My daughter Antoinette has a wonderful way of describing mornings.
Every day, at around 6:30 a.m., after the customary knock on the door, Jeff lets her and her brothers in the master’s bedroom.
The unica hija would approach me, glance to her Dad’s direction and would announce, “Mom and Dad, the night is gone. The sun is out and it’s a brand new day!”
Her sunny disposition lights up the room and often times is the wake-up pill I need to face the challenges of the day.
I am not sure where Antoinette learned these lines. Neither I nor Jeff taught her any of those for sure.
But my children have an affinity for describing things which come and go. For four years now, we have been fans of Eric Carle’s “Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me,” which is a wonderful book on learning the phases of the moon. We have discussed why the moon disappears and appears the size of a crescent, grows to be a full circle and then disappears again.
We have since been regular readers of Augie Rivera’s “Isang Harding Papel,” a children’s book which narrates the story of little girl Jenny and how she was separated from her mother at the height of Martial Law, a dark time in Philippine history in the hands of the late President Ferdinand Marcos.
This is perhaps where Antoinette got her “the night is gone” line.
Because when they asked me what Martial Law is, after several nights of reading this storybook, I would always say “it was a dark time.”
I would like them to remember that I continue to teach them to read more and embrace the culture of reading to equip themselves with the knowledge, skills and values needed to navigate this difficult world.
On December 2016, I went out to the street to join an anti-Marcos rally. Antoinette’s twin brother, Nicholas, joined me in that protest rally at the Capitol Building, which was followed by a one-kilometer walk to Fuente Osmeña where a noise barrage was held.
Nicholas carried with him a small placard that said, “If you change history, you are lying to me. #MarcosNOTahero.”
A couple of people, mostly trolls, criticized me for that action because according to them, I was just using my child to gain attention. I even got two death threats.
About a year and three months after that rally, I have reflected on that accusation and I wholeheartedly admit that I brought my child to that rally to gain attention.
But here are some points that they need to learn about me and the decision to bring my firstborn to that rally.
One, I fight for my children’s future, especially the future of the country in which they are citizens. I cannot let historical revisionism be accepted as truths. Marcos is never a hero and this truth is evident in the stories of abductions, torture, salvaging or extrajudicial killings that happened during the time when he made himself both “king” and “god” of the Philippines.
Two, I came out to speak up about this because in the age of post truths and fake news, nothing is more alarming than people in positions of power and influence who sanitize the atrocious and heinous acts committed by a dictator. This is the greatest fake news in Philippine history.
On June 2017, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) called on Filipinos to defend the truth against fake news. In a home composed of Catholics, Mormons and a Seventh-Day Adventist, we heed the call to fight against fake news and be guardians of the truth. We simply cannot take this sitting down.
Three, I do not know how else to fight fake news but to stand up and constantly call out people who share them. I do this in my capacity as a journalist, a writer and a mother, with an active social media presence. We can refuse to be purveyors and “disseminators” of fake news on social media by refusing to yield to fake news which is an insult to our intellect and as CBCP described as “a sin against charity because it hinders persons from making right and sound decisions and induces them, instead, to make faulty ones.”
Fake news takes us into a state of eternal darkness, a never-ending night that would never see the light of day.
These are times when we cannot afford to be fence-sitters on issues hounding our country. We have to stand up and take a stand; a statement that needs to be practiced more than said. So in the future, our children can really look forward to a day full of hopes and dreams and we can all fully embrace the meaning of “the night is gone.”
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