vows

Our fifth anniversary as a couple is nearing. I got to think--what lies ahead for both of us? Two people who once fell in love and begat two children--two important reasons why they have totally put aside their own needs and shifted their life’s patterns, so that they can enclose the little ones safely in between. Is there some reward for us in the offing? For us and us alone?

My husband and I met while we were working in the same building in the south. He’s a web designer, and I…..well, it seemed that I had been a century old vampire, slaving behind the corporate desk all my life. One day, a towering guy who was young and brash and ready to embrace life head-on meets a pocket-sized woman whose only claim to fame are her proud appendages,and her disturbing brain. Nonetheless she too was cavalier and was never frantic about anything much. They fell in love, and voila, love took root, that's Gabriel and Sophia for you. But can you imagine what we had to do to make up for the remarkable disparity between us, the years that divided us, he being five years my junior? We certainly were not a match made in heaven, and God knows what concessions we had to put up with to find our very middle ground. It was not a walk in the clouds.

Children are supposed to be the underlying principle of our effort to stick together as a family, but sometimes when they come into our life, things don’t seem like they used to be. Suddenly, there are schedules to keep, deadlines to meet, mouths to feed, hours to wake up to, infantile emotions to check, undivided attentions to give. It’s all theirs, and hardly yours or his. You forget to be a wife or husband, to take care of your spouse, to act up fittingly in moments that you should take the edge off each other’s uncertainties, or show the least bit of tenderness and consideration.

It’s not as if I hadn’t. I know how it feels to come home from an endless traffic snarl, smog and the city blight. I sometimes wish that I could go to a place where I can shut off momentarily and enjoy some silence. Far from the car horns, from the earsplitting screams of my kids, from just about anything. But more importantly, from the unforgiving realities of this world. And have someone at your side, come hell or high water. I know he does too. That’s why I never want to censure him for his little acts of neglect. He needs what I need. But when he hates, I hate. When he loves, I love. It’s a work in progress and there are many loose ends to always tie up. It is not beyond me to do it, and do it right and good. I wish, though, that I don’t have to trudge alone. I wish that it wasn't always only me, but us.

I think that if love is to be made an action word, it is as my husband would one day tell me: that it is accepting, realizing, and affirming the other one. I am still of the same mind. If not always of the same heart. On our fifth year together, I feel that it’s nigh time for me to get doing these very verbs, and not just vacillating about them. A random person who refused to be called nice and yet unabashedly leaves nuggets of his wisdom once said, smile and the world will instinctively smile back at you.

So there, I am grinning from ear to ear....

Being In Love

Note to self: I have long made a mental reminder to migrate the entries from my 360 blog to here. In fact, I already did so with a couple of posts. I have decided to "kill" 360, as having two blogs is too much for me. And, at the risk of sounding like a thankless wretch, I have to honestly say I did not enjoy writing there. Henceforth, the succeeding posts are stuff rehashed from my other blog, unless I say otherwise. Just a caveat.

Back to my endless meanderings about the rains, some afternoons I enjoy the cool air brought about by the monsoons. I wish we have this weather all year round. Well, that's about all I can do really, just wish, and imagine wildly.To me, a day like this is close to perfect. It's like being in love....and I swear there are instances that the rain just makes you go woozy and bask in the glowing feeling of loving or being loved....!

One such afternoon, it was just perfect. A little drizzle here and there as though I was on my way out to somewhere infinitely romantic. Really if I had a choice I would toss away my umbrella and take pleasure in the teeny drops of water that seem to purposely caress my face. I wasn't exactly on the verge of singing and trip-tripping like gene kelly on the puddles of the wet cobbled streets of madrigal. Sure I have felt love, and at best it's a happy thought, but in the real adult world, I had to appropriately appear unruffled and in one piece.

And yet, I'd know I feel love. That glorious feeling can't be helped. Like seeing someone you have not been with for a long time...it makes you feel terribly anxious, and a little heady. Do I worry about getting there, no I dont know, but believe me, it's hard to keep one's composure when you feel the bite. Either you stare into space like you're too overcome with a nervous spell, or you run around like a headless chicken because of the unbearable suspense of the coming minutes. Everything seems to teem with...well, exaggeration. Me, I choose to be a cool chick, eventhough I feel a gazillion butterflies swarm and flutter with giant wings in my stomach. But that's when I know I'm in love.

And then say, you see a someone. You notice how old you've grown apart, I mean not apart from each other but individually, yes..something like that. Has it been that long? You see yourself in the person who sees you for the first time again, and it's a little strange. There's a half smile in both your faces because you can't seem to find a word that will at least make ordinary sense. Instead you size each other up secretly....and the discovery is just unspeakable.

Or a person who long ago thought of you as someone you just exchange a few pleasantries with, is actually standing right in front of you--a little nervous like yourself probably--but certainly real in flesh----and some kind of wonderful. Suddenly the past comes rushing back, the years that had gone, when you were younger and confounded with the mysteries of life and the common hurts, watching life from a terribly selfish point of view. Your mind bustled with thoughts about the poor world that owed you everything and nothing. There was once arrogance , but now you're more steadfast, waiting for something to reborn, something which is about to be understood by only both of you and no one else. Highfalutin, but yeah, there will be such love....

At times, there's a torrent of desperation to talk, to want to know more, to ask more....and then it begins to rain down again, and you somehow feel the tranquility in the sound of water trickling down on the roof, on the windows, from the sky, or from your rapt hearts....no words need be spoken. A just silence painstakingly shuts you out from the world and makes you hear how deafeningly loud it actually is...a crash and boom you can't deny. Now, tell me if that isn't love?

Someone once said,there just won't come soft rains....

Being in love is getting the worst of the monsoon, being hit hard, feeling the icky bite, and finally relishing an afternoon delight in the tropics of your passion....yay! How cheeky can you get? But,true indeedy..

written 7.17.06

The Rains Cometh

Far too often, I have talked about rains and how much I love its presence. It's not actually raining while I write this....but the sky has an ominous color that tells it's going to pour soon, and so I am strategically set into my little inspired artsy mode which seems a bit peculiar because there's absolutely nothing artsy about what I am thinking or doing.....but, whatever.

I like the months leading up to the wet season, in this case July. The suddenly musty smell of the room, watching rainwater drip from the glass windows of my building, stirs me back to memories of the times that rain had made a big mark in my consciousness. Pardon my sounding tawdry, but back then I could always feel the romatic undertones of being huddled in the rain with just about anyone of the opposite sex. Somehow, the quixotic side of you hopes that some nice guy would offer you his coat or his umbrella, watch the rains let up, in a quaint coffee shop over petty and embarassed exchanges. But hey, I was fifteen when I had those thoughts.....

And then it was always very sad, infinitely sad, especially when you see the wet leaves glimmer under a pale moon after a downpour....you see life's tragedies unfold before you, how you lost a mother, the time you lived apart from your brothers, your first heartbreak, your failures, your unspoken furies, your fears, and your self-loathings.....It always seemed to rain. It was a waterlogged existence that you couldn't even tell when it would stop....

But oh, it stopped actually. The rains stop, but the memories are etched and burned. And that's why today, there's a crazy woman talking about senseless stuff about rains, even if it's too fucking hot and sundrenched outside. ...

Of Love

Watching the movie again the other night, I had wanted to re-relish the book a good friend gave me....There's a line uttered by Dr. Iannis while lecturing his beautiful daughter Pelagia about love. It is simple, but true.

"When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake,and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is nconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness; it is not excitement, it's not the desire to mate every second of the day, not lying awake at night imagining him kissing every part of your body. No.. don't blush. I'm telling you some truths. That is just being in love, which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love, itself, is what is left over, when being in love has burned away. Doesn't sound very exciting does it? ...but it is."

Being married for merely three years has made me realize that life is not all roses. It can often get unforgivably bumpy and rough that you just have to get a grip and find yourself time and again. The glamour of love is painfully lost in you. But come to think of it, you manage to rise above it all somehow. The struggle of giving, falling, being selfless, affirming, and understanding are manifestations of the lengths you are willing to go through to make life bearable and ultimately worth-living with the person you wake up next to each day----and therein lies the beauty.

Week-ender

Another workweek has passed, my blogging experience has become to me now like an immersion to an unknown world. In a nutshell, I had expected only a medium where I could unload my thoughts and observations on things that happen to me on a daily basis, but i have seen many online journals that speak of a vast array of emotions and experiences--a hodgepodge of what is truly human...sometimes funny, sometimes sad, at times gothic, or full of ennui and wariness....but often beautiful....i am perpetually in awe.

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, most of my workmates had gone somewhere in a frenzy to make last minute arrangements for a date, or reserve flowers. I suppose my husband has thought of a small surprise for me as well, but he kept chiding me to forego the whole thing....for practical purposes, as usual. I don't make a big deal out of it honestly, just thinking about Gabby and to bring him somewhere special on the weekend is enough. I'm sure he's earnestly waiting for the chance to try out his newfound skill--walking. He seem to increasingly feel claustrophic in our little space everyday, and wants to explore more.

Oliver is not a the kind who is effusive in his display of love or caring. In spite of his rather fussy and talkative front, he can be reticent when it comes expressing what he feels---especially towards me. Sometimes it is hurtful and disheartening, but he makes up for his shortsightedness in small, and yes---practical---ways.

Hmmm....Valentines has become indeed, just one of "those days".