my mother's runaway bride...

When you consciously (or unconsciously) forget unwanted memories, it's called motivated forgetting. Its a coping technique I am good at-- even before I first step in school.

I remembered my first days in school. I don't go straight to the classroom but hangs around that big tree where the school's humungous bell was hanging...by myself. Circling it, dancing around it as if playing with its soul. Then I'd stop. Runs back home. Gets the ire of my mother who never failed to send me back to school accompanied by a neighbor who--- would just drop me off by the school's gate entrance. And I'd be dancing with the tree again until it's time to go home.

I don't remember when I started to like school. But I am smart.

I am smart but I am and had always been my mother's runaway bride.

It was my mother's birthday yesterday. I was aware of it, I've always looked forward to that date especially when I started earning my own money and able to spend gifts for my mother. Unfortunately, I was stricken with the motivated forgetting plague.

I've done it again.

Did you really leave me again?

After all the seasons I spent waiting,

watching out the window,

listening at the door,

waiting for the news of your return.

For the news that you realized

that someone important was waiting for you?

A whole lifetime I’ve been waiting.

I can’t believe you’re not coming back

I can’t believe I’m supposed to stop waiting

I can’t believe you left me again.

Comments

Sunday's child...

I may not have a fair face, but I am a Sunday child. Forty-something years ago, on a wee hours of a Sunday, my mother had a 10-pounder. I was born from an unfortunate situation of my parents who were in dire need to uproot themselves from the very place they called home since their childhood. Most of my siblings were born and grew up in the same hometown. So growing up in a very different environ caused havoc to some of my older siblings --- who are unable to see the tin line between leaving and living. On the other hand, I did not realize the difference between us and them (my older siblings) even they kept teasing me and the other two younger siblings "Moros". I remembered how I was schooled by my older siblings about the sun, the moon, the stars...and why the sky is way up high. I've learned how greed can cause you hunger and misery from the story of the monkey and the turtle . I even learned the eye-flipping story of the pin...

heads or tails...

What's the best part of a fish to chomp on? The head. Especially when its sinigang or tinola (cooked in soup base) or even grilled. Filipinos has a funny gusto of eating fish, we are used to cooking and serving a whole fish -- with all its head, tail, bones, and skin on! Which, I know most people in California would gape at a sight of it--- a whole fish! Gawk. Ande cooked dinner yesterday. She called me saying "saan ka na" (where are you now?) at 645pm, while I was cruising or actually sitting in the traffic of SR-55 and I-5N. She said she cooked dinner. Yes, that's how lucky I am! I have a rent-free place and a dinner to look forward to. As expected, the one in my soup bowl was a milkfish head... and so in Ande's bowl. I went back to the kitchen for seconds and found the same heads and some tails of the milkfish in the pot. Went back to the table, grabbed my eye glasses again as milkfish are really, really bony! ...

I won't remember you....

I won’t remember you. I never remember anything that hurts me. Harsh huh! Acknowledging the pain and feeling it is one way but the easiest way there is when you have pain is to suck it up and forget about it. I did that. Done that. I learned to be cynical and stoical. I never remember anything that hurts me. When my father died, I only cried the day he was laid to rest. I cried hard in 2013 when I left my mother in a hospital bed without all her senses and memories…and the day she died. Crying helps. Instead of avoiding our feelings, we can simply feel them and forget about it. However, when events and circumstances overwhelm one to the point where they are an emotional wreck --- there’s always a medicine for it! So, Mrs. M got her dose. She passed away. It was sad. She was a happy soul. Someone just hurt me. I won’t remember you. ...

and so it goes...

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