Monday night. I arrived home from the office and enjoyed a quick dinner of rice and monggo. Our monggo day always falls on a Friday but I haven’t gone to the grocery yet and I thought that was the only thing we had left in the fridge.

I then settled inside the bedroom ready to do some blogging work. Lolo and Lola took the kids out to attend a birthday party earlier that afternoon and I had a chance to have some alone time, which is quite rare on a weekday.

Close to 10 pm, I was starting to wonder what time the kids will get home when I received a text message: “Psst… Pakibukas yung gate.” It was Kernan using his local number.

I rushed down the stairs and saw him backing up the vehicle in the garage. Our helper beat me to the punch and opened the gate before I could go down.

Inside the car were Jamaine and Kalia calling out to me, “Mommy! Mommy!” Jamaine proudly held up a pack of Marty’s Cracklings and said, “Mommy, may pasalubong ako sayo!”

Tears started streaming down my cheeks as I saw my hubby’s dark chocolate face through the driver’s window. It felt surreal seeing him parking our car at the driveway just as he always did when he would arrive home from work. It was as if he had never been away from home.

I hugged him tight with a slight reproach, “Why didn’t you tell me you were arriving home today?”

“Surprise!” he said.

As it turned out, he already knew a week ago he was coming home on Monday instead of Wednesday. That morning, everybody else knew, including our helpers, that he was already coming home but they wanted to surprise me.

And surprised I was. There were tell tale signs — the monggo was a special request from Kernan who missed eating this homecooked dish for more than a month and I noticed there was a tray of galunggong thawing at the sink, which as it turned out was supposed to be fried when he arrives — but I still didn’t get it.

And I’m glad I didn’t. It was a pleasant surprise albeit a teary one.

When Jamaine saw my teary eyes, she asked, “Mommy why are you crying?”

“Mommy’s just very happy.”

And we are. Very, very happy.

Happy weekend everyone!

Tagged as: family