Loving Thy Neighbor

I have decided to make good use of my time at home. I set out to teach our youngest her ABCs, and to help our 4-year-old to master writing her name.

It’s embarrassing. Our youngest, now three, does not know her ABCs. Her Kuya knew all 26 letters by heart at that age. I do not remember consciously teaching him the alphabet because two years ago, I was buried deep in work/training, hospital duty, and innumerable other tasks. But I surrounded him with a lot of books on the alphabet, and flashcards.

The flashcards are now long gone, hapless victims of the kids’ rough-handling. The books I very well remember. One of those was exactly the same as the one I had when I was little.

When I was very young, parents and titas showered me with gifts of books. I will never forget my big, hardboard set of Froebel-Kan books. As a little kid, I remember staring endlessly at the pretty, very detailed pictures of the frog and the princess and their sumptuous royal dinner. The same set of books were also very useful as shelter for my teddy bear and dolls; because they were very stiff, I would make the books stand up as walls, and I could manage to put another book as roof on the top. As I learned how to read, I discovered my insatiable appetite for books and read them countless times.

Imagine how delighted I was when I chanced upon exactly the same set of hardboard books at a Goodwill bookstore a few years ago. And they were on sale! I grabbed as many as my budget allowed. As soon as I got home, I stuck a sticker that bore my kids’ names (two, at that time) on each of the books’ cover. I’d like to think the two elder kids enjoyed them. I got a kick out of reading to them or simply seeing them staring at the pictures.

Now, we had a helper for almost two years whose sister lived in the same compound, just two doors away from us. This sister had a son, and later a daughter, just a bit younger than our kids. (Can you now see where I am going?). Last year, one of the yayas reported that she could not cut the kids’ nails because the small nailclipper was missing. It made me very angry to discover that the yaya had to go to the other house whenever one of our kids had to have their nails clipped to “borrow” what was rightfully ours. I confronted the helper… it was ugly, and after that the nailclipper magically reappeared.

Later on, hubby found out the same helper had been bringing food out of the house. Now, now… I know we were better off than her sister’s family; the husband worked for a hardware store and was probably earning minimum wage. But that did not give them reason to take what was not rightfully theirs. Also, we regularly shared food (cake, sweets) and old but still decently usable kids’ clothes and shoes for the sister’s kids.

Fast forward to the present. The helper is, thankfully, no longer with us. As soon as she left, we found out that a lot of Kuya’s beloved toy cars were gone. Some of their other toys are missing. Miraculously, our groceries now last much, much, much longer than before. We couldn’t help but notice. The detergent, which before lasted not longer than a week, now can sustain us up to two weeks! Even the oil, produce, rice… everything lasted longer than before. This confirmed our suspicions. And one of our yayas allegedly saw some of the kids’ toys and books in the other house. They were all battered up and when the yaya dared to ask the sister why those books were there, she said, “Itatapon na ang mga ‘yan ni ___ (helper’s name)”.

I was very angry but decided against confronting them. One never wins such arguments. They will always be defensive and feel “api”. For a while I stopped smiling at the sister, stopped acknowledging her when we ran into each other in the compound. But later, I again started giving her small smiles.

Today, with the exam over, I began looking for the kids’ alphabet books, particularly the hardboard one. It was gone! I was very mad (again). Mad at the helper who’s long gone. Mad at the neighbor. And mad at myself. Did I think that our youngest will just learn the alphabet all by herself? She is very smart and has a vocabulary that never ceases to amaze me, but sadly, does not know A from B from C.

This afternoon, I will be going out on a much-anticipated date with my sister. I will make sure to drop by the bookstore to replenish our stocks. And order Robee stickers to label them with the kids’ names, hoping that this time, the labels will work.

Loving one’s neighbors is not a very easy thing to do.