“Purposeful giving is not as apt to deplete one’s resources. It belongs to that natural order of giving that seems to renew itself even in the act of depletion. The more one gives, the more one has to give – like milk in the breast. Even in our purposeful giving must have some source that refills it. The milk in the breast must be replenished by food taken into the body. If it is woman’s function to give, she must be replenished too. But how?” – Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea, 1975.
“Stand Tall and Proud. Sink Your Roots into the Earth. Be Content with Natural Beauty. Drink Plenty of Water. Enjoy the View.” – Ilan Shamir.
Nicole David Yalong (Nicole) is a Gen Y mom, petite, pretty, a yoga-enthusiast, singer, lyricist, and a baker, who is married to Jake Yalong, an engineer by profession. When she asked me to be her ninang, I could not attend her destination wedding in Pampanga, Philippines.
Yet ceremony or not, and even with her busy mothering of twins, we have grown to be supportive friends via text and Instagram, anchored by occasional personal visits after museum, and before or after my interviews.
Somehow, her being a millennial has not created a gap with me, but high respect and awe for her courageous voice imparting appropriate wisdom she discerns from life.
I first saw a glimpse of her onstage at the Ford Amphitheater when she sang next to her international jazz, award-winning artist/composer/singer father, Mon David and her brother, Carlo David, a composer/singer/guitarist/saxophonist.
Nicole sang the beginning verses with pitch-perfect tunes, not laboring at all, but confident to reach a note and an ability to expand her vocal cords through a wide range. It is with exceptional ease, but depth of feelings, perhaps honed by her skill of writing lyrics to the tunes composed by her brother, Carlo and listening to her dad, Mon, sing, compose and arrange music as he plays the guitar.
One evening, she joined her dad at one of his jazz concerts to sing just one, she said, as it took posting the lyrics at every visible place in her home, given her role as a very busy mother of twin toddlers, Leo and Nico, who were stomping on the water puddle they created, as they watered the garden, with their rain boots on.
The serendipity of four backyard trees and thousand bloom parenting
I noticed the serendipity created by God for this family with four orange bearing fruit trees in their backyard and a towering pine tree in the front. The oranges from these trees are harvested in time to quench the thirst of very busy twins: shoveling dirt into their dump trucks, sorting and measuring soil, moving their trucks on the cement.
The twins are nurtured to develop competence and you can watch them on Instagram squeezing the juice of the oranges into their glasses. After a nutritious lunch, chocolate ice cream cone treats await them at times, from their dad, Jake, who occasionally squeezes in a few minutes to drop by from his engineering fieldwork projects.
I regard the four trees much like the four corners of the world, the inclusivity of north, south, east and west. Even illustrative of the four gospels of St. Matthew the Apostle, St. Mark the Evangelist, St. Luke the Evangelist, and St. John the Apostle.
Nicole and Jake’s new home is filled with light, open to the four orange trees in the backyard with a newly installed white fence, using the collective bayanihan labor of siblings and Nicole’s parents they share the home with.
I watched the twins come back from a day in the park with their grandfather, Mon David, and their mom, Nicole. As we walked into the threshold of their new house, I could feel the serenity, welcomed by a sea aqua-blue color of their front door.
As the twins were catching their breath, Mon started singing “Java Jive” by Manhattan Transfer asNicole joins in on pitch “I love coffee, I love tea, I love the java live and it loves me. Coffee and tea and the java and me. A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup.”
The twins settled down quickly.
I was not born into this Kapampangan family, yet I feel part of them, as I partake lunch of guinataang langka and bulalo cooked by Ann David, a medical technologist by profession.
Nicole sat in front of the twins, spooning portions of bulalo into their bowls, after eating a chocolate banana loaf that I baked for them. Nicole explained that is how she eats, desserts first.
I smiled noticing how confident a mother she is, trustful of how she was raised and how she belongs on this earth with her knowledge, skills and abilities.
One of my favored advocacies, if one can call it that, is giving three books to pregnant friends, as gifts. I found these invaluable: Magda Gerber’s “Caring for Infants with Respect and Your Self-Confident Baby: How to Encourage Your Child’s Natural Abilities From the Very Start” and Dr. Shefali Tsabary’s “The Conscious Parent: Transforming Ourselves, Empowering Our Children.” For every child grown using Gerber’s foundational philosophy, I have watched them become self-reliant, kind, compassionate adults who are productive citizens, a wish I have for every grown adult on earth towards sustained peace and harmony, including myself.
Aside from these three books, Nicole added what she learned given her interests in working with children. She shared Waldorf homeschooling methods of using art and nature in providing a holistic exposure to experiment and discovery.
She also reads her daily source of spiritual wisdom, living a purposeful life daily and she gains insights on how to fill up the interior heart vessels of her twins, guided by Gary Chapman’s “Five Languages of Love.”
She is conscious and clearly delineates the needs of her twins, one needs to be caressed and held until he is ready to be on his own, while the other is independent and seeks what he needs, focused attention on reading and art and by performing for family. At a baby shower, Leo held the microphone and sang “Do Re Mi.” and almost had all the lyrics.
Nicole and Jake believe in foundational Montessori, which is parenting that is child-centered, based on scientific observations of the children’s developments.
“Grace, not perfection,” Nicole asserts, after reading all the books given to her on parenting. She distilled the principles that she learned including the philosophy of providing safe environments to her twins and trusting them, “it takes more control to let go, than to control them,“ she said.
She emphasized how she relies on Jake at night, and through discussions, they both process how the day has been with the twins and what to improve upon.
Jake shared: “I am very blessed to have Nicole as my wife and the mother of my children. She’s dedicating her whole life in taking care of our twins and I really admire her for that. We are aware that we are opposites when it comes to our habits and interests, but we are happy together. That is probably because we share the same dream — how we want to raise our family and that for us, outweigh our [individual] differences.”
Can you believe these twins can stay in the backyard for three hours, alongside their mom, who is gardening, while they are shoveling dirt into their firetrucks and dump wagons, as well as find bark and leaves to play with, as they wish?
Try doing this, as they do, and after, a treat of freshly squeezed orange juice from their backyard trees? Would it be heavenly?
Nicole’s instincts are so right on. She arranged the four corners of the twins’ playroom with age-appropriate toys, activities and books. In the north corner, she has a book display, of books that support the twins chosen activities in nature or in the park. In the opposite corner is a table with white paper and markers. The twins were trained to only draw on paper provided on the table, and not the walls. On the east corner are plastic organizers that the twins can access for trucks, cars and legos. Nicole replenishes them daily to nurture their fine motor skills or assembling and balancing towers as the lessons for the day. Opposite that are some stuffed toys that invite the twins to linger, explore and discover what they want to do for the day.
Mom has 10 books on display, chosen for them to read, and Jake and Nicole read four to five with unhurried time until the twins are too weary to stay awake and fall asleep on their own at night. The rewards of this generous indulgent reading of 10 books are a quiet dinner shared by the couple, but also, bright, eager and ready-to-read twins.
I sometimes post on Instagram, “Genius in the making,” as the twins are reading the letters of EXIT, when they shop with their parents. They form letters using elbow macaroni and even match big and small letters using the puzzles. Their dad, Jake carefully chooses the puzzles, and assembles legos and wood blocks as towers with them on weekends, which enhances their perceptive abilities.
Equally remarkable is how quiet the twins are at the dinner table or any restaurant, focused on spooning every bite of food into their mouths until their stomachs are full and they get down from their boosters, raring to go to their playroom. Can you say that about meals with your toddlers?
Coming from Santorini, my jubilant niece Regine — newly married to Nikko — stayed with us for a week. She asked, “Tita, do they not choose only to do for themselves what they want?” I smiled as it was an invitation for a profound exchange of reflections.
Leo is busy drawing and coloring and matching his alphabets, while Nico is working with his trucks and cars and assembles towers. But also, Nicole trains them to help with laundry. How? Leo takes out v the clothes from the washer into the dryer. Then, when Nicole is baking cookies, Leo is excited to have “baking time with Mama,” and messily measures flour and sugar. But, the mess is okay, says Nicole, “I only put up with it for a few months until they gain mastery of holding the measuring cup.” She knows as she developed the twins to be self-reliant, messes for a while when they were little, but grown now to hold spoons to their mouths.
In a sense, they do what they want to do; after all, their lives are designed for them to live.
Leo is independent and plays by himself, while Nico is demanding during the day, only Mama can hold him, Nicole confides in me.
“Can I write this for the public to read?” I ask, to which she nods her head. Nico had been crying for no reason at all for days and she experimented with indulgent care first. Nothing could stop him. Then, she tried ignoring him. At the end of her patience scale, one day, she lightly spanked him, a first and her last. Empowered to speak and to express himself, Nico said, “Mama, don’t hit me.” Nicole is raising her twins with agency, with an ability to say what they need. She realized she needed to give him more patience, “I hugged him even more and told him that I have to take care of your brother. Use your words, tell me what you want – ‘Mama, I am tired.’ ‘Mama, I want carry.’”
Nicole realized that Nico really requires a lot of caressing and hugging until he is ready to play by himself. “I also no longer rush to give them breakfast in the morning [and] that it is okay for them to feel hunger. It used to be I was rushing to give them breakfast, but now, I give them milk, water, then make lunch for my husband, Jake. I prepare their breakfast as the day goes. I also found out if I go through with them the schedule of the day, that Noah is coming, (an older nephew) who likes to ride in the wagon, it becomes a relaxing day for them.”
She continued, “One time we saw a lizard and they chased that lizard for a good 15 minutes. Another time they saw bees eating the flower and so when we came inside the playroom, I had a book from the library about bees and flowers. I take them to the library once a week to socialize them with other kids. I am even more careful what books to expose them to. When we were kids, we were fortunate if we saw bees growing up. But, I take my ‘me’ time so I can be kind to Jake. It is just me lying down, meditating, staring at the ceiling or doing my exercise. I find that without that “me time”, it is a struggle to be mabait (kind and gentle). Before napping, I read them four to five books until they grow weary to take a nap. If their nap is incomplete, Nico needs extra hugs and cuddling.”
What happens if Nicole is not ready to go outside and the twins are? She sets the parameters, and says, “Wait for an hour and we can go outside.” Nico negotiates, “I can go outside, please.” The tone is a sweet one and emphasis on the ‘please.’ Nicole is firm, “But we will wait until 9:30 a.m.” She realized that it is the gentle manner, the kind medium of communications, and her sweet tone that give boundaries to the twins.
Nicole is grateful for her younger sister Mika who takes the trails with her and her twins, each one being carried as their kettlebells, except in their Gerry baby carriers.
Much like a bookmark that illustrated advice from a tree by Ilan Shamir: “Stand Tall and Proud. Sink Your Roots into the Earth. Be Content with Natural Beauty. Drink Plenty of Water. Enjoy the View,” I am certain these twins will grow to become the tallest and most abundant trees, full of positive energies to explore, trusted to have baking times with their Mama, even at tender young ages of two, including squeezing orange juice from four backyard trees to drink daily and putting ice cubes gingerly without spilling, creating the tallest legos of fire stations for their wooden trains and occasional lunch treats of chocolate ice cream cones from their dad, Jake when he can stop by, on field visit days.
Who would want to be a child in this home full of foundational love for Nature, but also the simple elegance of surroundings to be explored for each child for their milestones? Do you fill the richness of presence, understanding, patience, creativity, love and grace?
Purposeful giving is not apt to deplete one’s resources — it extends it, but it also enriches oneself, much like this mother who enjoys “growing and nurturing” her twins.
Could it be that Nicole learned it from her dad, Mon and her mom, Ann? “I just realized and I continue to witness (24/7) that the angel in our family can be a young supermom too! An epitome of love, patience, compassion, empathy, positive outlook and embracing nature – these beautiful qualities she constantly teaches and shares with Leo and Nico,” Mon, Nicole’s dad reflects.
May I add, she makes the best green matcha tea cookies and pecan tarts at Christmas.
Part II will be published in June as a continuation on Mon David as a Lolo.
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Prosy Abarquez-Delacruz, J.D. writes a weekly column for Asian Journal, called “Rhizomes.” She has been writing for AJ Press for 10 years. She also contributes to Balikbayan Magazine. Her training and experiences are in science, food technology, law and community volunteerism for 4 decades. She holds a B.S. degree from the University of the Philippines, a law degree from Whittier College School of Law in California and a certificate on 21st Century Leadership from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She has been a participant in NVM Writing Workshops taught by Prof. Peter Bacho for 4 years and Prof. Russell Leong. She has travelled to France, Holland, Belgium, Japan, Costa Rica, Mexico and over 22 national parks in the US, in her pursuit of love for nature and the arts.
