I recently finished reading Mitch Albom's Five People You Meet In Heaven right after I finished his other book, Tuesdays with Morrie, and I had a transitory moment of pensiveness (OK, OK, the Tuesdays made me cry a fitful). The premise of the book, in so many words, was that when you die (and eventually go to heaven [I wonder what happens if you did NOT go to heaven???]), you get to meet five different people who have touched or made a difference in your life (and vice-versa). These people may have caused you pain, or perhaps have caused some life-changing experience to you (and vice-versa). And the uncanny part of it all is this: you are not necessarily aware of the vice-versa part of it all!
Which got me thinking...who could be my five people? After some chewing over the matter, I started coming up with a shortlist. Now, some of these people are still living as of this writing, but since this is just me being pensive, ergo being way too imaginative, then I'm figuring when I'm six feet under, chances are one or all of these peeps could be there waiting for me...(unless of course I went *way* ahead of them)!
I think, next to "NO", the first word I said as an infant was "Mama". I remember growing up being teased as a Mama's Boy, having always been seen literally tugging at her skirt everywhere she went. (In seeing my niece Jasmine do the same thing to my mom--her lola--I can't help but smile a little.) My mom was a very uncompromising disciplinarian; she wanted nothing but perfection, the best. She would literally drag me out of the basketball court and make me hit my books, even if it was a weekend...just so I'd stay on top of my class. This was almost always the case, so my passion for sports (basketball in particular) vanished into thin air.
She wanted me to excel in everything so she pushed me to do my best. However, being only human (heh..heh), I sometimes let her down, and that disappointed the holy smokes outta her. At some point, after being valedictorian from Kindergarten to fifth grade, and then placing second to a wiz kid in sixth grade, she refused to talk to me...just for letting her down with my being "just" a salutatorian. I could tell then, that look of disappointment from her was going to get me scarred for life. Come senior high school, I passed the admissions test in the University of the Philippines. When I opted to take a non-quota course (i.e. Public Administration) instead of those "titled" courses that she wanted for me (e.g. Medicine, Law, Engineering, Architecture, etc.), she was indignant. She said I was her only hope (well, she gave up earlier on my sister because my Ate was a more resolute child; she'd fight for the decisions and choices she made herself and not our mother's), and that I should really modify my decision. I struck a deal with her...well, more a threat, that is. I told (er, threatened) her that if I took the degree of her choice, I couldn't promise her that I'd do good; and that if she let me take up what I desired, I'd guarantee her a medal on graduation. I got my wish...and my medal, eventually. But since I was "just" a cum laude, she was asking why I didn't make the cut for magna (or worse, summa!) cum laudes... Hay. Somebody give me a knife to slash my wrist with!
In all fairness to my momma, I know that she meant well. Being the good mother that she was, she merely wanted her children to be the best. Or perhaps, this was also attributed to her wanting to prove to her momma (my "Inang Justina") that she could be a good mother, and that she was good enough. You see, my Inang was the classic harridan, being the disinherited Spaniard Doña that she was, and anything my mother (and her other siblings) did was never satisfactory. So I guess, it was just passed on from mother to mother. And I just happened to be the unfortunate receiving end. Hay.
It is with these circumstances that I came to grow up as a person that was in a constant struggle to please my mother...or to prove to myself that I was good enough [for her approval]. And although it has been ages since I've vehemently convinced myself that I was, indeed, good enough--hell, sometimes even excellent!--in things that I do, I still haven't gotten to come to terms with it. In retrospect, I realized how I've been too strict with myself, even competitive, just to establish the fact that I really am good enough. This has (had?) been a major source of conflicts with me and whoever I was involved with in the past: every comment given me was someway taken as an attack, a criticism (no matter how well-meaning they were), and an assault to my ivory tower of self-adequacy. God knows, I'd love to get rid of this immature behavior/attitude. So, in my version of heaven, I will sit down with my mother, and tell her to just be easy on me; that I love her so much, but that she's going to have to make do with what I can do, because I give my best in every single endeavor.
Moving on to my next person, I wasn't the least surprised to realize that my second person would be my dad. My dad, being the good provider that he was, never really saw my sister and I growing up; he was in the Middle East (Saudi to Kuwait to Libya and Kuwait again) making a living for the family ever since my sister was just beginning to crawl. The only memories and images of my father that I held on to as a child wanting a father figure were his routine voice tapes, his musical/pop-up greeting cards, his legions of balikbayan boxes and Samsonite brief cases, the twenty peso bills per strand of white hair that I'd pluck from his head, and his mild-mannered self. His transitory vacations in Bataan from his 2-year contracts in the Mid-East were always looked forward to, especially by my mother. And since the only things that I associate with my father were those things I mentioned earlier, I never really got worked up as her (or my sister, who was the token Daddy's Little Girl).
Yes, he was a first rate provider, but the opportunity cost of the comfortable living, good education, nice and big house, and prissy toys was the void I had in my being: growing up not having a father I could play ball with, go fishing with, fix car engines with, go camping with, and have boy talk with. And in my formative years, with the lack of a father figure, I had to make do with a mother-and-father figure, thus the Mama's Boy prototype.
I was never really close to my father even up to now. Especially now. I remember him meeting an accident in his job as Chemical Engineer in Kuwait City. Aboard an elevator that nosedived 200 floors down to ground level, my father suffered injuries to his nerves in his head, thus causing him to be a little less mild-mannered, and a little crankier. The littlest things would set him off, and he got more and more distant. His presence got more fleeting; he'd stay in the house less (now that he's retired) and would be out trying not to be bored at home.
In my heaven, I would strap him on to a Barcelona chair--his dream chair--and talk to him. We'll just talk like two grownup friends trying to catch up on lost time. I'll tell him about what happened on my way adulthood, and I'll ask him what I did right, what I should continue doing, and what I could do better. I'd tell him how I learned how to do things on my own: fishing, carpentry, changing the tires of our car, cook, plumb, and a whole lot of others...and how I wish he was the one who taught me those how-to's. I'd tell him how I appreciate all the hard work and sacrifices, but will also tell him that I wish he stayed longer to make us enjoy the thing that mattered most: his time. In my heaven, I'd make time go back to when our house was still the modest wooden house, and I'd make him stay put in the country and play ball with me, and go fishing, and do dad-son stuff. In my heaven, it will never be too late for that...unlike how it is now.
My third person will be Armie Hazel. (Oh, God, please let me go before her. If I knew she died before me, my heart will be torn into pieces!) Armie Hazel--or in my endearment, "Arzel"--is my true soul mate. Or at least that's how *I* see it. She was my girlfriend for more than six years, and someway my fiancée.
I met her in high school, not really giving much thought that she would eventually be the person that would make my life come full circle. To borrow that totally cheesy, corny line from Jerry Maguire, she did, after all, complete me.
Arzel was this English-speaking (back when I could barely speak the language, me being probinsyano and all) daughter of an overbearing disciplinarian father, and a student who was almost never at school, well, after school. She was the most beautiful girl in freshman year. She was one of the smartest, sharpest, and funniest. It didn't hurt to also know that she had the sexiest boobs for a 13 year old. Hehehehe. And the thing that blew my mind was knowing that she fancied me--the geeky four-eyed baduy probinsyano from the boys' section right across their girls' wing. Writing her countless love notes--which, in retrospect, I think were written with poor grammar and sentence construction. Haha!--and throwing her stolen side glances, and a whole lot of other juvenile courtship tactics, I was finally able to get her "matamis na OO" and finally got steady with her. And, OMG. I think I was able to bring her home with me! Whoohoo. How's that for geek-gone-lucky?
It broke my heart when she told me that she and her entire family were migrating to the US, and that they were doing it sooner rather than later. She moved to California before I could even tell her how much she meant to me. Needless to say, I was never the touchy, feely, expressive person that I am now. And looking back, I realized that it was really her that taught me how important those were in any relationship. I never really told her that she meant the world to me. She never knew that whenever she walked in a room, time stopped for me and my heart would yell out that I was the luckiest man alive, because I was loved by the most beautiful girl in the world. I never really told her much, except that I missed her. (Well, a poem came out of all this--being inspired and all--and I'll be posting it after this entry.)
Arzel is now a mother. She's becoming more and more beautiful, and is turning into the woman that I have always wanted to spend the rest of my life with. She's now, technically, out of my life...what with her being happily married and blessed with an angel for a daughter who's becoming as beautiful as her.
In my heaven, Arzel will never be my coulda, woulda, shoulda, and what-might-have-been. In there, I'll be the better man that I've always wanted to be. Arzel will be the mother of MY daughter, and will be staring back into my eyes, not her husband's. In there, I'll tell her, "hey, I'm a better person because of you." And in my heaven, I will realize that I do not need to be in heaven just to be with her. After all, she IS heaven.
The shortlist ends here. My last two will come. I can almost feel their presence.
No comments:
Post a Comment