3 years and 24 minutes ago, a set of eyes above a plump body of mass covered in green (that was my ob-gyne) was the first thing that Zak saw. Then he turned his head and saw a rusty oxygen tank in the corner, which was hastily covered by a nurse. A pair of hands hauled him up and dumped him on his mother's bossom. He didn't cry. He closed his eyes, his fists, because he realised that his mother was teteering on an 8-inch slab of wood that was the delivery bed. His mother was then 72 kilos. If that delivery bed was just suspended and there was an audience around it, it would have been a circus of a birth. Welcome to Surigao, Zak!
He was then taken to an adjoining room to be cleaned while his father hovered nervously. A nurse boiled some water on a large kettle, no not an electric kettle, but one which could have been unearthed from somewhere to discover the Mayan civilization, only that the inside was scrubbed with Dazz.
It was only when his 3rd birthday party finished that Zak cried. When we told him we were going home, he thought we were going back to that private hospital in Surigao to reminisce his birth and remind him how difficult indeed it was to take him out from the comfort of his mother's womb only for him to face this rusty world.
K and I could still remember clearly that day but the rest of the story could be told in his next birthday, and every birthday celebrations after that.
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