An Open Letter

Dear K,

As of writing, you are still too young to read this. But I hope that, in your adolescence, when that time your doubts on me start to come, you will stumble upon this blog. I hope that this will give you answers and when this does not, I hope that this will give you faith.

Today, I watched you walk down a few short streets in Makati; all the time, never losing your grip on my hand. I wonder, twenty years from now – when you are about the same age as mine: will you ever remember this day we both looked forward to for about a year? Will you be walking on this street in your own pair of heels; fully in control and on top of things?

You were beautiful. I was elated, not because everyone thought you were my mirror image, rather because you possessed your own charm. I looked at you, on our way home, and beyond an old self-portrait that was your face was a look so innocent yet lost in a mix of perception and inquiry.

I know you will be a woman; one with her own style, strength and substance. I do not intend to make you live a comfortable life out of lies and partial truths. Maybe some truths will have to be sugar-coated while your understanding is limited by your experience. But, trust me, my way of protecting you is through exposing you to knowledge. I want you to learn how to stand on your own feet for this is what makes a woman out of a lady.

You can hate me. Though hate is such a strong word, it is normal. I felt that more than once with your grandparents. As a girl who was about your age, I thought of them in superlatives: the best-looking pair, the smartest and the greatest. They were perfect; they were invincible. However, as I grew up, I learned that they are human: flawed and vulnerable. This was where my frustration started. It furthered and deepened upon the realization that these two people, who both created me, are, in fact, very different from their offspring. In the end, though, hate will lead you nowhere. Your parents – and whether they are present or not in your life, are part of the reality that you have to deal with. You will be able to trust and understand others only when you start trusting and understanding the people whom you came from.

Sometimes, though, I feel the need to ask for your forgiveness. I am sorry I had you at a time when I did not know yet how to manage my emotions. I am sorry I lack the guts to take a leap to a different career or a second job, for me to be able to independently provide for the two of us. I am sorry I failed at giving you a good father. I am sorry I get lost in my own problems.

with my newborn

On our waking moments, I have to be two times strong to keep you secure. But at night, when you are asleep, I wrap my arms around you to gather all the strength I need for the next day. My life has been a mess ever since we started sleeping in separate rooms. You just do not know how lost I am without you. That is why having you sleep beside me last night was magical. This is how I renewed my strength: in the dark, with our arms around each other; your breathing slow and relaxed. My little one was lost in that place between sleep and awake; listening to the whispered tune of the lullabies I sang to my womb.

I love you, baby.

Mommy Joyce

29 October 2008

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A Surreal Conjunction

Conjunction is a term used in positional astronomy and astrology. It means that, as seen from some place (usually the Earth), two celestial bodies appear near one another in the sky. The event is also sometimes known as an appulse.
-Wikipedia

Who would have thought we’d ever happen?

You and I have our own carefully calculated places in the universe; spinning in our own axes; moving, revolving on our own paths and yet, we collide – at least from the earth’s point of view – such that we fulfill a certain scientific prophecy: the conjunction.

We happened (and we ended) for a split second in the universe’s time.

Isn’t it amazing how two different people, borne from a series of fortunate accidents, meet and come together in the most unlikely place and time? For somehow, the universe knows how to cooperate. There’s always a way in space to give rhyme to the countless beating humdrums of stars and planets . . . and of rocks.

Why do we always have to see conjunctions from the face of the earth? Why do relationships always have to be judged from a third person’s point of view? Will these judgments ever be fair knowing that sentiments are confined within the person who feels them?

Maybe we did not really happen. Maybe we just imagined.

How we found ourselves “occupying the same position in the right ascension” for our observer’s point of view remains a mystery we dare not solve. By doing this, we have denied ourselves of possibilities; of a rarity that everyday people fail to see.

It is now all about finding a scientist – a mad man; a lonely boy on the face of the earth – who will take time to see the beauty of it all. And who, most of all, will be crazy enough to believe about how each of us felt.

Will we both live to find ourselves in another conjunction?

26 September 2008

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