Ah, as for me, tears are good and weeping is okay, but that's it.

Go on and move ahead.

Shed A Tear

Unmasked by sorrow,
Pierced by agony,
Bared by pain,
Do not cower,
Do not surrender,
Tread even when bare.
Stand firm.
Do not falter.
Shed a tear.

A new series...

Update: 5/23/2010. It has not been 24 hours into this series and already it is taking a different turn. I was drawing more portraits and I thought of the women I love who have shed tears and I kept thinking of positive things. I know I mentioned it in my little ditty, above, but truly, I am a naturally happy person. I cannot dwell in sadness and sorrow. It will eat me alive. If I am faced with adversity, I strive to overcome it. So I will continue this series but it is not going to be about sadness nor sorrow but about hope, courage and perseverance. It is about reaching out and up and inspiration derived from the beautiful people I love and who love me in return. By the way, how can I not think of Hope? It is my Mother's name.

A New Series

I am starting a new series. I am calling it "Shed A Tear" I will let the posts explain the features of these new series. You will soon see a pattern. It's a drawing and short description. Here's a little story I would like to share with you...

I hope that some literary hacks don't import my stories and fictionalize it or use it as material for their their trite novelettes. That's been known to happen. This series is an autobiographical foray into the inner sanctum of my F-POT. I am basing it on personal experiences. I am taking literary liberty by the mere fact that it is impossible to truly relate the stench , the pain and the agony of some of these experiences, but I will try.

I was seventeen years old when I performed my first post-mortem care. I was a student nurse at a provincial hospital with a bed capacity of 250 but with a usual patient census of up to 800. Most often patients slept on cots in the halls or mats they brought from home, laid down on the floors. The only time the halls were cleared of patients was when the dictator's wife or some national or foreign visitors came to the hospital for photo opportunities. I am not sure why we had to appear that we had room, perhaps because there may have been funds allotted for the hospital building extension that managed to actually not be stolen by the national government officials and so trickled down to the regions but instead were siphoned by the regional and provincial government officials.

My classmates and I wore white uniforms with white aprons and after the first six months we had our capping ceremony. We wore caps, except in the OR where we wore dark green scrubs; in the pediatric wards where we wore baby blue or baby pink aprons with cute appliques, over our white dress; in the psychiatric hospital where we wore civilian clothes and in public health nursing where we wore professional nurses' dress uniforms. We had two male classmates. They did not wear dresses.

The hospital had a permeating stench. It lingered in the halls, some sort of tropical smell, since there was no air-conditioning except in the few rooms in the private patient wing. The patients were poor, indigent, down-trodden, lived in wretched poverty. The hospital supplied some medicines and equipment but we re-sterilized catheters; re-used IV tubings; re-washed, re-powdered and re-autoclaved the gloves; re-sharpened the hypodermic needles. Yet, the best and the brightest nurses attended that school of nursing because it had an academic and clinical record of excellence. Every graduating class since the school's founding during the war in 1945 had a 100% successful passing of the board examination and always had several graduates in the top 10.

By the time I was 18, I had handled over fifty deliveries, performed procedures that most nurses in the US never have a chance to do during their first and second year of professional experience. This explains why I never worked as a nurse in my country after graduation but was hired in the US when I applied for my first nursing job with only a telephone interview. My clinical experience transcript was the equivalent of five years of nursing experience. I had exceeded my required scrubbed and circulated major surgery case requirements and my classmates and I handled hundreds of deliveries without a physician present, and we cared for more patients with communicable diseases than some practitioners in the CDC have seen.

The pediatric pavilion had a wing for malnourished children afflicted with marasmus kwashiorkor. I met a three year old boy who could not stand up because his wasted limbs could not carry his enlarged abdomen. For two months he had nothing to eat, so he ate dirt and mud. The pavilion reeked with the stench of infected flesh and at night the wailing of the mothers crying over their dying children reverberated and echoed in the halls.

I contracted tuberculosis in my junior year after being assigned as the student head nurse of the isolation ward. It was only a spot in my lung and so I had ambulatory treatment with penicillin and streptomycin (Dicrysticin) injections, isoniazid, ethambutol and Vitamin B complex for six months while I continued my studies. My classmate was not lucky, she actually had inflammation of her lungs, was coughing and had blood-streaked sputum, therefore had to take a year leave of absence. There was a patient there by the name of Ernie. He was blind and lived in the ward because his family refused to take him back. The hospital kept him. We had several of those patients. They were permanent patients of the hospital, one was a hemiplegic patient with massive decubitus ulcers. He manipulated every freshman student nurse but I was spared for my older sister was a graduate of the school and was the head nurse of the private patient ward. There were toddlers in the nursery, abandoned by their mothers and later were sent to the orphanage. Ernie, the blind patient distinguished the nurses by their voices but went further with me and my sister by recognizing the sound of our footsteps. He would say "Is that you Miss Adorio, the Younger?" before I even uttered a word. Sometimes I would pretend to be my sister my changing my voice but ended up giggling, so Ernie and I both ended up laughing.

After graduation, I was assigned to perform my required public nursing internship in a province where 90% of the population had exposure to or have contracted tuberculosis. There, for the first time I was mostly alone when I visited the patients in their home.

One day the military base medic and corpsman was out sick. The military base requested for a nurse from the city clinic where I was assigned. The head nurse dispatched me to the military camp. I was nineteen years old. I entered a room and there standing in attention were 250 men lined up for their physical examination. I worked with a captain who was a medical doctor. I tried to look away from the men for they were stark naked, however, that day, they were being examined for inguinal hernia. The captain instructed the recruits to blow on the back of their hands and bear down while I had to visually examine for herniation on their inguinal areas. I have never seen so many penises at one time. I tried to maintain my professional decorum. After the examination I immediately left. That afternoon as my post-graduate classmates and I were walking towards our boarding house, the bus full of recruits drove by and saw me. They peered out the windows, enthusiastically waved and gestured hand salutes towards me. I could not contain my amusement. I laughed so hard that tears rolled down my cheeks. That night, I dreamed of marching penises.

Illustration Friday - Early (Deja vu)

Early Sunday Morning, On Call. This is a ballpen doodle on my Moleskine pocket notebook. Double-click on images to enlarge.

One Early Morning
Three Years and One Day Ago
May 20, 2007

Everything is quiet around here. I am the first one to wake up. My husband is still asleep, exhausted from his fishing trip to the Gulf of Mexico yesterday. The children are asleep. I just realize that all this time I have been thinking that my daughter is twelve years old. She is only eleven. What kind of a mother am I? I am not very good with ages. When I turned 29, I thought I was turning 30. I refused to get out of bed on my birthday. I was so depressed. I kept telling myself "I am thirty years old, I have not done anything, I don't even have a child." My husband finally showed me my passport, and my birth certificate to prove that I was wrong. My fear of turning thirty made my 28th year the most horrible year for me. Oh well, I was never good in Math. By the time I became thirty, I did not care since I had over two years of morbid expectations. My thirties were actually some of the best years of my life.

I did not come here today to talk about birthdays, although I will soon have another. This morning, all is quiet. I am in the kitchen drinking coffee with cream and very little brown sugar. I am drawing in my Moleskine notebook. I should really be finishing my laundry. The hall where the laundry closet is located is lined with piles of towels, sheets, whites and colors. I started them yesterday but then again I also started drawing. Nothing much gets done. This drawing and painting are getting in the way of my chores.

All I hear is the humming of the refrigerator in the background. It is so quiet that my ears become increasingly more sensitive, I hear the twirling of the fan blades and some faint humming, maybe from electricity, or who knows an alien beaming me up... okay, I mean it is very quiet.

So this is my morning. I am on call until eight in the morning. My pager did not beep. There is a sense of relief, a weight departing from my body (I wish they were actual kilograms or pounds leaving my body but it's the metaphor kind). When I am on call for work, I am on the edge. Last night I dared attend a friend's birthday party. I took along my laptop just in case. A few seconds after I walk in her foyer, my pager beeped. My heart jumped. My friend's husband helped me get hooked up to their high speed Internet. I was able to connect to my employer's network. It turned out to be a problem that needed somebody else to perform a missing procedure. My husband, eleven year old daughter and I stayed for an hour.

So after eight in the morning, everyone else was still asleep. I relished the peace and quiet. I drew myself in the kitchen table drawing on my Moleskine notebook. Have you ever seen those great masters' paintings where they paint themselves painting themselves and so on and so forth. I think Jan Van Eyck did that or maybe not. As a child I always thought that was the neatest thing ever, like a series of mirrors, absolutely fascinating. Of course mine is just a doodle while I sip my coffee from my Periwinkle Fiesta keyhole ring mug. Oh, about dishes, I have not talked about dishes for a long time. You're probably thankful I haven't.

Wordless Wednesday