My petite, hyperactive daughter is what I call our Christmas
present from God. That’s because my husband was raised Jewish,
but is Polynesian, which means he was supposed to be Catholic,
but never made it into the church due to some vaguely absurdist
Biblical reasons. It all worked out anyway, and we all celebrate
Christmas together. Thankfully!
December 20 of 1994, out popped our little brown bundle of joy,
Angela Cristina Peralta, the mommie-described “Prettiest Girl in
the World.” She’s modest enough not to think so, or so she says.
Beauty and charm rolled into one Philippina-American package,
except when she tracks in a ton of sand from the beach. We have
to hit those universal, Pacific NW-located ocean sides on a
regular basis, as that’s the only celebration of her most
obvious heritage we really can do. Except for the River Dancing.
This is because she has ancestry from all over the world.
Mine covers both Eastern and Western Europe, and my husband’s
covers Asia and Polynesia, as well as Western Europe again and
who knows what all else. So aside from being related to
Australian aborigines (we have now found that they too are
probably distant cousins), Angie’s a definite World Class
Citizen.
And thus is stuck going to her big sister’s Irish dancing
classes on a semi-regular basis, for strangely enough, her
Polynesian half-sister has that as part of her heritage, and is
the twenty-six-year-old executive director of North West Irish
Folk dancing. So every so often we see our little island
princess dancing hippity-hoppity, with both arms straight down
at her sides, resembling nothing so much as a mildly demented
pepper shaker, with a certain amount of graceful élan, when she
gets the steps exactly right.
But lately, there have been the usual homework woes. What
started out as Angie’s clear desire to please both mommie and
daddie, and to get every chore done and every homework turned in
on time, has filtered down to her doing everything at the last
possible second, and getting it turned in on “late day.” My
husband, having all that prior experience with the last three
children, of course simply laughs the above off as what he’s
already been through in a triceling. “It’s just a stage,” he
says in that aggravating but enormously pleased tone of voice he
uses when I start to turn into a vaguely screechy whine directed
at Angela’s tender pinky-brown ears. “You just have to know
him,” he says.
Reggie, being a Pinoy pidgin speaker, always uses “him” for
“her” whenever the active principle is involved, and the reverse
when someone male is passive. He then calls anything male a
“she.” This took awhile to get used to, and still raises
eyebrows in public occasionally. You just have to know “her,”
and then you understand my Pinoy hubbie. Of course, it hasn’t
rubbed off on me, and I still am my own man about it….I think.
Well, to get around to the story, after having given you the
background: one time Angela and I attended a movie about a
comic-book character named “Daredevil,” and she had a hard time
getting over the death of the main female character. She
reminded her too much of her sissie Jayne, the Irish dancing
director. Angie kept talking about how “he died, HE DIED!” and
this of course greatly interfered with her homework, too.
So although at first I fumed at both her tendency to parrot
Daddy’s sad mistake about the sexing of our English language,
and her leaving her homework until possibly third grade rolls
around, I managed to cut my whining down to a slightly
embittered wail. I told Angela, “Just get around to him (did I
forget to mention that “its” are usually “hims?”) when you feel
like it, and whenever you’re ready, we’ll hit the beach again
later. That is, simply do half of him before we visit her (the
beach), and do the other half of him when we get home.”
To make a long story short, that’s exactly what he (Angie) did.
We spent a wonderful Sunday collecting sand crabs, mussel
shells, small clams, scraps and pieces of driftwood, and heck
only knows what else that was smelly and needed lots of washing
when we wearily trekked our way home.
Angie immediately headed for the bathroom, and stuck both “his”
feet into the sink, washing both of them off and leaving me the
shoes, which are presently drying in the tub. And I know “he”
will have finished all the needed homework in time to turn “him”
in for late day, as we “pinkie swore” on it—a quite useful
method we have found to make sure we both do what we are
supposed to do, involving intertwining two of our little
pinkies, and promising solemnly forever to do what’s right—and
that my little Polynesian princess will muddle on through her
homework, and her life, somehow.
At least that’s what her daddie knows. As for myself, “he” still
has quite a lot to savvy.
