We tried to postpone planning for our homecoming this Christmas for as long as possible – in hopes of avoiding the usual headaches that goes with it. Tried anyway. We couldn’t proscrastinate for too long. It is the end of August – we would be lucky to find cheap airfares this time of year.

Last year, we took the 10-day ticket offered by Northwest, which was valued at almost half the price of the other available tickets. Since Aya was already two years old, she had to have a seat of her own, and so we have to buy tickets for all of three of us. We chose to go home on December 19, then went back to Japan ten days later, two days shy of New Year’s Day.

Belatedly, we realized that the vacation was too short, and the New Year’s eve we spent here at home ogling each other for lack of something to do was enough for us to carefully plan our vacation the following year. Not again, we promised.

We tried to exhaust the options available for us, including booking for a one-way flight using reward miles accumulated in our Northwest card (not a chance, we learned), and booking for a roundtrip ticket in the Philippines. The cheapest flight we could find is worth 100k plus – multiply that by three – this adds up to a rather hefty sum. Argh. 🙁

We could go to the US on that price alone. (Surprisingly, flights to the US are quite cheap that time of year.) Or visit some place we’ve never been before. Heck, even to Europe if we had enough guts to endure winter there. Why spend all that money going back to the same place we’ve been to many times already? Why go back and endure the heat, traffic, stressful Christmas shopping at the malls? And consider this – it’s the one single vacation that wins the honor of being the grandest spending of the year. Everything goes out, nothing comes in. No thanks to the commercialization of Christmas. If there’s one thing we hate doing in January, it’s looking at the credit card transactions of the month before.

Well,the answer is simple: our family. How many times in a year do we get to see them, anyway?

Since Daddy died, I have viewed homecoming in an entirely different light. I could have been home that last December (the year before he died) – and we could have spent one more Christmas together as a family. But I decided to forego our supposed trip in December because we had already gone home three months earlier to attend my sister’s wedding. Little did I know that he would be gone in five months’ time. What makes me think that my family will always be there when I go home? What assurance do I have that every time we go home everybody else would be present? If I knew that this particular meeting would be our last, wouldn’t it be worth any effort, time and money? Money can be earned in the coming days. The opportunity, if not seized, is lost forever.

For us, Christmas is more than just a holiday or celebration. It has, and always will be, family time. Try putting a price tag on that.

Last Friday night, I was able to watch a special documentary at NHK channel regarding the “world’s worst single-aircraft accident in history,” which happened 20 years ago (read more about the story here). That incident involved a Boeing 747 operated by JAL. The aircraft crashed somewhere in Gunma prefecture. Five hundred and twenty persons perished on that ill-fated day. I have harbored such a high regard of JAL all these years – making the erroneous judgment that the more expensive airline usually implies better service. Pity. I didn’t know about the accident until now. In that TV feature, there were at least two surviving relatives whose stories made such an impression on me. One of them was a lady who lost her 9-yr old son. The other one was another lady who lost her husband. She was pregnant at the time of the crash. Her now full-grown 19-year old son remains as the only living remembrance of her husband.

My heart goes out to those people who are still clearly in pain after all these years. I do emphatize with them. Such is the lot that is assigned to us, those who survive after the death of a loved one.

This heartbreaking story has barely begun sinking in (though quite belatedly, given that it has been 20 years since the accident) when just last Sunday, another plane crash grabbed the headlines. A Boeing 737 operated by Helios Airways crashed in Greece, killing all 121 persons aboard. Among the casualties was a yet undetermined number of children. Being a parent, I couldn’t begin to imagine the pain their parents (if not with them inside the plane) are currently going through. No parent ever deserved to see their children die.

While checking for related stories to this recent incident at CNN, to my horror, yet another plane crashed somewhere in Venezuela today, this time with 152 souls aboard the aircraft.

Why so many fatal errors in aircraft safety lately?

Flying is always risky business, but it is usually the only means to get to wonderful, exotic places in the world.

Aya has already flown so many times with us. As soon as she is buckled up on her seat, she would lean forward and grab the safety instruction card inserted at the back of the front seat. Together, we would go through each illustration and I would explain to her the meaning of each one. Like what to do when the aircraft lands on water. What to do when the oxygen masks drop down. Where to find the emergency exits. It is a habit which started the first time during a long-haul flight to Hungary. She was getting restless and was making a lot of noises. Quite unprepared, and not having anything else of interest to divert her attention, I grabbed the safety instruction card and explained it to her. Apparently, she never forgot about it, and every time we flew she always remembered to take out the card out of the seat. How could I ever make her understand that it’s no fun to actually see oxygen masks dangling in front of our noses, if and when such a situation ever happens? How can I tell her that for the life of me, I could never, ever be so enthusiastic about having to pull out that life vest under my seat? What good will a life vest do if the plane crashes on a mountain?!!

It seems to me that every parent who flies is fearful of only one thing: that of actually having their children aboard with them. It takes courage to move out of the home’s comfort zone. It takes sheer determination and patience to put them on a flight, especially on long-haul ones. There’s always a risk in everything, transportation certainly one of them. We have never traveled anywhere without travel insurance, not since Aya began her globetrotting with us. It’s such a helpless feeling, to be at the mercy of the pilot’s skills and training, the maintenance crew, the weather, the aircraft itself. The check-in counter is not just a place to check-in your luggage. You are practically checking in your life as well. What happens henceforth is out of your control. I think it’s no coincidence that we use the same word – departure – to refer to both airplane flights and, well, the one we all take: the trip of no return.

If it’s your time, then it’s your time. Any adult would probably have no qualms about that. But for a child…it is simply unacceptable; it runs counter to any human reasoning. Any loving, caring parent will forget about self-preservation in a heartbeat when their child is in the slightest of danger. For the slightest turbulence we experience while flying, I always find myself reaching out to Aya in panic and grabbing her hand in desperation. Talk about being a paranoid mother.

We will be leaving in four weeks’ time. Aboard an aircraft which, hopefully, would safely make the trip, as with all the previous ones we’ve taken. In the meantime, even in the light of the recent aircraft disasters, I would try to convince myself that the probability of the plane crashing is ridiculously small. For the safety of my daughter, I would very much like to believe that to be true.

What else is there to do? Que sera sera.

This past week, we were on our own again. After being pampered like small kids for almost six months, we are back to the juggling act again. The so-called juggling act between domestic and work affairs, that is. If you asked me why I’ve been so productive at work, I would tell you that it’s because my mother was around all this time to help me take care of my daughter, and that she had practically managed all of our household affairs. For instance we didn’t have to worry about taking our daughter to the daycare in the morning and picking her up in the afternoon. Mom took care of that for us. We didn’t have to worry about what to eat for dinner. Again, Mom made sure that there was always something hot and delicious waiting for us when we get home. She took care of logistics, food, and cleaning. Aya is the litterbug of our home, as any toddler is I suppose, but Mom made sure to clean up after her, every time. What more could you ask for? Indeed, life was a bed of roses. 🙂

Sayonara for now Lola. Aya gave her Lola a goodbye kiss at Narita.

Well, all that has changed. Since last week we were back to cleaning our own mess, making our own meals, and taking care of our daughter. As it should be, right? It’s going to be a difficult adjustment for us, but in time I’m sure we’ll be humming along with the rhythm just fine.

That’s the downside of living here in Japan. In absence of household help, you have to do everything from housekeeping to taking care of the children. That’s no easy task – just ask any homemaker or stay-at-home wife and mother. If both parents are working, then at least it’s possible for them to put the kids in the daycare while they are at work. The good news is that at least the daycare system here is efficient and trustworthy, and they still involve parents in various ways and organized activities. I mean, you just don’t haul your children to the daycare and leave them there like that. There is a daily checklist of things to provide and submit. Everyday involves bringing clean, dry towels, bibs and clothes, and taking the same used items back home at the end of the day. There are monthly height and weight measurements, and occasional health and dental checkups. Everything is recorded in the kid’s health booklet, which is submitted to the parents for signing as with a student’s report card. There are dozens of handouts written in Japanese – enough to give you a headache if you didn’t know enough Japanese. And before I forget to mention, everyday I have to write in Japanese in Aya’s “renraku no-to” – a some sort of written form of communication between parents and daycare teachers. It’s like forced writing in Japanese, everyday – argh! If it’s any consolation for me, the daycare teachers probably have a more difficult time making sense of my bad Japanese grammar and childlike scrawlings of kanji characters. Hey, at least I try to write something. The very first few days when Aya attended daycare, I left my portion of the page blank – until I was reprimanded for it. So now I write whatever comes to mind. Mundane things like if Aya’s pooping fine or not. 😛 No, seriously. It makes them feel better that I am paying attention to my child’s condition.

For working parents, it is inevitable for “work” to continue all the way home, and parents don’t “clock out” until their kids are fast asleep. I don’t know that it’s more advantageous, in the long run, for a child to grow up under 100% parenting at home. At any rate, this is not a possible option for us, with both of us working. Aya has been attending daycare since she was 10 months old. The advantage is that she is growing up to be quite a sociable kid, and even bilingual at that (Nihongo and Tagalog). Years from now she would probably be speaking Japanese much better than us. Already she is picking up a lot of English words from the cartoons she watches on tv. I’ve also started communicating to her in English. Her learning rate is tremendous.

Tomorrow is Monday. We will be waking up early in the morning to prepare breakfast, Aya’s things for the daycare, ourselves, and everything else to start another working week. Oh yes, tomorrow is also “obento no hi” at the daycare, so that means that we also have to prepare Aya’s packed lunch.

Time to buckle up, indeed.