This is so weird. My mom and dad are in the living room right now, laughing and joking with my two brothers...there's sound everywhere of family, echoing throughout the house, since my mom came in from out of town. It's a strange familiar sound, one that brings back happy childhood memories, and yet a strain of anxiety--which freaks me out a little. I have only vague memories of these days from over half my lifetime ago. My emotions get tossed up in many different pieces, each piece landing differently in my mind, whenever I hear these familiar sounds. My mom and dad still flirt with each other and play fight like teenagers...I'm exited for them and disgusted at the same time. They do it in front of me and I'm cringing in the inside, but smiling in the outside. Half of me wants them to get back together, but then the other half knows that it will never work out. And it's painful. It's so temporary. Here is the perfect family that I thought I had when I was very small. There's lots of togetherness, laughter, love, and all that good stuff- the twang of Ilocano, their Filipino dialect, bouncing off the walls. The fact that I know these sounds will disappear again soon, and my parents affection will disappear, and the togetherness will unravel, tickles that part in the back of my throat that pushes the tears. Long ago I convinced myself that things are better off as they ended up: the divorce, we supporting ourselves, our parents and their distant relationships with themselves, and us... I believed it was good to get the chance to grow up fast and become independent, FAST-because we were forced to. It made us stronger. We would never be where we are now. But I'm left with anticipation...looking forward only to the family's demise over and over again, whenever my mom comes in from out of town. When she's here, we are that family from my childhood past: my dad is a good man, we are all the blessed happy kids, under the protection of a highly concerned mother---but she is leaving again...as she always did. And with her, the family- as it had ended originally. Waiting for her to leave is the worst part. Then that same feeling I had, when I watched my mother carry all her clothes out to the car as she left my father, with me watching, floods me again- and I see the twelve year old girl, crying. |
Unrated and scarcely edited personal accounts involving: memoirs, tokens of the subconscious, adventure, and splashes of imagination.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Saturday, April 30, 2005 Little Girl Sounds
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