The Happiest Hobbits

This is part of my blog series, Uyayi: A Lullaby Across Generations — a homage to our roots during the month we celebrate Araw ng Kalayaan  [Philippine Independence Day]. Each post explores a single word from a picture book we brought home after our last visit to the motherland. Filipino words I didn’t grow up using, but now read aloud with love and intention. Words I now gift to my children, one page at a time. Inip. Gigil. Sabik. Hiya. Even one word, spoken often enough, can begin to root a child. . . . There’s a kind of love so fierce, so tender, so Filipino, there isn’t quite an English word for it. But we know it. We’ve lived it. We’ve been on the giving end — and the receiving. We call it gigil . My earliest memory of gigil ? I was four years old, asked to keep an eye on my baby sister. She was all cheeks and lashes. Soft, perfect, squishy. Something in me snapped – not from anger, but from adoration too big for words. It surged through my tiny body, overwhelming in its tend...

My dear little loves, Today is June 12 –  Araw ng Kalayaan.  Philippine Independence Day. It’s not just a date we mark on the calendar. It’s a story we carry.  And one day, it will be yours to carry too. You didn’t grow up in the Philippines, and neither did I. But you have Filipino hearts. And part of my job as your mama is to make sure you know where those hearts come from – not just through facts or history lessons, but through something much deeper: memory, belonging, soul. So tonight, like we do every night, we’ll read together. But tonight, I’ll read this: For you, right now – aged 1 and 7, still small enough to fall asleep to the sound of my voice: You didn’t know the lullaby. Not yet. But you learned it – just in time. You didn’t grow up hearing the stories. But you read them aloud now – with love tucked into every page. And that’s what kalayaan is, really: not just flags or fireworks or parades – but the soft sound of a mother’s voice reading truth in...

Today, the Church turns a year older. And we, her children scattered across the nations, feel the wind of her birth rushing through us once more. Pentecost. The day the Holy Spirit came like wind and flame, resting on the heads of trembling disciples and igniting their voices with unfamiliar tongues. Not heavenly gibberish, but languages — real, earthly languages from every corner of the known world. The miracle wasn’t just in the speaking. It was in the understanding. Each person gathered in Jerusalem heard the Good News in their own mother tongue. Let that settle in your heart. The Holy Spirit didn’t erase their languages. It didn’t impose a new one. It  sanctified the ones they already had — the words whispered by their mothers, sung at bedtime, shouted in joy, or wept in grief. These were the very words the Spirit used to proclaim salvation. And here we are today: Filipino parents raising children far from the motherland. Scattered seeds, planted in foreign soil....

Inip  isn’t just boredom. It’s a kind of restless waiting that lives deep in the Filipino soul.  This is a reflection on what it means to sit with that ache — as a parent, a working woman, a child of the diaspora, and a daughter of faith.  This word holds more than we think. And maybe it’s asking us to hold it gently too. Part of a four-word series that began with Uyayi: A Lullaby Across Generations —  a love letter to my children and to parents like me, raising roots far from the motherland.  It's a personal celebration of our Filipino heritage in our home during the same month we mark Araw ng Kalayaan . . . . . .  “Mommy… I’m borrred!” That’s my 7-year-old’s go-to line. When she says it, I hear it in surround sound. Dramatic. Drawn out. Declared like it’s a national emergency. And because she has ADHD, she really feels it — body and soul.  No filter. No shame.  Just raw, honest: “I’m bored.” I used to respond with the usual:  “G...